In one hand, Michael Norris held the phone to his ear. With the other, he pressed the barrel of a pistol to his head.
His mother was still on the line.
The bullet was his only way out. An escape from guilt and a lifetime in a prison cell.
If Norris feared anything, it was an enclosed space cut off from the sky and the familiar crunch of dirt beneath his boots.
A farmer and land surveyor, Norris never felt quite right indoors. When a vicious shoulder injury made manual labour impossible, he tried an office job.
He lasted a month.
So the possibility of living the rest of his life in a cramped prison cell was too much for him to handle.
Huddled in a spartan St. Catharines motel room three nights ago, he knew incarceration was a very real possibility.
A month had passed since Norris murdered Violet Jeanne Gould, his own frail grandmother he had looked after for years.
She had been brutally beaten and repeatedly stabbed.
"He said he couldn't stand the thought of being locked in a cage for the rest of his life. He wasn't going to live like that," said Garry Gould, Norris's uncle and son of the murdered woman.
"So there is only one way out."
With a dragnet closing on him Wednesday night, Norris called his family from Room 281 of the Capri Inn on Ontario Street in St. Catharines. He left voice messages for most of them, including one at his uncle's Newmarket home.
The messages were all the same -- tortured by his crime, Norris asked for forgiveness.
Gould said his nephew described the murder in the message.
"It was a hard thing to listen to," Gould said.
"He was remorseful. He was afraid."
Around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday, Norris placed a call to his mother. He knew police would be there soon.
"He said he wasn't going with them," Gould said.
The homes of Violet Jeanne Gould's children and grandchildren are filled with her oil-painted landscapes.
"Mother painted other things. She taught classes. She even took some classes herself," Garry Gould said. "But she always came back to landscapes."
He said there was a time when his mother was jovial. One of nine children raised during the Great Depression, she took it upon herself to entertain the family.
"She played several instruments and would be this one-woman band and put on performances," Gould said.
But time had stolen some of her humour.
"After Dad died, she changed, became more withdrawn and harder to get along with," her son said.
Living alone in her Newmarket home and growing ever more frail, Gould found a helping hand in her grandson, Michael Norris.
Norris, who lived on a Bancroft farm, was routinely in Newmarket as a land surveyor. While there, he stayed with Gould and helped her around the house.
"Helping his family was important to him," said Gould, who drove across Canada with Norris a few years ago. "If you needed help, Michael was who you turned to."
At 83, Gould did not always get along with her 40-year-old grandson. The generation gap was a routine source of tension. So were drastic changes in both their lives.
Norris shredded his shoulder on the job four years ago. Reconstructive surgery wasn't completely successful and his uncle said Norris took a host of pills to dull the constant pain.
Work as a land surveyor became difficult. Norris could still work around his farm, but even that was painful.
Meanwhile, Gould's fading health made it impossible to keep her home. She decided to sell it and move into a Newmarket retirement complex.
"That was hard for her," said her son. "She had to sell a lot of her belongings off. She watched things she collected over 83 years of life sold in a garage sale for two or three dollars."
In late May, growing tension between Gould and Norris boiled over into heated arguments.
Sometime between May 16 and 18, Gould's apartment was ransacked. She was stabbed and beaten to death. Her pet chihuahua was also killed.
York Regional Police first believed the woman was murdered in a robbery attempt. That someone would kill her over the few dollars and inexpensive trinkets in her house enraged her family.
They carried that anger to the funeral. Only Norris seemed not to share their rage.
During the services, he was oddly quiet.
"We all noticed it," Gould said. "But then, when he was not taking his medications, he became withdrawn. As far as we knew, that was the cause of it."
York police interviewed and fingerprinted Norris two weeks ago as part of their investigation.
"After that, Michael disappeared," Gould said. His family, his girlfriend and his young son did not know where Norris was.
By Monday, all Ontario police departments were looking for Norris. A Canada-wide warrant had been issued on a charge of first-degree murder.
No police officer was to approach Norris without an armed tactical unit present, York police warned.
On Wednesday, York police told the public Norris was wanted for murder and "urgently" needed help finding him.
