QUESTIONS LINGER IN DEATH OF "AWESOME DUKE"

Report on crash that killed constable five years ago finally ready for release

In the weeks before his 1994 death, Constable John Knight, a strapping
Toronto traffic cop known as the Awesome Duke, was terribly troubled.

His mind was a vault, full of secrets about some of the most high-profile
cases of the day, including the 1991 murder of Dr. Carolyn Warrick.

But in the late summer of 1994, pointed questions were being asked about
possible police wrongdoing in the manhunt for Warrick's killers,
particularly about Knight's involvement in the case. Internal affairs was on
his case.

Desperate, he turned to the police union for help, telling representatives
he was worried about becoming a scapegoat for the sins of other officers.
According to union sources, he said he was afraid something was going to
happen to him.

Members of the 38-year-old officer's family say they knew he was fearful
about events unfolding in his life.

Knight's meeting with police union officials came about two weeks before he
met his end while briefly chasing a car on Sep. 28, 1994. Details of the
crash have been shrouded in secrecy for five years. No police report or
coroner's finding has been made public.

But now the Ontario coroner's office says it's about to release findings on
the crash, possibly this week. Dr. William Lucas, regional coroner for
Toronto, confirmed Monday he's ready to report.

But several questions probably won't be answered in the report:

* What did internal affairs learn when it investigated Knight's role in the
1991 Warrick murder probe?

* Why was a traffic officer involved in so many high-profile busts,
including drug seizures? Was he just lucky or was he being used by special
squads to pull over suspects for apparent traffic violations, to get around
proper search rules?

* Why was the traffic report on Knight completed just a month ago, almost
five years after his death? This type of investigation is routinely finished
within days or weeks.

At the time of his death, it was said among officers that Knight took to his
grave a lot of secrets about police operations - some that had gone awry.

When Knight crashed, internal affairs was all over the case. The department
wanted to know if Knight had met with foul play, committed suicide, or
simply died accidentally, driving too fast.

Theories abounded, but getting to the truth was difficult.

For starters, the stolen black Mustang that Knight had started to pursue on
Markham Rd. near Eglinton Ave. the night he was killed was never found, nor
did its four occupants ever come forward.

During the investigation, police sources say, police learned that the
cruiser Knight was driving had just undergone a brake job.

According to sources, investigators focused on the front brakes following
the deadly collision, to see if new brake pads had been properly installed.

The model - Ford Crown Victoria - had also been reported to have a steering
problem, although a U.S. government agency has since concluded that there
were no safety defects with the Crown Victoria police cars.

It's probable that the coroner will rule speed was a factor in the accident.
But just why it took so long to complete their work on Knight's case is a
question police brass have - for years - been reluctant to answer.

Perhaps the force felt the passage of time would dull memories of the events
of the early 1990s, when Knight, it seemed, was involved in all the big
cases of the day.

On the surface it appeared the 6-foot-4, 240-pound officer was a lucky charm
for the police force. He had a knack for "stumbling" across major drug
stashes or, in one case, $250,000 in stolen jewelry.

Routine traffic stops while making rounds: That's how the force explained
Knight's involvement in major arrests. His file was full of commendations
reflecting the high regard the force had for his work.

Knight was credited with a 1994 drug bust that at the time marked the
biggest crack-cocaine seizure in the city's history.

It was during a routine traffic stop that Knight discovered $225,000 under
the driver's seat in a car he had pulled over at Kennedy and Danforth Rds.

But the case later fell apart when one of the drug-squad officers admitted
in court to tampering with her notes.

Then there was the Carolyn Warrick murder investigation. That's when trouble
began for Knight.

Ordinarily a traffic officer working the city's east end, Knight was called
in and soon became an integral part of the team working to find Warrick's
killers.

The 1991 murder manhunt was one of the city's largest. Pressure was on
homicide investigators to find two men who beat the young doctor to death in
the garage of her apartment building.

Two cocaine addicts, Craig Kimberley and Tom Clancey, were arrested and
charged with first-degree murder.

Then the case disappeared into a legal ether for years, mired in various
legal arguments. Many dealt with the conduct of the police, including
Knight's role.

During arguments, which began in 1993, Clancey's lawyer, the late Fred
Rowell, was quoted as thanking Knight for admitting he had been asked to do
things he felt were improper on at least two occasions.

"It's nice to see there's honest policemen still out there," Rowell stated.

But by the time the murder trial actually got under way in March, 1995,
Knight had long been buried, after a funeral with full police honours.

That July, Kimberley and Clancey were found guilty of first-degree murder in
Warrick's 1991 beating death. (Both have launched appeals.)

The trial ended without mention of the controversy that had stalled it in
the courts for years.

The media didn't really know - or hadn't paid attention to - what had
transpired between 1991 and Knight's death in 1994.

So the public didn't know that Knight had been at the centre of a legal
storm that included allegations of memo book tampering, the alleged illegal
recording of a suspect, and other claims of police trickery.

No officer was ever disciplined in the Warrick case. The internal affairs
probe, one police source said, simply "went away."

With files from Nick Pron