The mysterious death of a B.C. woman in Tonga
INSIDE THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF A CANADIAN IN TONGA
On the evening of July 6, 2016, Patricia Kearney’s siblings got an email from the boyfriend with whom she had spent years sailing across the South Pacific.
“Dean here from Tonga. There is no easy way to say this ... Trish passed away in her sleep,” he wrote. “She went peacefully.”
Though devastated by the news, the family found comfort in the knowledge she didn’t have to suffer anymore. The 56-year-old had lived with an incurable nerve disorder that had worsened over time.
But days later, the B.C. family’s grief turned to shock. The boyfriend, Dean Fletcher, then 54, was taken into custody by Tongan police, accused of viciously beating Kearney to death.
Twice Fletcher escaped police custody — the second time fleeing by boat to American Samoa, where U.S. authorities detained him. But earlier this month, the U.S. government announced it would not turn him over to Tongan authorities to answer to the murder charges over concerns he wouldn’t get a fair trial. Fletcher, who had been held in Hawaii pending the extradition decision, was set free.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Michael, Leslie and Katherine Kearney — who were raised in Horseshoe Bay, B.C., and still live in Greater Vancouver — told the National Post their quest for justice over the past year and a half has been met by one setback after another.
“We read in the papers there’s going to be an extradition,” Leslie Kearney said. “Everything’s good. You’re beginning to have a life again — and then you’re shattered.”
Fletcher now faces the chal- lenge of re-starting his life with a swirl of unsettled allegations looming over him. If he returns to Canada — his parents Bill and Sheryl Fletcher live on B.C.’s Hornby Island — he risks the possibility of being apprehended and going through another round of extradition proceedings.
“I am very concerned over the possibility of arrest upon entry into Canada and would like to remove this from the record,” Fletcher told the Post in an email, insisting Kearney’s death was the result of a “tragic accident.”
“Trish was the centre of my universe. ... I am bereft at her passing and can only imagine what the Kearney family must be feeling. I am completely rudderless. I would give anything to have Trish back.”
Kearney’s siblings don’t believe a word of it. Said Leslie, “A violent monster … has been unleashed on an unsuspecting public.”
Patricia Kearney was always a bit of a “tomboy,” said her family and friends — adventurous and a free spirit.
Even as she battled a medical disorder that causes numbness, tingling and muscle weakness, Kearney pursued passions like softball and scuba diving.
Fletcher, who was born in the U.S. but raised in Canada, said he first met Kearney in 1990 in Whistler, B.C. She was working at a local credit union and he was a self-employed carpenter.
“Trish and I were close friends for almost 10 years before our friendship blossomed into romance at Christmas 1999,” he said.
The following year, Fletcher says he purchased a 44-foot wooden cutter called Umi. He and Kearney spent the next three years fitting out the boat and learning to sail.
In November 2003, the pair announced to their families they were heading for Southern California and beyond. It was just the kind of thing that Kearney would do, said her siblings, who described her as a bit naive.
“My father would’ve said something like, ‘That girl needs to get some common sense,’ ” Leslie Kearney said, referring to their late father Jim Kearney, a Vancouver Sun sports writer and CBC commentator.
Fletcher and Kearney spent time in Mexico and Central and South America before heading for the South Pacific.
After acquiring a new vessel, Olwen, a 34-foot wooden scoop, the couple split their time between New Zealand and the Kingdom of Tonga, a small Polynesian archipelago nation. Fletcher found work repairing boats and helping move other people’s yachts during storm season.
Kearney periodically sent email updates to her siblings but nothing that offered much insight into her relationship with Fletcher.
In April 2009, she asked her brother to send a care package consisting of purple earplugs, sour wine gums and motion-sickness pills. In April 2011, she was anxious to know how the Vancouver Canucks were doing. “I sure miss the hockey,” she wrote.
In early 2015, Fletcher acquired yet another vessel, a graceful 41-footer made of fibreglass. It was called Sea Oak. On a sailing website, Fletcher gushed about its handling in rough seas.
