It was 2011 when Linda Daniels and her daughter disappeared. In 2016, the police came to find out if Glenn Bauman, a former Mennonite in the Kitchener/Waterloo area and the common-law spouse of Linda, had killed them. Circumstantial evidence and some questionable activities on behalf of undercover police officers led to his arrest and eventual conviction for two counts of first degree with the claim that he killed them and burned them up in barrels. Substantial research suggests this may not have been the case. But what exactly did happen? Will there be a retrial?

Chapter 1. Project Witness: Open the File

 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:  A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;  A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;  A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;  A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.

Ecclesiastes.

Glenn Bauman stands about 5 foot 8, with a cadaverous figure, lips thin and jaw jutting out from a face weathered by a life of manual work, crooked teeth deeply yellowed by years of smoking, sparse hair - stringy and irreparably greasy looking. Deep marionette lines hollow his cheeks but are softened by a slight upturn of his lips at their edges. He looks both hard and soft at the same time, animated almost - probably one of his most distinctive characteristics. He belongs in a flannel shirt and overalls - something homemade that will hang off his wiry frame, practical not pretentious, destined for labour. Despite the worn appearance, he does maintain something of a youthful mischievousness and while he doesn’t laugh easily he also isn’t afraid to let tears flow when he speaks about his childhood. It’s a manly cry - just a few tears that travel down the sides of his face which he doesn’t shy from or cover up in some feign of masculinity. He’s soft spoken. He’s introverted. And he’s clearly damaged. But if you take the time to get to know him, to really get to know him, he will show a generosity you wouldn’t expect from someone with such stoic poise and tormented essence, the prickly pear tough to touch but sweet to taste if you have the patience to work past the skin. Giving the shirt off his back wouldn’t be a stretch. In fact, he would probably wash it for you first. And yet, he might harbour a sense of distrust even after he gave you the shirt.

You wouldn’t know all this just by looking at Glenn. Walking into a local tavern and seeing him likely wouldn’t stir anything but a sense of comfort and familiarity.

When Glenn speaks, it’s with the distinct accent of a central Ontario Mennonite and the idiosyncrasies of their dialect, Pennsylvania Dutch being something of a misnomer since it’s actually a German vernacular. There’s a slight lilt when they speak, deliberately, slowly and thoughtfully,  rich with pauses and sounding not unlike an English spoken by someone who lived and learned in a Nordic European culture. 

It’s 2011. Adele’s single “Rolling in the Deep” is playing through the radio of the truck cabin with the polyphonic white noise of the road droning on beneath. “We could have had it all” echoes the refrain..

“There's a fire starting in my heart

Reaching a fever pitch and it's bringing me out the dark.”

Perhaps it’s foreshadowing. Perhaps it’s just a song.

Glenn is on his trucking run home on July 18th.  He couldn’t even begin to remember what he was delivering those past two weeks pushing through Canada and the United States.  A thousand miles today maybe of blur. He just followed the pattern. Drive. Stop and rest in the cab when there was a rest stop - less often than he should have. Pop a few bennies to make sure his eyes stayed open.

It isn’t all just road and radio because Glenn has a habit of talking to himself while he drives; it’s one of his ways of processing information and staving off loneliness.  He’s heading towards the border crossing at Fort Erie and Buffalo between the US and Canada coming through customs shortly after midnight and then into Ontario on the Queen Elizabeth Parkway leading to Highway 401.  He’s done this route hundreds of times before, maybe thousands so it’s as though his internal autopilot is taking him home. You know. You get in your car and it just takes you to the destination your vehicle knows. A few hours later, as he turns off the highway, the sudden blackness of the country roads churn up gravel and dust behind him with the welcome crunching and crackling and lightless force. All he wants is to crawl into his own bed, in his own house, with his common-law wife after he kisses his step daughter good night. 

Or so he says. As it turns out, Glenn much preferred being on the road to being at home at this time. Things hadn’t been so good at home for a while.

Rather than repairing to the bedroom, he dons the blanket and stretches out on the old, plaid sofa in the living room, adjusting himself so the springs aren’t going to hamper his rest. It’s better than sleeping in the truck, that’s for sure. 

Glenn told friends and family he woke up the next day only to find them missing and that a note was left saying not to bother looking for them. A few bags and the Siamese cats that Linda was breeding for extra cash were also gone. Glenn asked his neighbour if he had seen any vehicles coming over while he was away. His neighbour had not. But then, a neighbour doesn’t always know the comings and goings of a house. He only recounted that Glenn seemed quite shaken.

Glenn apparently reported them missing shortly after the disappearance, but the sergeant on the desk either told him to “let sleeping does lie” or else his realtor lawyer did when he asked how he could track them down so that he could sell the house given Linda’s name was on the mortgage. It seems the police officer didn’t remember this conversation.

Her son, Andrew, filed a missing persons report four years later.

The core of our justice system holds that innocence exists until guilt is proven. The sculptural image of “Lady Justice”is a historic reflection of the Roman goddess “Justita”, one of the four Platonic virtues which included wisdom, moderation, courage and justice with its own historic references in ancient Greek and Egyptian cultures.  The image features a right hand holding two equally weighted scales while in her left hand a sword is readied to smite those who do not behave justly and to confirm that justice shall be swift and final. Often she is depicted with a blindfold, at least since the 16th century, to show that she will be an impartial witness and disregard wealth, power, and abuses of the system by those with an agenda. However, she was first depicted with a blindfold on because she did not see the injustices and was tolerant of abuses of the judicial system. “Lady Justice’s blindfold was used as a negative attribute. The earliest known representation of a blindfolded Lady Justice is a satirical woodcut for Sebastian Brant’s Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools, 1494), in which the author criticised the abuse of trials and the foolishness of court quarellings.”  

We seldom consider the paradoxes of the blindfold’s meaning and it is only when we are confronted by egregious abuses in our systems such as the killing of innocent black men at the hands of police, or the false convictions of such notorious “convicts” like Guy Paul Morin and David Milgaard that we consider flaws in our justice systems. We hold on to a belief today that justice is impartial and objective; we have to have faith in this. If our faith is challenged, we need to see such abuses as abberations rather than status quo.

Glenn Bauman, a former Old Order Mennonite of the Kitchener/Waterloo area of Ontario, Canada and a long-haul trucker, was convicted in 2019 of having murdered his common-law wife, Linda,  and her daughter, Cheyenne, and burning their bodies in burn barrels outside of their country home on the weekend of July 18, 2011.  But even if he was convicted, many questions remain.  

And so begins this very bizarre true tale of what can only be understood as emotional starvation.

Why didn’t anyone else go looking for Linda for four years? Nobody else looked for her because it seems nobody else cared. None of her family since she had pretty much disowned them. None of her friends because she really didn’t have any. And not even the staff sergeant who Glenn apparently visited those four years ago to report them missing.

But soon after Andrew had filed the missing persons report, a forensic search had been undertaken at the previous residence and turned up some questionable evidence of possible foul play. The name of the investigation was then dubbed “Project Witness” suggesting a sexy version of the Harrison Ford film, Witness, that figured an Amish family where an 8-year old boy has witnessed the murder of an undercover police officer but must retreat to his Amish home for protection. Harrison Ford is John Book, his protector against the corrupt police trying to silence the boy. 

Police investigations have a long history of bizarre names that the investigators come up with. “Project Breadmaker” in Toronto was so named because an original target lived on a street named Dempster and “Project Decepticon” was an investigation into the sale of ecstacy and other illicit drugs based on an evil robot in the comic book Transformers series. In Orlando, Florida, the investigators called one “Project Doublemint” because they were investigating a set of twins involved in the selling of crack and cocaine. It’s something that police investigators have been doing for years.

When you name a surveillance effort “Project Witness”, you already have a plan in play. A Hollywood production. It would involve millions of dollars spent by police in Ontario and across Canada to try to peg a former Old Order Mennonite man for the murder of his common-law wife and her daughter. All based on some sketchy evidence of blood found on floorboards and the possibility of teeth fragments in a burn barrel located on the property.

When you invest that much in terms of human and financial resources, you’d best “get your man” and have a solid conclusion for the script.

WorkingTitle: Brethren/ Glenn Bauman