Driving around southern Ontario in his brown 1997 Toyota Camry, Norris often called family.
"Every time he would call someone, the police would intercept it and negotiators would talk to him," Gould said. "But he didn't believe anything the police said. He wasn't going to go to jail."
By the time York police told the public Norris was wanted for his grandmother's murder, which they later confirmed he had committed, he had already checked into the Capri Inn in St. Catharines.
He again called family, leaving messages admitting to the murder of his grandmother.
"He made it look like a robbery to keep the police off the scent," Gould said.
Again the calls were intercepted by York police who tried to convince Norris to surrender. They also told Niagara Regional Police where Norris was.
The NRP tactical unit prepared to swoop down on the motel around 10:30 p.m. Wednesday as Norris dialed his mother's number.
"I think Michael had no intention of going with them," Gould said.
Before NRP officers arrived, Norris pulled the trigger. His mother was still on the line.
The terror began with screams into the night, the shattering of glass and flames.
Chaos consumed the neighbourhood. A pregnant woman, trying to protect an eight-year-old girl, begged for her life with the blade of a machete pressed against her face.
A house burned and a mother cried out for mercy.
When it ended, no one in the Rykert Street townhouse complex bathed in the angry red glow of police lights would dare go back to sleep.
"This is like war," said a young resident of the neighbourhood too frightened to be identified. "I was shaking and crying. It isn't just one house now. It's spreading to everyone. It's like a war."
The west St. Catharines townhouse complex showed no sign Friday morning of the firebombing attack of the previous night.
But just past the large visitors' parking lot at No. 59, down the worn pathways littered with children's toys and bits of garbage, a phalanx of young men stood guard outside unit 99 -- the ransacked home of Salvadoran immigrant Digna Mira.
Late Thursday night, Mira's two-storey home was attacked by marauders armed with machetes and Molotov cocktails.
Five people -- two men and three teens -- were arrested by Niagara Regional Police shortly after the attack. A warrant is out for a sixth man.
But that brought little comfort Friday to Mira, who worries the gang has accomplices who will be back to harass her family of four children.
"I don't think I can stay here. I don't know if it's safe anymore," she said, staring at the gaping hole in her living room window marking the entry point of a bomb crafted from a Heineken bottle and a handkerchief.
"I work from seven in the morning to 4:30 at night five days a week. On Saturday I clean my house and on Sunday I go to church. That's my life. That's all. I just want a safe place to live."
Mira's home has become caught up in a complex web of crime, counterfeiting and violence police are trying to untangle.
Staff Sergeant Randy Bleich of the NRP's St. Catharines division said Thursday night's incident was the culmination of a dispute between a person known to hang around Mira's home and the group that attacked her.
The dispute may have involved a counterfeiting scheme, Bleich said, but police are still trying to piece together the details.
"At this point in the investigation, I cannot speculate or say too much," he said.
Whatever the cause of the argument, it turned dangerous Wednesday evening.
Mira said a group of young men came to her door wanting to talk to her 19-year-old son, believing he had information on the whereabouts of the man they were arguing with Tuesday.
Mira said her son knows the man and thinks they might have met at school.
"He told them he didn't know. He had no information for them," Mira said. "They left. But then they came back later. They even called here, always asking the same thing."
Late Wednesday, a single firebomb was lobbed at the back of Mira's home. The siding under her bedroom window melted and her picnic table was burned. The window of her back door was smashed.
"My daughter starting screaming and when I came, the back of the house was on fire."
Mira replaced the broken window and hoped that would be the end of it.
It wasn't.
Residents know the complex has a reputation for trouble and has been known to police, but Wednesday's firebomb was beyond anything anyone living there had seen.
Most residents were too frightened to speak publicly, believing the violence isn't over. But they felt after Wednesday night a storm was brewing.
"We all knew it. Something was going it happen. It had to," said a young mother expecting her second child in five months.
Most of Thursday passed without incident. The sun set and there were no signs of trouble.
Around 11 p.m., Mira's son and his 13-year-old brother left to grab a bite at McDonald's. Her 18-year-old daughter Julia was on the porch talking with friends as police cruisers rolled by.