“Sea Oak would just rise to the sea and the green monster would slide and boil noisily under us, most times, and She would just continue on her course,” he wrote.
Kearney seemed to adore the new vessel, too. “The boat is even nicer than the photos. I am in love,” she wrote to her brother.
That same year, Fletcher says, Kearney proposed marriage and he accepted.
“We were planning a church wedding, but with family members and friends upon three continents the details were a work in progress,” he said. They talked about maybe travelling to Europe and then moving into a house somewhere warm.
Kearney’s siblings believe Fletcher is a liar. Kearney never mentioned anything about a wedding, they said. In fact, according to the family, during a family gettogether a few years ago Kearney mentioned that Fletcher had proposed to her and she flatly refused.
During her last visit to B.C., in early 2016, Kearney signalled she was tiring of life on the seas, her family said. Her medical condition was not making it easy to live in tight quarters.
“I just can’t do it anymore,” Michael Kearney remembered his sister saying.
The siblings said they later learned from friends in Tonga that Kearney’s relationship with Fletcher had become toxic and that she wanted off the boat. “Dean was not happy with her decision,” Katherine Kearney said.
Fletcher insists their relationship was “never stronger” and Kearney only ever proposed to him. He said Kearney was financially independent and could have left any time she chose to.
“Why would Trish have rejoined me (after her trip home) had our relationship been toxic?”
In July 2016, Fletcher sent the email to the Kearneys announcing her death. “Trish passed away in her sleep aboard Sea Oak in her birth (sic). She went peacefully. I found her this morning when I made coffee and she didn’t answer,” he wrote.
The next morning, Leslie Kearney tried to console him in an email. “The initial shock is just beginning to ease here and we are really concerned for you,” she wrote. “Are you o.k., are you going to be o.k.?”
Fletcher responded that he felt “rather lost.”
“The Sea Oak is empty,” he wrote.
He said he had visited a cemetery designated for foreigners that overlooked the water. “It appears to have room and a nice sunny open view.”
He told them not to worry about funeral costs. “Everything is being looked after.”
“Please feel free to ask anything. We are family after all.”
The Kearneys never heard from Fletcher again.
“He went off the radar,” Leslie Kearney recalled. “Mike got worried and started to check Tongan newspapers. And he found a story that basically said Dean had been arrested.”
Fletcher was initially charged with manslaughter, but prosecutors later upgraded the charges to murder.
While in police custody, Fletcher twice escaped. The first time, on July 11, 2016, he was caught after a foot chase. The second time, on Sept. 29, 2016, Fletcher made it to the Sea Oak and sailed away. Police chased him, but for safety reasons they abandoned the pursuit after he reportedly fired flares at them and threatened to set their boat on fire.
A few days later, he made landfall in American Samoa, where he was arrested and taken to Honolulu pending extradition proceedings.
Documents filed in U.S. District Court in Hawaii in support of extradition outlined the evidence. They state that Fletcher went to police on July 7, 2016, to report that Kearney had died after slipping and falling down the Sea Oak’s stairs.
However, three witnesses who operate local diving businesses in the town of Neiafu gave a different account. They said they saw a man the day before waiting to be picked up in a dinghy to take him back to his yacht, which was moored about 100 metres offshore.
The witnesses said that when the man stepped into the dinghy, he began yelling at the woman picking him up. He grabbed her hair and threw her to the floor, the court records state. He then dropped his knees onto her neck.
According to the witnesses, as the woman got up, he punched her in the face, knocking her back down. He also kicked her. As they approached the yacht, the witnesses said, the man yelled, “F---ing kill you, bitch.”
When the woman tried to get onto the yacht, the man strangled her and threw her down, the witnesses said. He continued punching and throwing her about, according to the witness statements.
On July 8, 2016, a witness reported seeing what appeared to be a bloodstained sheet inside the dinghy. That same day, another person saw Fletcher in the dinghy, and it appeared to that person he was submerging something into the water.
