Roger Wallace Warren (December 17, 1943 – July 24, 2019) was a
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
miner
A miner is a person who extracts ore, coal, chalk, clay, or other minerals from the earth through mining. There are two senses in which the term is used. In its narrowest sense, a miner is someone who works at the rock face; cutting, blasting ...
who was convicted of nine counts of
second-degree murder in connection to the September 18, 1992
Giant Mine bombings near
Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
Yellowknife (; Dogrib: ) is the capital, largest community, and only city in the Northwest Territories, Canada. It is on the northern shore of Great Slave Lake, about south of the Arctic Circle, on the west side of Yellowknife Bay near the ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...
. Warren was convicted (in 1995) due to his
confession
A confession is a statement – made by a person or by a group of persons – acknowledging some personal fact that the person (or the group) would ostensibly prefer to keep hidden. The term presumes that the speaker is providing information th ...
to the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; french: Gendarmerie royale du Canada; french: GRC, label=none), commonly known in English as the Mounties (and colloquially in French as ) is the federal police, federal and national police service of ...
.
In 2003, Warren again confessed to the bombing, saying that he acted alone. This second confession followed the decision by the
Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted, to drop their investigation of the case.
During testimony at a July 2004 lawsuit (filed by the widows of the victims), Warren blamed poor security, his
union (now part of the
CAW union) and the company that owned the mine,
Royal Oak Mines Incorporated, for provoking him. He claimed that a simple screen and padlock over a broken window would have dissuaded him, and that he was only capable of the bombing because strike-breakers had been "dehumanized" by his union. He also claimed that "(his) termination resulted in the deaths of nine men."
He became eligible for parole in 2010, applied for
day parole in mid-March 2014, and was granted after a hearing on June 17, 2014. At the hearing, he expressed regret for the murders.
[ ] He was granted full parole in 2017.
Warren died on July 24, 2019 at the age of 75 in
Abbotsford, British Columbia
Abbotsford is a city located in British Columbia, adjacent to the Canada–United States border, Greater Vancouver and the Fraser River. With an estimated population of 153,524 people it is the largest municipality in the province outside metro ...
.
Warren was portrayed by
Frank Moore in the 1996
CBC Television
CBC Television (also known as CBC TV) is a Canadian English-language broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcaster. The network began operations on September 6, 1952. Its French- ...
film ''
Giant Mine''.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Warren, Roger
1943 births
2019 deaths
Bombers (people)
Canadian mass murderers
Canadian miners
Canadian people convicted of murder
People convicted of murder by Canada