Then a van parked on the corner, but its occupants never got out. A few minutes later, two cars, one black and one red, drove past. Residents were immediately suspicious but Mira was stretched out on her couch watching television with her eight-year-old daughter tucked under her favourite blanket.
When the cars returned and began to slow down in front of unit 99, a neighbour grabbed Julia and pulled her indoors.
"I knew something was wrong about that car. I just knew it." Julia said. "I was pulled inside and called police."
Before she could finish dialing, her mother came under siege.
"I was on the couch when the window just exploded," Mira said of the first firebomb thrown through her front window, mere inches from her head rested on a pillow.
"There was glass everywhere."
Police and neighbours say several Molotov cocktails were thrown against the front of the house. Six to eight men from the cars stormed the house brandishing more of the beer-bottle firebombs and machetes.
"They came in and a man with a machete tried to grab me, but I had my daughter and I just ran," said Mira, who escaped through her back door. "My daughter was shouting, 'My blankie, my blankie!' I said 'Forget the blankie.We have to run.' "
The attackers threw a bomb at her television, slashed the walls and broke pictures while chasing Mira outside.
Mira's pregnant neighbour was sitting outside when the attack began.
"I saw her little girl running and, you know, your first reaction as a mother is to protect children, so I ran up and grabbed her," she said.
As soon as she had the little one in her arms, one of the machete-wielding men grabbed her.
"He put the machete up to my head and I was begging. I said 'Don't kill me please. I have a daughter. I'm pregnant,' " she said. "He told me the only reason he wasn't going to kill me was because I was pregnant."
When her father tried to intervene, he was struck on the back with a machete, although he was not seriously hurt.
At this point, the townhouse complex descended into total chaos and accounts of what happened next aren't clear.
Some residents rushed into Mira's house with fire extinguishers. Others say they were chased by the attackers before they fled in their cars.
Bleich said police and firefighters arrived about 11 p.m.
Based on witness accounts, police found the red car and arrested the five people inside.
Police are still looking for the second car and its 21-year-old occupant, who is thought to have fled to the Toronto area. A warrant has been issued for his arrest. Police did not release further details about him Friday.
Bleich estimates about $5,000 damage was done to Mira's home.
Wearing baggy sports shirts or jackets, the five young men charged in the attack stood shoulder to shoulder in a bail court prisoner's box Friday, flanked by police officers.
A handful of parents waited all day for their sons who were not brought before a justice until mid-afternoon.
A publication ban protects information about the three youngest accused, two 16-year-olds and a 17-year-old, who all fall under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
Two adults, Raymond Senda, 18, of St. Catharines, and Sada Raja, 19, of Scarborough, are charged with arson with disregard for human life.
Senda was further charged with possession of a prohibited weapon, obstructing police, contravention of a weapons probation order and breach of probation.
Assistant Crown attorney Tom Jacob asked that the group continue to be held in custody so police could have time to continue their probe of the case.
They are investigating another firebombing outside the jurisdiction and counterfeiting, Jacob told the court.
The group will appear in a St. Catharines court again on May 4.
By Friday afternoon, the neighbourhood was preparing for a new onslaught.
Young men stood watch outside Mira's home while the family packed up to move to a safe house. Teenagers routinely warned children at a local school to stay away.
Rumours of thousands of dollars in counterfeit bills being burned in basements circulated around the complex, as residents braced themselves in the belief that more violence is on the way.
Bleich said police will be keeping a close eye on Rykert Street this weekend.
"We know this could escalate again," he said. "Every shift is being briefed so our officers know what is going on."
Mira said Friday afternoon she is still in shock.
"I don't drink but I feel like I am drunk," she said
"This has to stop. I just want to live in safety."
The casket in Marc Woerlen's hands was impossibly small. It was no bigger than a flower box and likely didn't weigh much more.
But as he carried it, Woerlen's eyes were tightly closed and his steps measured as though it took all his might to lift it.
The brilliantly white coffin adorned with white and red roses held the body of his 19-month-old daughter, Debora.
The weight Woerlen carried was not in his hands.
