The daughter of a man who was shot dead in his home in the Kootenays spent more than three years worrying that the killer would get away with his murder.
If it weren’t for the killer’s confession before a judge last month in the death of David Creamer, he might have, said Taylor Creamer.
She and a former chief coroner from Alberta now based in B.C. have raised concerns about the B.C. Coroners Service’s employment of non-doctors as coroners instead of physicians as medical examiners.
Creamer said she had reservations after police and the coroner told her family that her dad, a healthy, active 69-year-old, had died after hitting his head at home in Kimberley on Feb. 6, 2022. His death was ruled accidental by a coroner who didn’t go to the scene.
“They told us he had fallen and hit his head,” she said. “It wasn’t really adding up because he was on the couch. And if he had fallen, why was he on the couch?”
Police later learned that Mitchell McIntyre, the man who killed Creamer, a former friend, had earlier the same day killed Julia Howe, his landlord’s partner, 90 minutes away in Creston.
Howe’s death was also ruled accidental by the same coroner who determined the cause of Creamer’s death. It wasn’t until an autopsy days later that a .22-calibre bullet wound was found in her skull.
Police learned later that a distraught McIntyre, in the days after the killings, told staff at the hospital where he had been committed under the Mental Health Act that he had killed a David “Creamly” in Kimberley, according to a court document.
By then Creamer’s body had been cremated and there was no evidence to examine, so it wasn’t clear if any charges would be laid in his case.
After McIntyre’s 11-month trial in Kamloops for second-degree murder in Howe’s death came to an abrupt end with his guilty plea June 9, he was charged with murder and using a firearm to commit an offence in Creamer’s death, according to court documents.
McIntyre pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Aug. 22 and faces a sentencing hearing next month.
Creamer says she is relieved, but the years-long ordeal left her with questions.
“How can someone kill two people and both of them be ruled accidental?” asked Creamer, 32. “It does feel like a broken justice system. You trust the professionals, but then you realize they screwed up.”
She said her family was told just weeks after his death that her father was murdered, but they were asked not to talk about the case, to prevent affecting a possible conviction in an eventual trial.
“But I think it was so hush-hush because people wanted to cover their own (arse),” she said. “You’re a coroner and that’s literally your job, to determine how someone died.
“It makes me so enraged and it makes me question the law and anyone with a badge.”
The retired forensic pathologist who revamped Alberta’s handling of suspicious deaths to replace coroners who aren’t doctors with medical examiners who are physicians said B.C. is long overdue for the same change.
Dr. John Butt, who served as chief coroner in Alberta and Nova Scotia, said that in the 1970s he was consulted by three deputy ministers in the B.C. ministry that oversaw coroners.
“That was 50 years ago and nothing has changed since,” said Butt, who moved to B.C. 25 years ago and served as an expert witness in trials before fully retiring in 2018.
B.C. is one of the few provinces to still use community coroners, hired to handle the administrative and legal details of a death, rather than medical examiners, who are trained doctors.
Butt believes that can lead to “messes” and mistakes being made about cause of death.
“Doctors are being forced to sign death certificates with incomplete information coming from these half-assed coroners,” he said.
He said that may have affected the 2022 case where the bodies of two females, including a 13-year-old Indigenous teen, were overlooked by a coroner who “remotely” attended the death of a man in a Vancouver Downtown Eastside room, which is allowed under the Coroner’s Act, but that Butt maintains is poor practice.
He also recalled the suspected drowning of a Kelowna woman in 2016 that turned into a murder investigation where an autopsy wasn’t ordered for 10 days, after the body had been embalmed.
But he said the details in Creamer’s and Howe’s cases were among the worst he’s heard.
“The system (now) is just not a professional system. The discovery of those two murders proves it.”
The coroner’s service isn’t commenting on either of the two Kootenay deaths, pending the completion of investigations and reports, said spokeswoman Holly Tally in an email. She wouldn’t say if the conduct of the coroner in the cases would be included in the investigations or reports.
Tally said it’s up to Chief Coroner Dr. Jatinder Baidwan to release reports after determining if the release is in the public interest
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The coroner’s service website says it “investigates all unnatural, sudden and unexpected, unexplained or unattended deaths” and makes recommendations to “improve public safety and prevent deaths in similar circumstances.”
The service falls under the Public Safety and Solicitor General Ministry, but is independent.
“All concerns about coroner conduct” are reviewed by the chief coroner, said Tally.
A complaint about a coroner or the service can also be made to the B.C. ombudsperson.
Creamer said she will wait until after the sentencing hearing before taking any other steps. But she would like someone to accept responsibility for the handling of her dad’s case.
Creamer said she hasn’t been contacted by the coroner’s service and thinks they’re just “hoping it will blow over. But really, there should be some awareness raised.”
Kash Heed, a former solicitor general and police officer, said the overlooked murders raise concerns about the coroner’s service and the Solicitor General’s Ministry should hold an independent review of the coroner’s handling of the cases.
Kim Rossmo, a former Vancouver police officer who is now a criminology professor at Texas State University and an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University, said that coroners, whether doctors or not, need to be trained to examine a body.
“You’re only going to be as good as your training” and it should be continuing, he said.