The suspect in the death of long-time CBC journalist Michael Finlay turned himself in to police this morning at Toronto’s downtown 52 Division. Robert Robin Cropearedwolf, 43, later appeared via video conference at College Park Court. He has been charged with manslaughter.

I haven’t written a paragraph like that since Michael and I were both journalists working for The Vancouver Sun. Michael was older than me and started at the paper a few years earlier, but The Sun always got its newbies’ feet wet in the same way, usually on the night shift.

One common assignment was to cover night cops. That meant going down to the police station on Main Street and rifling through the charge sheets, searching for crimes worth writing up–and define that. Sometimes we’d have to talk to the duty sergeant. Depending on the guy, he could be avuncular and helpful or he could be a jerk, especially to women. When we got back to the old Sun newsroom on Granville Street, we would write up our stories, usually in less than a couple of hundred words, six column inches. What we would write about was almost always terribly sad. Petty theft. Purse snatching. Common assault.

All these years later, Michael has become the subject of a series of unspeakably sad news stories. As I wrote here earlier, he was randomly assaulted on January 24, 2023 on Danforth Avenue in Toronto. We now know he was pushed into a concrete planter, had both ribs broken and a lung punctured. He later suffered a heart attack and died on January 31.

Soon after his initial injury, police issued a warrant for the arrest of Cropearedwolf. I wrote about the suspect here: how a man of that name has been the subject of warrants for his arrest concerning a string of burglaries, including a $2 million jewel theft in Toronto.

In all of this, I’ve kept emphasizing that the man now charged with manslaughter in Michael’s death is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. I support this principle–one of fairness–especially since I’ve lived in Latin America and seen what it’s like to live under corrupt judicial systems.

Here’s a story from down south. The father of a friend of ours was divorcing his wife, our friend’s mother, so he could marry his long-time mistress. It’s a thing in Latin America: the casa chica. Some rich guys routinely maintain two households, one where they live with their wives and publicly-acknowledged children, another where they live with a second woman and a second set of children. I even know about one family where the father had several children in the first household who were each born about the same time as a child in the casa chica. Each newborn was given the same name as his or her half-sibling of the same age, presumably so the father never risked calling a kid by the wrong name.

But I digress. In the case of our friend, the father was–unusually–divorcing his wife. Having know about the casa chica for years, our friend’s mother was apparently pretty happy to see the last of her husband. Except that in the divorce court, the husband managed to get his wife of 40 years legally booted out of the family home. He wasn’t to required to pay her a settlement or any form of alimony. Our friend’s mother was left penniless.

Appalled, naive, not long in the country, I asked our friend, “How could something like that happen?”

“Dad bought off the judge,” he said. “But it’s okay. We’re appealing the ruling, and we’ve bought off the judge in the appeals court. Mom’s going to be okay.”

I’m a big believer in the rule of law. Innocent until proven guilty. Especially after noodling around online and finding a racist and apparently Q-Anon-affiliated website where (trigger warning) the story about Michael’s death is headlined this way: “Killer of White CBC Propagandist Michael Finlay is Abo Named Cropearedwolf with Criminal Record.”

The article goes on to say, “Boy is it ever a good thing that this human detritus was out of jail where he could randomly assault White People just cause.”

The website’s mission statement? “The purpose of (the website) is to cover all the news that needs to be covered. Whether that be beating down some bad faith attacks by idiotic e-grifters, or shining a light on anti-White court rulings and the systematic abuse of children.”

Myself, I couldn’t help wondering if Cropearedwolf turned himself into police because he’s guilty and feels remorse for the killing. If he thinks it might help him get a lighter sentence. If he knew they were going to get him anyway and he was tired of hiding. Quite possibly all of these things. Or just possibly, because he didn’t do it and wants to clear his name.

We had a lovely wake for Michael last week at his favourite pub, Gabby’s, where the owner kindly held an open bar for his many friends. Stories were told, glasses raised. It was wonderful, a grand old bash, and I wish that it had never had to happen.