On Saturday, Woerlen buried his entire family -- his pregnant wife Monika, 39, sons Marcus, 8, Sammy, 7, and Paul, 5, and daughters Debora, Elena, 10, and Susanna, 11.
They were killed Monday when a fire destroyed their West Lincoln home. All eight died of smoke inhalation.
Woerlen was in Ottawa at the time of the blaze.
More than a thousand people, some coming from across the Atlantic Ocean, attended the funeral for Woerlen's family held at Bethany Community Church in west St. Catharines.
The caskets, all as white as the one that held Debora, were lined up end-to-end at the front of the enormous church.
Behind them, Woerlen family home movies were shown on a video screen.
The seven-minute video showed images of the family: one dressed as a bright yellow bumble bee, another splashing happily in a swimming pool. Monika Woerlen calling "Bye!" as her kids boarded a school bus, waving from the window as they pulled away.
Pastor Jether Vinson, a longtime friend of the Woerlens, said Monika devoted her life to her children.
"It is fitting that when God called her children home, she was right there with them," Vinson said.
Vinson said Monika, pregnant with a child that was to be named Isaac, lived a life most Christians only aspire to. She was a totally selfless woman committed to helping those she loved.
"Marc tasted a satisfying life living with Monika," Vinson said.
The pastor said those grieving had a choice -- to allow themselves to be overcome with sadness and dwell on their own feelings, or live as Monika Woerlen had lived and devote themselves to others.
"We are learning not to live for ourselves," Vinson said.
Dressed in matching black suits, black shirts and ties, Monika Woerlen's 10 brothers took the stage to sing in flawless harmony the hymn Nearer My God to Thee.
Afterwards, Woerlen's father, Max Woerlen, echoed Vinson's sentiments.
Niagara has been overcome by what he called a "volcanic eruption" of support and love for the Woerlens and for Monika's family, the van Stralens.
He urged the community to share those feelings with everyone and not to let them go once the funeral was over.
"These virtuous rivers of care and co-operation must continue to be shared with all mankind, lest it just become a passing wind," he said.
Fred van Stralen, Monika Woerlen's father, paid tribute to the firefighters who had the grisly task of retrieving the bodies from the remains of the burned, collapsed farmhouse.
"My sons are firemen and I know what they go through," he said. "To those firemen who had to sift through all that ash ... that was just amazing."
West Lincoln Mayor Katie Trombetta also spoke, offering the township's sympathies to the Woerlen and van Stralen families.
Susan MacNeil, principal of Gainsborough School where five of the seven Woerlen children attended, gave a brief tribute to the children.
Finally, after family, friends and well-wishers had spoken, Marc Woerlen climbed the three steps to the church's stage and walked to the microphone.
Wearing a black suit and carrying a black leather-bound Bible, which has kept him strong for the last week, Woerlen said he accepted God's will to take his family.
"This is a day the Lord has made," he said. "He has decided they must come home."
He said his wife suffered a serious back injury playing sports when she was young. A spinal fusion operation repaired some of the damage and offered relief from the constant pain.
Each time she gave birth, because of her sensitive spine, the pain came back with a vengeance. But like Jesus on the cross, she was willing to sacrifice her own comfort for others.
"She gave herself to pain to bring forth seven wonderful children," Woerlen said, choking back tears. "She was a living sacrifice.
"Thank you, Monika, for your example to me and to the rest of the world. Our wonderful seven children were always a gift from heaven. The joy we shared from the breakfast table to the good-night hugs and kisses will spur me on in faithfulness until eternity."
Through the nearly 90-minute funeral, there was only one fleeting moment of laughter from the mourners when Woerlen thanked the emergency personnel who responded to the fire.
"I want to thank the police, the fire department and the coroner for their tremendous service," he said. "I want to apologize from the deepest part of my heart for ever complaining about paying taxes."
Afterwards, as the police escorted the funeral procession for the long, winding trip from St. Catharines to Lane's Cemetery in St. Anns, knots of people gathered along the side of the road outside their homes, standing as an honour guard for the Woerlens.
"Our thoughts and prayers are with you," read a sign held by a young woman.