Divers later recovered a bed sheet with brown staining that “probably” was blood, the records state.
An autopsy report dated Aug. 29, 2016, found that Kearney had died from “excessive blood loss and intracranial haemorrhage, as a result of multiple blunt impacts to the head, chest and abdomen.”
In the eyes of prosecutors, Fletcher’s two escapes were evidence of “consciousness of guilt.”
However, Fletcher’s lawyer, Melinda Yamaga, suggested in court filings it was absurd to draw any conclusions about Fletcher from the escapes. She also accused the police of carrying out a “shoddy” investigation.
In their report, police noted bruises and injuries on the body but made no observations of the yacht or dinghy that would suggest a struggle took place, such as items in disarray or bloodstains, she wrote.
Yamaga suggested Kearney’s body was not properly stored and said the forensic analysis of the bed sheet was “inconclusive” as to the presence of blood.
She also noted that Kearney’s deteriorating medical condition made her unable to walk on uneven surfaces. There is “significant evidence,” she added, that Kearney was an alcoholic and took a cocktail of prescription drugs.
Fletcher’s family and friends submitted character references to the court on his behalf. Among them was Mary Lou Hansen of Alberta, a longtime family friend. “Yes he had a temper but he certainly would never have harmed her,” Hansen told the National Post. “He worshipped her.”
Jason Brosnahan, a yacht broker in New Zealand whom the couple befriended, confirmed he also wrote a support letter. He said he talked to Fletcher a handful of times while in custody and that Fletcher’s version of events — that Kearney died in a “horrible accident” — seemed credible.
If Fletcher killed his partner, he said, why would he go to police?
Earlier this month, The Associated Press reported U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had decided to deny Tonga’s extradition request because of concerns Fletcher faced a death sentence or life in prison and would not have access to a defence lawyer free of charge. A judge released Fletcher from custody in Honolulu.
Leslie Kearney said she and her sister broke down when they learned of Fletcher’s release, having been led to believe extradition was a “slam dunk.” While still reeling from news of the extradition denial, the Kearneys say they have had no luck getting a copy of the death certificate or autopsy report, despite multiple attempts through Canadian foreign affairs officials and Tongan authorities. A spokesman for Global Affairs Canada said the department is in contact with local authorities and providing help to the family. “To protect the privacy of the individual concerned, further details ... cannot be released.”
Neither Fletcher nor his family will say where he is at the moment. But in his emails to the National Post, Fletcher said his goal now is to try to “put my life back in order” and to “pursue vindication one step at a time.”
“I am innocent of all accusations,” he said. “Trish passing was a terrible, tragic accident.”
Asked about the conflicting versions of how Kearney died — that she died in her sleep and that she fell down the stairs — Fletcher maintains both happened. After the fall, she indicated she was sore but ok and to put her to bed and ‘leave me alone,’ which I did,” he wrote.
When she didn’t wake up the next morning, he said he performed CPR on her “until I could not continue, several hours at least.”
“I would point out,” Fletcher added, “that Tonga is one of the most corrupt nations on earth.”
Local media reports indicate several officers have been disciplined over the past year for misconduct. But Aminiasi Kefu, acting attorney general and director of public prosecutions for the Kingdom of Tonga, denied there were missteps in the investigation. Fletcher’s escape was due to “incompetence” but not collusion or corruption, he added.
In phone and email conversations with the Post, Sheryl Fletcher said she hopes her son can begin rebuilding his life after being “brutalized” in the South Pacific media.
“Both families have suffered greatly throughout this entire ordeal,” she said, noting that she and her husband grieved the death of Kearney, as if she were their own daughter.
The Kearneys, meanwhile, say they’ve now resigned themselves to the possibility they may never know what actually happened to their sister.
“There’s hope it could happen. But there’s resignation as well,” Leslie Kearney said.
“I’m just tired and exhausted at this point.”
TRISH PASSING WAS A TERRIBLE, TRAGIC ACCIDENT.