Helen Betty Osborne

Helen Betty Osborne, or Betty Osborne (1952 – November 13, 1971), was a Cree Aboriginal woman from Norway House reserve who was kidnapped and murdered while walking down Third Street in The Pas, Manitoba.

Osborne was born in Norway House, Manitoba, the eldest of many children born to Joe and Justine (née McKay) Osborne. Her ambition was to go to college and become a teacher. However, the only way to succeed in doing so was to continue her education away from the reserve as secondary education was not available. She spent two years at Guy Hill Residential School, just outside The Pas, and in the fall of 1971 went to live with a Caucasian family (in a government programme where the families were reimbursed for hosting Native students) in The Pas, Manitoba. The Pas was a culturally-mixed town of Caucasian, Métis and Cree people. Helen Betty attended Margaret Barbour Collegiate in The Pas.

On the evening of her death, she had spent the evening with friends at The Northern Lite Cafe and then at the Bensons' place (where she was staying) before heading back downtown. Around midnight, Osborne's friends returned home; very little is known of Osborne's whereabouts or actions after this time. She was walking home at approximately 2:30am when she was abducted, brutally beaten, sexually assaulted, stabbed over 50 times, and killed. The following day Kenny Gurba, a fourteen-year-old in the town, grew tired of fishing and went off looking for rabbit tracks when he discovered her unclothed body. He and his father reported the discovery to the police.

Police at first suspected her ex-boyfriend, Cornelius Bighetty, but his name was cleared after successfully passing a lie detector test. She and Cornelius had an argument earlier in the evening at the Cambrian Hotel. During the initial days of the investigation, attention was placed on Betty's friends. Unfortunately, unacceptable recording and preserving of evidence at the Pump House (the crime scene) seriously crippled the investigation.

Dwayne Archie Johnston, James Robert Paul Houghton, Lee Scott Colgan and Norman Bernard Manger, four young, Caucasian men from The Pas, were eventually implicated in her death; however, it was not until December 1987, sixteen years after her death, that any of them were convicted of the crime. It was at this time that Constable Rob Urbanoski took over the investigation and placed an ad in the local newspaper asking for witnesses to come forward. Even then, only Johnston was convicted, as Houghton had been acquitted, Colgan had received immunity for testifying against Houghton and Johnston, and Manger was never charged.

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