Monika Woerlen and her seven children were laid to rest on a grassy hill overlooking the entire cemetery.
Hundreds of mourners formed a circle around the burial site and as a pastor read scripture, hundreds more joined them.
Marc Woerlen offered personal farewells to each member of his family.
At the end of the ceremony, everyone gathered to sing a slow hymn about the impermanence of life.
Woerlen accompanied the singers on his trumpet.
He wept as he played, but not a single note wavered.
Their silence spoke volumes.
Piece by piece, the firefighters cleared away the charred debris of a two-storey home to find the bodies of seven children and their pregnant mother.
The firefighters sifted through the rubble with their hands and there was no need to speak. Everyone understood the grim nature of what they were doing.
"They don't say too much actually. They are dealing with their job in a very business-like manner," said Niagara Regional Police chaplain John Ripley, standing near the scene. "It involves a lot of silence and that is more pervasive than anything."
Ripley was at what was left of the Woerlen home in West Lincoln Tuesday to offer comfort to firefighters who were recovering the bodies of the victims.
Monika Woerlen, 39, died in the fire along with her children Susanna Ruth, 11, Elena Jane, 10, Marcus Simon, 8, Samuel Benjamin, 7, Paul Anthony, 5, Nathan Matthew, 3, and 18-month-old Debora Lynne.
Marc Woerlen, Monika Woerlen's husband, was in Ottawa when the fire claimed his family.
By Tuesday evening, all eight bodies had been pulled from the debris. Each new discovery took a toll on the fire crews digging through the piles of blackened lumber and burned bricks.
"I basically don't tell them anything, but I am here to listen and that is my primary role here," Ripley said. "The main question they ask is 'Why?' and there really is no answer to that question."
Indeed, investigators were at a loss to explain how the fire started and why the Woerlens were unable to get out.
"It is still very early in the investigation," said Chief Scott McLeod of the Pelham Volunteer Fire Department. "Our focus today really has been the recovery of the bodies."
McLeod said the Ontario fire marshal told him the blaze was the worst fire in the province in more than a decade.
It is still not known if there were fire alarms in the house or if the family members were trying to escape when they died.
The Ontario fire marshal will take the lead in the investigation into the cause of the blaze, but he is not expected to come to any conclusion for several days.
All investigators can say for sure is that arson is not suspected.
Shortly after 11 p.m. Monday, a 911 call was placed by a passerby on Concession 4 Road, just off of Regional Road 24 in West Lincoln, who reported a house on fire.
"The first man on the scene got there in about 10 minutes," McLeod said. "Already at that time, the house was completely involved."
Without fire hydrants, water had to be brought in on tanker trucks to fight the blaze.
At first, fire crews were told the house was abandoned. But within moments, the horrifying truth was relayed over their radios.
There were people inside.
Firefighters had to watch helplessly as flames belched out of the two-storey home's doors, windows and roof. A rescue attempt was simply impossible.
"There was just no way to even attempt to enter the home," McLeod said. "There are no words to convey the feeling, when you think, 'What if we had got there sooner? What if someone had called sooner?'
"It hurts. It really, truly hurts."
The chief said it appeared as though the house was caught in a "backdraft" -- a violent explosion of fire that occurs when air reaches an oxygen-starved fire.
While he said the home was heated by a oil furnace and some type of wood stove, McLeod would not speculate on the cause of the fire.
It took 40 volunteer firefighters more than an hour to bring the violent blaze under control. But fire had consumed the century-old, brick and cedar farmhouse from the inside out. Around 12:30 a.m., as the last embers of the fire were beaten down, the building collapsed.
"The roof fell in and the second floor was pretty much gone," McLeod said.
The house was obliterated. Only part of a recently built cinder-block addition to the back of the house still stands, with part of its fireplace intact.
Marc Woerlen, 41, his wife and children were the second generation of his family to live in the house.
The house, corn fields and pig farm on Concession 4 Road had once belonged to Max Woerlen, Marc's father, who now lives in a red brick home just beyond the vast fields of corn stalks.
The family had recently sold the farm and Marc was in Ottawa with his brother Monday making arrangements to move his family to the nation's capitol.
