It must have been terrifying. A frigid March night back in 2010. The biting wind blowing in off the Halifax Harbour. A young woman, barely alive, lying at the foot of the Mackay Bridge.
The sound of so many trucks and cars rumbled above. If anyone saw her, no one stopped to help. She couldn't move. Her body temperature was dropping, her heart slowing down.
She was fading fast. Bridge workers found her the next morning unconscious. She'd die later in hospital. Police identified her as Holly Bartlett. She was a 31-year-old grad student who lived a couple of blocks away.
Holly was legally blind, but for people who knew her well, the circumstances surrounding her death seemed utterly improbable. So her friends contacted our tip line and asked the Fifth Estate to take a second look at the investigation into her death. We headed to Halifax to check out the story. Did the police do a thorough job?
And did the explanation of how she died that night make sense? Police believe what happened to Holly that night was all a tragic accident. Investigators believe she fell down the steep embankment and lost her cane. Drunk and disoriented, she squeezed through a hole in the fence then crawled to this abutment.
They believe she climbed the steep pitch here, believing she would get to the deck of the bridge where she could get help. But police say she would fall off this steep pitch here to her death. For them, it was an open and shut case. Holly's mom, Marion Bartlett, feels the police built their investigation on assumptions, not facts. They concluded the investigation.
It was wrapped up before Holly was, before we had her service. You know, that was the end of it. They thought... A poor little blind drunk girl, you know? And Holly was anything but a poor little blind drunk girl.
Anything but. Holly was born with small eyes, a genetic condition called microphthalmia. As a child, she had limited vision.
But as she got older, she slowly lost more and more of what little vision she had. By age 13, Holly was legally blind. but she never let it define her. I can see the windows, so when it's a good day, not like today, but when it's a good day and it's nice and bright out, I can count over, so I know where I am.
She had a very dry sense of humour. She had no trouble poking fun at herself, you know, like a portal blind girl or, you know, oh, I could see that, anybody could see that. So what the computer first does is it tells me the title of the document that's just opened. By age 30, she was in grad school. A fellow student interviewed her about what it was like to go blind.
It's been a progress in terms of accepting what being blind means and what it doesn't mean and having to deal with other people's assumptions of what it means. But, you know, as everybody matures, it gets a little bit easier. She had a zest for adventure.
She learned how to swing dance. And when a friend told her he was going skydiving, she insisted she come too. Life was fun for Holly. On what would be the last night of her life, she went out with friends to celebrate the end of the semester. By all accounts, Holly had about six drinks in six hours that night.
She weighed 123 pounds. Her classmates said, sure, she was drunk. But when one friend walked her to a cab that night, she thought Holly was fine to make it home on her own.
Instead, inexplicably, she would end up under the bridge, clinging to life. Her mother remembers what she looked like when she arrived at the hospital. It was an awful sight. She was all strapped down to the table and her hands, her hands were like, they were all blistered and frozen. Her death was attributed to blunt force trauma to the head.
She was also suffering from severe hypothermia. But even before Holly died, her mom says the lead investigator told her at the hospital he believed this was an accident, a result of her being drunk and disoriented. The case was barely open before police seemed to have made up their minds.
So here's the police version of how Holly got to the bridge. After getting out of the cab, she would have walked down a sloping driveway from her apartment. Then she would continue to walk down a road about the length of three football fields. A busy highway on one side, rows of homes on the other.
She would then stumble off the road towards the base of the bridge. But take a look at that student video. This was shot right outside her apartment.
Holly walked with confidence around her building. Even after a few drinks, would she really get that lost in a parking lot? It doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't make sense.
Peter Parsons is Holly's friend. He's also legally blind. He helped teach Holly orientation skills so she could get around town on her own. He said she was a natural.
Here, this is quite a walk. It is. It is quite a walk. And it's quite a walk with lots of traffic clues. That is a basic thing that Holly would know that, OK, if the traffic is on my left, I'm walking away from my building.
So how would I fix that? I would turn around, put the traffic on my right and walk back towards. I feel that Holly had such expert orientation mobility skills.
It would have been as automatic as to someone who's sighted. Peter believes it's just too easy to assume blind people can get easily lost and disoriented. He told that to the Halifax police, but felt they ignored him.
He then contacted us. I believe it was discrimination not to investigate the case like if it were a sighted person. If the assumptions weren't made and it wasn't chalked up as, you know, drunk blind girl, unfortunately, you know, we could have had more answers. But there is someone who can provide some answers. Perhaps the last person to see Holly alive.
The taxi driver who picked her up that night. Coming up after the break, the driver and the last moments of Holly's life. People are wondering which version is true. Are you sure about this? Oh yes.
The mystery of Holly Bartlett's death still haunts her family and friends four years later. What led this 31-year-old grad student to fall to her death under a Halifax bridge? After a night out, Holly came home in a cab, but she never made it through her front door. Holly was legally blind.
Police believed she was drunk and disoriented that night. And she walked hundreds of meters away from her home, falling to her death. But a few things are hard to explain. Her cell phone and wallet were found outside her apartment. But her cane was found by the bridge, mysteriously leaning against the fence, just a few steps from where Holly's body was discovered.
We wanted to talk to the last known person to see her alive that night. Paul Fraser has been driving a cab in Halifax for 23 years. In an exclusive interview, he spoke with the Fifth Estate.
She only spoke one word to me. I asked her if she lived in the tower, just straight ahead there, and she said, yes, but there's a voice that still haunts me today. He says he's haunted because he was later told by police she had died in an accident.
But he remembers the ride itself was routine, though when questioned later by police, he said Holly was drunk. And what did you tell them? They asked me what scale.
One to ten. I said about eight. She sat quietly in there. And based on that, you evaluated that she was an eight out of ten drunk?
Yes. But that's based on what? I don't understand. It isn't based on too much, is it?
I don't think it infected the investigation that much. But it did. A key pillar of the police theory was she was drunk and disoriented, and that rested in large part on Fraser's word. But there would be yet another twist to his story.
According to the lawyer for Holly's family, Fraser told police he cheated Holly that night after she overpaid him. He told police he ripped her off and was ashamed. Now, four years later, he's changed that story too.
You did say that you had ripped her off and that you did not feel too proud of that. No, no, I didn't. The best of my memory, no. Because I didn't do it.
So you can see where the confusion is here. Yes. People are wondering which version is true.
Are you sure about this? Oh yes. It wasn't just what Fraser told police that was perplexing, but also what he didn't tell police. There was a bus parked by the foot of Holly's apartment that night.
When police examined video taken by the bus's security camera, Fraser's cab is seen returning to Holly's building after he'd dropped her off. Later, under questioning, he said it was because he saw her trip and fall. Then, racked with guilt, he returned to check on her, but she was gone. You saw her fall down. Yes, I did, never.
You could have stopped right then and there. I could have stopped moving forward, yeah. Why didn't you? Jaded with people falling down.
With me the first time. Based on the testimony of Paul Fraser, police wrapped up their investigation. The case was closed until the new police chief looked at it a few months ago.
There was no direct evidence to let us know what happened to her. Jean-Michel Blais inherited the file when he took over the force. He admits there are holes in the investigation.
It seemed to be almost improbable how she could have gone that far without anybody seeing anything, without anybody hearing anything. There was just a lot of questions there. After meeting with Holly's family, the police chief agreed the investigation needs a second look, so the Quebec City Police are now reviewing the case and police procedures.
And that's why we've taken this highly unusual step. Okay, I mean, there wasn't a significant amount of public pressure to go ahead, but we chose this as being the right thing to do, okay, for Holly and for her family. Okay, to be able to say, alright, is there something that we missed here?
The review is underway and the report from the Quebec City Police will be made public likely sometime this summer. But the case will not necessarily be reopened unless a new witness comes forward or new evidence is uncovered. But four years after Holly's death, her mother, Marion Bartlett, has all but run out of hope.
We may never know how Holly ended up under the bridge compound, but the police department certainly didn't do an investigation to find out how or why she ended up where she did. I think that the biggest thing that I face and that I have absolutely no control over is Other people's assumptions about me and other people's feelings and insecurities around that. I've never let the fact that I can't see you stop me, really, from doing anything. If I really want to get somewhere, I'll find a way to do it.