In October 1970 Kirkland Lake, Ontario was still thought to be a sleepy little corner of the world. Most of the families derived an income from either working in the gold mines that earned the town its nickname 'The Mile of Gold' or in some other business which supported mining. Many of the families were by current standards financially poor.
The poorest section of town was actually on the outskirts. Harvey Kirkland was a small but close knit village where the families all knew each other and while they lacked financial stability they certainly did not lack spirit.
Kathy Wilson's Disappearance
On October 20, 1970 12-year-old Kathy Wilson walked home from school with her younger sisters at which time her mother asked her to return to town for some groceries and to pick up the mail. Kathy made it to town where she stopped at a friend’s house and the post office. The youngster then called her mother to ask if she could buy a treat and after stopping to share it with a friend she headed home. Her mother had sent her sisters out to meet her but she never made it.
The Truth About What Happened to Kathy Wison
While the post office and grocery store Kathy stopped at that day are long gone the belief that one man, 61-year-old Barry Manion, held the answer to Wilson's disappearance has never faded. Wilson's younger sisters remember vividly seeing young Kathy in Mr. Manions' truck and they remember him pushing her to the floor to hide her from view.
Mr. Manion drove the girl to a secluded spot where she bolted while threatening to tell her parents about the sexual abuse she'd been suffering for more than two years. "I put my hands around her neck and I shook her up a couple of times," Manion told police officers in his confession. "She did all the right things, kicking and screaming . . . She did everything right and I did everything wrong."
Mr. Manion confessed to strangling the girl before covering her with ground cover and laying her grocery bag beside her before leaving the spot. He had not returned to the spot where the murder occurred until taking police there this winter.
Closure for the Wilson Family
On January 12, 2009 Mr. Barry Manion was sentenced in a Haileybury, ON courtroom to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 10 years. The Kirkland Lake police hope to be able to recover young Kathy's remains this coming spring in order to give the family some closure. Kathy would be laid to rest beside her father and brother.
Karrie Emms - As a single mother of two beautiful children, Colton (11) and Jesslynn (9) Karrie has a passion for writing that began at the tender age ...