He returned to Niagara early Tuesday, where he spent most of the day at his father's house.
In the crush of media attention following the fire, few neighbours and friends would speak publicly about the loss that has rocked the farming community.
"Reporters have been here all day, asking me how I feel," said neighbour Twania Hultink. "How do you think I feel?"
The Woerlens, members of a Christian organization called The Brethren, had five of their seven children attending Gainsborough School in Bismarck.
In a statement released through the NRP, the family described Monika Woerlen as a cheerful person with a joyful attitude.
"We are deeply shocked by the untimely and tragic death of our beloved wife, daughter and friend Monika Rachel Woerlen," said the statement, read to reporters by NRP Superintendent Damian Parrent.
"There are no words to describe our feelings other than that we aredevastated by the loss."
The statement says Monika was one of 15 children who was "a true helper, one who often did all she could to lighten the load of those whom she noticed burdened down by the cares of life.
"We love her husband, Marc, who must now carry on and live to honour their memory," Parrent read. "We thank you, the media and the public, for your concern in this tragedy, but request that you respect our privacy during our time of mourning."
The bodies will be sent to Hamilton for autopsies by regional coroner Dr. David Eden, who will determine the cause of death.
It's been nearly two weeks since he died and he remains little more than a statistic.
A 25-year-old male. Resided in St. Catharines. Drove a 1994 Buick. Killed in a car accident Dec. 5, in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
End of story.
Nothing else about him is publicly known -- where he worked, who his family is or where he went to school -- because police won't reveal his name.
For most of the last year, Niagara Regional Police have operated under a policy of not releasing the names of accident victims without the expressed consent of their families.
In this case, police say, the family didn't give consent. So to the community-at-large, the 25-year-old St. Catharines man is another faceless accident victim.
A statistic.
"When something catastrophic happens to someone in our community and the police won't tell us who the person is, the community is weakened," said Standard managing editor Andrea Kriluck.
The NRP policy, currently under review by recently appointed Chief Wendy Southall, has often placed the service at odds with local news media. What's more, the policy change has become part of a provincewide debate over what and how much information police departments should be releasing to the public.
Some police departments, such as those in Niagara, Peterborough and Sarnia, have taken the view that Ontario's privacy regulations place stiff restrictions on what information can be publicly released.
Others, including Toronto, Owen Sound and North Bay, feel less constrained by the act.
Until this year, the NRP had a more liberal policy about releasing information. For example, the NRP would typically identify the victim of an accident after next of kin had been notified.
The NRP policy changed in January after an inquiry from the Niagara Falls Review about what kind of information is released to the press.
NRP spokesman Constable Rick Geady said the inquiry prompted the service to look at the policies of other police departments in Ontario, in particular those of the Peterborough police department.
Then chief Gary Nicholls sought a legal opinion from NRP lawyer Woody McKaig about what the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act said about what information can be released.
Based on McKaig's opinion of the act, the NRP has taken the view a deceased person has the same privacy rights as a living person.
In a February memo to all members of the police service, Nicholls said a section of the act empowers family members alone to release the name of a dead person.
"Section 54 (A) of the act also speaks of the release of personal information of the deceased individual, stating that the deceased individual's personal representative has the right to exercise power as it relates to the release of information," he wrote.
Based on this interpretation, Nicholls' memo said the police force will not publicly identify a person killed in an accident without the permission of his or her family.
The only exception is in the case of a homicide, where "the act provides an exclusionary clause that allows the release of a deceased person's name in order to further an investigation," Nicholls wrote.
While the act does provide a number of exceptions specific to law enforcement -- including several to protect police officers, sources and witnesses -- Section 54 makes no reference to withholding the identity of a dead person:
"Any right or power conferred on an individual by this act may be exercised, (a) if the individual is deceased, by the individual's personal representative if exercise of the right or power relates to the administration of the individual's estate."
Since February the NRP has stayed true to McKaig's interpretation of the act.
When contacted this week, McKaig declined to discuss the issue.
"Whenever possible, we will ask a victim's family for their consent to release a person's name," said Geady, who is responsible for most of the NRP's communications with the media. "But if that person doesn't give the consent, we cannot release it."
