SYDNEY, N.S. – Almost 25 years after her son’s body was found face down in a shallow brook on the outskirts of a small Cape Breton town, Maureen Miller is challenging the findings of two new reports that echo a series of earlier investigations, all of which concluded Clayton Miller’s death was an accident.
“It’s been 25 years of hell,” Maureen Miller said in an interview Thursday.
“Clayton Miller still matters to me. But to the government and the police, he doesn’t matter because there are so many people in government, police forces and the medical profession that have covered this up.”
She says the latest investigations, conducted by Nova Scotia’s chief medical examiner and the province’s independent police watchdog, failed to consider key evidence that proves her 17-year-old son was beaten before he died in 1990.
The two reports conclude Clayton Miller was drunk when he fell into the stream in New Waterford while trying to run from police who had raided a nearby bush party on May 4, 1990. His body was found two days later.
But Miller says she believes the reports are wrong.
Citing autopsy photographs, she says her son’s face was badly bruised around the eyes, his upper lip was split and swollen and his nose was so distorted it had to be broken.
Miller says she wants police to reopen their investigation.
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The medical examiner’s report was prompted by a review presented in September to the provincial justice minister by Kathleen Dwyer, a nurse who concluded that Clayton Miller was killed by a blow to the head and that his body had been moved.
The province’s Serious Incident Response Team was called in the following month when allegations surfaced that a member of the Cape Breton Regional Police Service was withholding information about the case.
The circumstances surrounding the teen’s death have been the subject of endless rumours in Cape Breton, which were not quelled by the previous findings of two autopsies, a fatality inquiry, two RCMP investigations and a police commission review.
Dr. Matthew Bowes, the chief medical examiner, said Thursday that investigators “could spend a lifetime” chasing down and documenting every bit of speculation.
Bowes’s report concluded there is no proof Clayton Miller died a violent death or that his body was moved. He found the cause of his death was probably a combination of exposure to cold conditions and alcohol intoxication.
“If he wasn’t beaten, then many of the rumours and conjecture become of no importance,” Bowes said in an interview, adding that the seven doctors who reviewed the case over the years had all concluded there was no evidence of a beating.
Bowes says it appears Miller is unwilling to accept that the discolouration and distortion of her son’s face was actually caused by the pooling of blood in his head after he died, a common condition know as livor mortis.
As for the review of police involvement, the director of the police watchdog, Ron MacDonald, concluded that the officer accused of withholding information was at the stream the day after the raid, but the officer said he didn’t see Clayton Miller’s body.
“His evidence was credible and convincing,” MacDonald says in his report.
MacDonald’s report also discounts a series of rumours, including allegations from a female witness who said Clayton Miller had been beaten by police.
“I can say, beyond any doubt, that there is a complete lack of evidence available to prove that Clayton Miller died as a result of the application of force to his body by anyone, including any police officer,” MacDonald says in his report.
— By Michael MacDonald in Halifax.
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