Minister of Community and Social Services! Who killed Ty Conn?
Who Killed Ty Conn follows
the story of Conn's tragic life, which took him from a childhood of abuse to a
life of crime, finally leading to his death at the age of thirty-two. By the
time Conn had reached the age of two he had already been abandoned by his
father, mother, and grandparents. Ontario child protection services intervened and allowed an
affluent but unsuitable family to adopt him.
The breakdown of Ty's home life led to foster homes, insecurity and
petty theft. As Conn's sense of personal loneliness and abandonment escalated,
so did his criminal activity. Multiple convictions for armed robbery and
escaping prison eventually brought him to Kingston Penitentiary. Once again
alienated and facing a hopeless future, he devised an ingenious escape plan. On
May 7, 1999, he went over the wall.
When the police finally tracked him
down after a full-scale search, he chose death over prison. At the moment he
shot himself, around midnight on May 20, 1999, Conn was on the phone with Theresa Burke,
associate producer of CBC's the fifth estate. Burke and Linden
MacIntyre, a fifth estate co-host, had met Conn in a Saskatchewan
Correctional Institute in 1994 when they featured him on a show dealing with
the effects of child abuse. In
their opinion, Conn was not a hardened criminal but a man trying to come to
terms with a life of rejection, and a danger to no one but himself
Linden MacIntyre On Tyrone Conn
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