Other police forces have applied a more restrictive interpretation. In Peterborough, police say they cannot release the name of a victim without the family's permission. However, they will not ask for that permission.
"They do not release the names of accident victims or the names of people charged with non-criminal offences (like Highway Traffic Act charges)," said Ed Arnold, managing editor of the Peterborough Examiner. "We even had one case where they wouldn't name someone charged with murder because they hadn't notified the accused's next of kin," Arnold said. "That decision was changed the next day, but we are in a position where we don't get very much information from the police."
Sergeant Dan Smith, acting media relations officer for the Peterborough Lakefield Community Police Service, said police deal with each incident on a case-by-case basis. They have to take into account both the public's right to know and what would jeopardize a case, he said.
"It's a fine balancing act sometimes."
The Peterborough police don't release the names of victims, unless the person was a homicide victim and the deceased's next-of-kin have been notified first. The other exceptions are for fatal motor vehicle collisions, in which police likely would release the name of the victim but would ask relatives first, he said.
Police interpretations of the privacy act are not the only reason behind the decline in the amount of information released.
Technology also plays an important role.
A few years ago, the NRP replaced its ailing radio system. The system was so bad officers in certain areas of the region were unable to use their radios, potentially putting them in grave danger.
The new radio system uses encrypted digital technology and is more reliable than the previous one.
But because the new system is encrypted, local media can no longer monitor routine police calls, as they had for decades.
In some cities where police have moved to digital radio systems, such as Calgary, police provide media outlets with scanners that monitor some police frequencies. Sensitive transmissions, such as those from SWAT teams, are locked out for security reasons.
"We have been told that in the case of the NRP, it's an all or nothing proposition," Kriluck said. "They say they don't have the ability to lock out some channels."
Today, Niagara's media is alerted to everything from robberies to car accidents to slayings through a paging system. When an event the police deem newsworthy happens, the NRP sends a message via pagers given to news outlets.
"It means that we are totally dependent on the police to tell us when something has happened," Kriluck said. "I am not saying this is their intention, but it does give the police the opportunity to operate in secrecy if they wanted to."
The result of these changes means less news about crime and daily police activity. It also means many stories have less information than they did a few years ago.
Kriluck and Arnold said reporters try to make up for the decline in police information by talking to sources such as neighbours or witnesses, or getting names from public records, including court documents. But those types of sources are not always available.
"If something catastrophic happens to a member of the community that involves the use of publicly funded resources, like a serious car accident or an industrial accident, people have a right to know," Kriluck says.
Something as simple as the name of an accident victim is beneficial to the community, she says. In some cases, a reader might know something about a victim they can pass on to police. For instance, if a motorist was killed in a collision, a reader might provide details about how the victim spent their last hours and that could aid police in their investigation. Other times, it allows the community to grieve and help the family that has just lost a loved one.
"I have seen it time and again in my 28 years as a journalist that when a tragedy happens, people rise to the occasion and want to help," Kriluck said.
Lawyers representing newspapers say they disagree with the interpretation of the privacy act adopted by some Ontario police departments.
"I see nothing in the act that would prevent the release of the name of a victim of an accident or someone facing charges," said Blair Mackenzie, vice-president, general counsel and secretary for Osprey Media Group Inc., which owns The Standard.
MacKenzie said society is becoming increasingly concerned with privacy and security issues, so it isn't surprising police forces are following suit.
However, he said it is inevitable the pendulum will swing too far in the name of privacy and "blow up" in the faces of police administrators who adopt a very strict interpretation of the privacy act.
Stuart Robertson, a lawyer with O'Donnell, Robertson & Sanfilippo in Toronto that represents newspapers across Canada, said the current impasse between the press and some police departments is caused by the act itself.
"To be fair to the police, the underlying issue is the structure of the act," he said.
The act's guiding principles are that information should be accessible and released when it is in the public interest, he said.
It describes what kind of information should be publicly available and what shouldn't. However, for nearly every rule in the act, there is an exemption.
And many exemptions have exemptions. So the definition of what is the public interest isn't often clear, Roberston said.
Yet there is one clear absolute in the act that says, "No person shall wilfully disclose personal information in contravention of this act."
This stark warning, when combined with ambiguity found elsewhere in the act, leads to some police departments taking the most conservative road.
"If the police release something and are found that in doing so they violated the act, they are the ones who will pay the price," Robertson said. "So in some communities, they err on the side of conservatism and release nothing.
"The penalty is for releasing information, not for withholding information."
Southall said she could not comment on the current NRP policy because she was not involved in its creation.
However, she has committed to undertaking a complete review of the NRP's policy, which will include advice from NRP lawyers and will cover everything from general information to information on police misconduct hearings.
Southall said the review will be completed in the new year.
The police dispatcher could hear Susan Kilby's voice, but was unable to speak to her.
Someone had called 911 Sunday night, but whoever dialled wasn't on the line pleading for help. The phone line was open and the dispatcher could hear the sounds of a heated argument in the distance.
Minutes later, before Niagara Regional Police officers could reach the north St. Catharines home, Kilby was dead.
Her skull had been smashed in the home of her estranged husband.
Her young children -- aged seven and five -- were nearby. Perhaps close enough to hear their mother's last moments alive.
Not long afterwards, their father, General Motors employee Patrick
Kilby, 47, was charged with first-degree murder.
"I do not believe the children were eyewitnesses. But the sequence of events isn't clear this early in the investigation," said Sergeant Cliff Sexton, a Niagara Regional Police detective in charge of investigating the region's eighth homicide of the year. "We don't know yet if the children were in the house or outside in the van at the time of the crime."
By Monday morning, the entire property at 22 Dunblane Ave., overlooking Lock 2 of the Welland Canal, had been cordoned off by police.
Just beyond the yellow police tape, a modest memorial was placed against a potted bush standing in dried grass.
"In loving memory of Suzie Kilby. A wonderful mother and caring friend and thoughtful aunt," read a note from Allan and Kristy Kilby tied to four gerbera daisies by a purple ribbon. "You will be missed by all that you touched."
Police said the 39-year-old American citizen from Virginia was killed by blunt force trauma to her skull around 7:47 p.m. Sunday.
Kilby and her husband had been separated for more than a year, neighbours said. Since she moved to an apartment on Leaside Drive, neighbours on Dunblane Avenue didn't see much of her, except for when she dropped off or picked up her children.
Most neighbours interviewed Monday only knew Kilby casually, saying hello when they saw her outside the house. They say she worked at a boutique in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Early Sunday evening, Kilby arrived at the Dunblane Avenue home in her burgundy van to pick up the children who had been visiting with their father, police and neighbours said.
What happened next, Sexton said, is under investigation.
"We are at a preliminary stage of investigation right now," he said.
What police do know is that someone from Patrick Kilby's house called 911.
"We actually don't know who called 911 at this point," he said. "It was an open line situation where the dispatcher could hear the argument."
The two children were taken outside the house and placed into their mother's van, police and neighbours said. However, police do not know if the children were moved before or after Kilby was killed.
Moments before NRP officers arrived, the children were taken to 24 Dunblane Ave. by their father and left in the care of a neighbour, police said.
Sexton said he could not say what was used to kill Kilby until forensics investigators finish searching the house.
The forensics probe didn't begin until late Monday afternoon because of a delay in finding a justice of the peace to issue a search warrant.
Patrick Kilby, dressed in a white paper jumpsuit, appeared briefly in a St. Catharines court Monday morning.
The tall blond man seemed not to notice family and friends who filled a row of seats in the courtroom. In hushed tones, he spoke with a duty counsellor after being charged with first-degree murder.
He did not look at his family as he was taken back to jail.
He is to appear in court Wednesday via video from the Niagara Detention Centre in Thorold.
His supporters declined to speak to The Standard outside the courtroom.
Sexton said the children are in the custody of Family and Children's Services.
"They are with FACS and at some point there will be discussion with the family regarding who the children will live with." No funeral arrangements have been announced and Kilby's family is coming to St. Catharines from Virginia.
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