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Pre-inquiry
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Even as millions are spent
on this inquiry into a 37 year old murder, two prime examples
of how wrongful convictions occur are unfolding in Saskatoon.
Wilfred Hathway is having
his defence severely handicapped as prosecutor Brent Klause has
successfully obtained an order from now Chief Justice Robert
Laing to keep disclosure out of the hands of his defence team.
Denver Crawford's
memory is not being well served. Material has surfaced which
indicates Dominic McCullock's
lawyer, Mark Brayford, did not provide a vigorous defence for
his client who was convicted of killing Jaime
Wheeler. This brutal murder was described as savage, committed
by a dangerous person, by Judge Laing, even though the conviction
was for second degree murder. This raises again the 2000 conviction
of Leon Walchuk who has steadfastly
maintained his innocence in the murder of his wife and whose
appeals have been turned down, despite evidence not presented
at trial which would show serious flaws in the Crown's case.
Commission
of Inquiry Into the Wrongful Conviction of David Milgaard:
(Page 14)
Honourable Mr. Justice Edward
P. MacCallum, Commissioner
| Commission website
| Lockyer shows similarities
with Guy Paul Morin investigation |
More
background (also see
links on sidebar) Sask to
give inquiry another $700,000
Retired officer refuses
to apologize, leaving Joyce Milgaard in tears
Betty Ann Adam, The
StarPhoenix, August 26, 2005
Joyce Milgaard wept as a former
Saskatoon police detective began to apologize but then denied
he had anything to apologize for.
"I started to cry because
I thought finally, someone is admitting they did something wrong
and we're making progress. And then I really cried when he turned
it around and said he did nothing wrong and that he had nothing
to apologize for," Joyce Milgaard said Thursday during a
break at the inquiry into the wrongful conviction of her son,
David Milgaard, who spent 23 years in prison for a murder he
didn't commit.
"The whole thing, the
denial, denial, denial, I find extremely upsetting and unbelievable,"
she said.
Retired Det. Eddy Karst said
he accepts some of the responsibility for what happened to Milgaard.
Responding to questions from
lawyer James Lockyer, who represents Joyce Milgaard, Karst said
he certainly didn't feel good about it.
Lockyer asked Karst if he ever
wanted to apologize.
"No. I certainly feel
sorry for David Milgaard, or anyone else that has been wrongly
incarcerated, or for Mrs. Milgaard having been put through this,
however, I did nothing wrong in my opinion and I don't feel I
have anything to apologize for," Karst said.
Karst became a main investigator
looking into the Jan. 31, 1969, death of Gail Miller after Albert
Cadrain, then 16, told Karst he had seen blood on Milgaard's
clothes the day of the crime.
Karst was dispatched to Winnipeg
the same night and interviewed Milgaard, also then 16, for several
hours.
During the next 11 weeks Karst
and other Saskatoon police failed to obtain evidence that would
support a murder charge.
Two Regina teens, Ron Wilson
and Nichol John, gave matching alibis for Milgaard, saying he
was never away from them long enough to have committed the crime.
By April 16, 1969, police had
worked out a theory that Milgaard was intent on stealing a purse
of a nurse the three teens had asked for directions. The theory
had Milgaard lose control of his sexual impulses and rape and
stab the young woman.
Karst and Ray Mackie brought
Wilson and John to Saskatoon from May 21 to 24. Each was driven
around the area of the killing and questioned extensively. An
interrogation specialist brought in from Calgary conducted a
polygraph on Wilson. Knives were shown to the teens and Miller's
blood-stained dress was shown to John.
The teens gave statements over
four days that laid out the same story police had theorized,
Lockyer showed.
The only way Wilson and John
could have known the facts they gave in their damning statements
was if police gave them the information, Lockyer suggested.
Karst said that is a viable
suggestion, but he can't imagine Saskatoon police doing it.
Karst said he thinks Wilson
and John simply lied. But he also rejected a suggestion that
Wilson and John separately invented the same lies about Milgaard.
Lockyer asked how could they
have made up matching stories that fit the known facts of the
crime. Karst said he had no idea.
Karst also said he might have
been aware that police suspected that a rapist then active in
the neighbourhood was the killer.
But he said he didn't make
the connection until three weeks after Milgaard was convicted,
when the rapist struck again and Karst was assigned to part of
the investigation.
The rapist turned out to be
Larry Fisher, who had lived in Cadrain's basement at the time
of Miller's murder. Karst said he didn't realize that at the
time, and he doesn't know why he and Det.-Sgt. Ray Mackie asked
Cadrain if he knew anything about an unnamed suspect in the new
rape case.
Karst said he doesn't remember
going to Winnipeg eight months later to question Fisher, who
confessed to some of the Saskatoon rapes. He said he doesn't
know if he asked Fisher about the other rapes to which Fisher
later confessed.
Karst also said he doesn't
think he connected the rapes to the Miller murder.
Karst said he can't remember
knowing that Fisher's ex-wife, Linda Fisher, told Saskatoon police
in 1980 that she thought Fisher had murdered Miller. Linda said
they had lived in Cadrain's basement, her paring knife was missing
after Miller's death and Larry had become nervous when she accused
him of the killing.
When Karst was confronted with
previous sworn testimony where he acknowledged knowing about
Linda Fisher's allegations, Karst said he didn't act on the new
information because no one assigned it to him.
"As a human being you
thought the wrong man might be in jail. You might have saved
him 12 more years in prison. How can you explain that nothing
was done?" Lockyer said.
"I can't explain,"
Karst said.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Karst says he warned senior
officers about doubts in Milgaard case
Betty Ann Adam, The
StarPhoenix, August 30, 2005
Former detective Eddy Karst
did his part to inform higher-ranking decision-makers about weaknesses
in the case against David Milgaard, Karst said Monday at the
Milgaard wrongful conviction inquiry.
Karst told his superiors in
an April 18, 1969 report, that Albert Cadrain's story of seeing
blood on Milgaard's clothing should be re-examined because two
teenagers who had been with Milgaard at the time of the murder
maintained he was never away from them long enough to have raped
and murdered nursing assistant Gail Miller, Karst said under
cross-examination by his lawyer, Aaron Fox.
Weeks later, after the two
other teens gave new, damning statements against Milgaard, Karst
pointed out that one of them, