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May 16, 2007

Manor murder suspect may have ties to other deaths

By SUZANNE MOORE

PLATTSBURGH — The man suspected of killing Darcy R. Manor is also a suspect in the murders of two gay men in the Halifax area.

Glen D. Race, 26, was apprehended in Texas near the Mexican border. In his possession was the .44-caliber rifle stolen from the secluded camp on Drown Road in Mooers, where Manor was found murdered early Friday morning.

Manor’s missing 1992 Ford pickup truck was located late Tuesday in the Houston area, New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation Capt. Robert LaFountain confirmed Tuesday.

Canadian sources told the Press-Republican that police suspect Race, of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, of murdering both Trevor Charles Brewster and Michael Paul Knott, who were both gay.

The body of Knott, 44, was discovered May 5; his vehicle was found secreted in the woods near Halifax Stanfield International Airport.

Trevor Charles Brewster was reported missing on May 8; his remains were found under a boardwalk in a park well-known as a spot where men cruise for gay sex, according a Halifax newspaper, The Daily News.

His car, a black 2004 Honda Civic with a distinctive rainbow teddy bear decal on the trunk, had not yet been recovered as of Wednesday morning.

Police didn’t reveal how the men died but said there were enough similarities to merit a joint investigation by Halifax and other law-enforcement agencies.

As of Wednesday morning, Race had not yet been charged with the Mooers homicide, LaFountain said. He was arrested on several federal charges, however.

LaFountain said New York State Police were in Quebec Tuesday following leads to determine Race’s path to Mooers while other officers headed to the Houston area to bring back Manor’s truck, which had been secured by authorities there.

Manor, 35, and a married father of two young sons, was part-time caretaker at Churubusco Lodge camp where he met his death.

He’d closed his auto-repair shop just after 5 p.m. on Thursday and gone to the camp to do some work on the water system.

Friends and family looked for him after he failed to return home by his children’s bedtime; his body was found at the camp just after midnight. He had been shot.

“The senseless killing of this poor man is enough to rip you apart,” said Martin V. Lavin, the Burlington attorney whose family corporation, Churubusco Lodge Inc., owns the 395.6-acre camp property.

Wednesday, he followed Internet media reports that connected Race with the two Halifax-area murders.

“It’s beginning to take on some form as to why this ridiculous and unspeakable thing had to happen to destroy lives,” he said, the vibrato of anger plain in his voice.

“Particularly in view of the fact (Race) could have easily hidden away, it’s pretty obvious he made a purposeful decision he was going to do something.”

It gave him some relief to learn Manor’s stolen pickup truck had been recovered by police, but he was amazed it had traveled all the way to Texas.

“It doesn’t seem possible,” he said. “It’s such a recognizable vehicle.”

Lavin politely declined to answer questions related to the investigation, including queries about the rifle that police had reported missing from the camp and that Race had with him when he was apprehended.

“I’m sure that my statement to the police is probably going to be used in the extradition hearing, and I may be a major witness,” he said.

Lavin attended both Manor’s wake and funeral.

“My eyes are still watering,” he said from his Burlington office. “It was awful.

“When I met (Manor’s widow) Heather at the wake, I completely broke down.”

Lavin last saw Manor about a week and a half before the murder, when he told the caretaker he planned a weekend there soon.

It was time to get the water system up and running, and though Lavin doesn’t mind installing it as much as shutting it down for the winter, he said Manor told him he’d tend to the task.

Lavin knows that, the night before, Manor went over the job details at his home on White Road in Mooers, collecting the tools he’d need for the work.

“That poor, poor man,” he said. “That poor, poor family.

“The senselessness of this whole thing is just incomprehensible.”

Churubusco Lodge is just a mile or so from the U.S./Quebec border, adjacent to a local natural wonder called the Gulf, a deep chasm in the midst of wilderness in both New York and Canada that Lavin said no car would be able to negotiate.

And he thought it unlikely Manor’s killer could have sneaked into the country on foot at that point either.

“Let’s say it would be quite a challenge,” he said.

While his camp property is gated, at entrances both on Drown and Soucia roads, it’s not unusual, he said, for locals to show up there, especially at the western end near the Gulf.

It’s common, too, for people from the area to ride all-terrain vehicles on the camp’s trails.

“As long as the property is respected, it’s no problem,” he said.

Neither he nor any of his family has ever found anyone from Canada or farther afield on the grounds, he added.

“(But) someone got there somehow — that, we do know,” he said, his anger unabated. “Let’s hope the person or persons responsible for (the murder) spends a long time behind bars.

“Or in a chair that gets warm.”





E-mail Suzanne Moore at:

smoore@pressrepublican.com

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