Police have released the name of a suspect wanted for manslaughter in the death of our friend, Michael Finlay. Michael died on January 31, a week after he was randomly assaulted on Danforth Avenue in Toronto. The suspect has been named as Robert Robin Cropearedwolf, 43.

A phrase you hear in cases like this is that someone is “known to police.” In a news conference Friday, Detective Jason Hillier didn’t use it. But online research shows that it probably fits, and that it’s likely part of a very long and difficult story.

Before I start, that’s Cropearedwolf in the photo, and police are asking anyone with any information on his whereabouts to contact them at 416-808-5500, Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477), or at www.222tips.com. 

Michael is the real centre of this story, and I wrote about him earlier. This time I want to begin with the trauma faced by his family and friends. How often do you know someone who dies violently? Manslaughter. Murder. The reverberations from a violent death ripple out. Like other friends, I’ve been feeling jangled and distracted since first hearing that he was in the ICU. My concentration has been off, my day divided into disconnected bites as I jump at the ping of every arriving email. 

Michael was a long-time journalist at the CBC, and earlier, The Vancouver Sun, and most of his old friends started out as journalists, too. We all seem to need to do something when there’s little to be done. So we email each other in chains now dozens of messages long, tossing around theories and memories and legal questions, We make phone calls, visit, and some of us scroll around online. 

Finding a lot.

Robert Robin Cropearedwolf is a suspect. He hasn’t been arrested or charged with anything. Our legal system is built on the presumption of innocence, and that’s a good thing. I’ve lived in countries where judicial corruption is rampant, and you don’t want to come before the courts unless you’ve got enough money to buy yourself a judge.

That being said, a young man of that name appears in a Red Deer Advocate story from 1997. The report says that an 18-year-old named Robert Robin Cropearedwoolf was one of five young men charged with an assault in a youth correctional facility. Under the headline “’Birthday beats’ inmate ritual blamed for injuries,” Advocate journalist Andrea Maynard reported that the young men were charged in the wake of a birthday ritual. 

“Constable J’Nell Perkins said inmates at the Shunda Creek Youth Camp were miffed when another prisoner didn’t reveal it was his 18^th birthday on Sunday.

“He was badly beaten when they found out the next day.

“The attack is a sort of ghoulish ritual when prisoners reach the age of majority, says Alberta Justice spokesman Lesley Grunow. ‘It’s called a birthday beats.’

Police are still investigating, said Perkins, adding that other factors are involved.”

Two young men were charged with aggravated assault in that case. The 18-year-old named Robert Robin Cropearedwolf was one of three facing the lesser charge of assault causing bodily harm. There’s no follow-up story saying whether or not any of the five was convicted.

Fourteen years later, a man named Robert Robin Cropearedwolf shows up in a news report unearthed by a friend. In 2011, the Idaho State Journal says that a man of that name, aged 32, was arrested by Idaho State Police Corporal Lance Cox along with a female companion after a police traffic stop. Both were said to be from Oakland, California.

“A subsequent search and inventory of the vehicle revealed further evidence of crimes,” says the report. “Several US Passports were recovered that did not belong to the occupants of the vehicle. One of the passports had been altered with Cropearedwolf’s photograph on it with a different name.  Also a stolen checkbook, numerous driver’s licenses and state identification cards along with jewelry, numerous electronics, 2-way radios, binoculars, bolt cutters and various instruments/tools commonly used during burglaries were found in the vehicle.

“In the days since the arrest, Cpl. Cox discovered through his investigation that San Rafael, California Police Department has Cropearedwolf as a suspect in a string of burglaries to residences, businesses and churches in their area. California authorities believe Cropearedwolf is a suspect in numerous other cities. The Idaho State Police is working with numerous law enforcement agencies from the FBI, US Marshall’s Office, Homeland Security and various other state and local authorities to gather as much information and evidence to determine the scale of crimes Cropearedwolf and (his female companion) may be involved in. The FBI is investigating the stolen passports. ISP is continuing to investigate and gather evidence from electronic devices seized from the car to help solve any other active or pending cases from California to Idaho.”

In Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Colin Freeze reports that now-Sergeant Cox told him that Cropearedwolf was later convicted and sentenced to two to four years.

More recently, Toronto news reports from 2017 show that a man named Robert Robin Cropearedwolf was wanted in a series of robberies in the King Street West area of Toronto, including a jewelry theft. Freeze reports this weekend that a man of that name “appears to have been facing criminal charges that were laid in Toronto last spring. Court officials said Friday that they could not immediately release details.”

It’s a distinctive name, and other unrelated and entirely positive news stories show that people who use the differently-spelled name Crop Eared Wolf are members of the Kanai or Blood Nation of southern Alberta, part of the Blackfoot Confederacy. In fact, my husband stumbled across the history of a distinguished Blood chief of that name in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

Makoyi-Opistoki (Crop Eared Wolf) was born about 1845. The article about him is somewhat dated and colonial in its vocabulary, although the author was the distinguished academic Hugh Dempsey, a white man who was married to a woman from the Blood people. According to Dempsey’s article, Makoyi-Opostoki was orphaned at a young age and adopted by the Blood chief Red Crow, who named him his successor when he died in 1900.

“Red Crow saw in his adopted son a stability and quiet, forceful leadership which he knew would be essential for the success of the tribe.,” the article says. “The choice was wise, for in the next few years the Blood were assailed with demands that they surrender parts of their reserve for use by white settlers. The first attempts were made in 1901 when residents of Cardston… wanted land thrown open for settlement. In 1907 the tribe was forced to vote on the proposition of selling 2,400 acres near their southern boundary. Although the government put pressure on the Indians to agree, the surrender was rejected by a vote of 109 to 33. An irate local newspaper commented that Crop Eared Wolf  ‘personally canvassed every vote on the reserve. Some he scared, others he coaxed, and others he induced to stay away, and he converted a sweeping sentiment in favor of settling into a triumphant majority against.’

“In retaliation, Indian agent Robert Nathanial Wilson set out to humiliate the chief at every opportunity and tried to have him deposed. Crop Eared Wolf responded by filing a formal complaint of harassment through local lawyers and appealing directly to Indian commissioner David Laird for support. Partly as a result of his action, the government abandoned any immediate plans to force further surrender votes and concentrated on breaking land for Indian farmers. Crop Eared Wolf strongly endorsed this program and by 1909 the Blood had cultivated almost 2,500 acres of land with their own steam tractor and had harvested 24,000 bushels of wheat with their own machinery….

“Although further attempts were made to reduce the size of the reserve in 1917, 1918, 1920, and 1921, no Blood lands were ever voluntarily surrendered.”

The reserve is apparently the biggest one in Canada, although it’s still a pitifully small amount of land for people who once roamed the Great Plains before settlers like my Swedish family arrived.  

And whether or not the Robert Robin Cropearedwolf in the archival news reports is the same person the police are now seeking, and whether or not he is guilty, the articles suggest a sad story of a man incarcerated as a teenager in a juvenile facility who seems to have been in and out of trouble ever since. Reading them, I have no doubt the big historical story and the personal one are connected, trauma begetting trauma down through the generations. 

In a smaller way, Michael’s death is a trauma that leaves me too scattered to put things together properly. I’ve been a magpie lately, gathering all these pieces from many places—friends’ research, my husband’s research, mine—some of them looking back almost 200 years. Where guilt begins and where it ends is something I can’t grapple with right now, not in the raw aftermath of death.

But I don’t think anyone wants another innocent person killed on the streets of Toronto. If you see the person in the photo above, please contact police. Michael deserves justice. And I have an idea that the man in the photograph may need help, and hope that after all these years, he gets it.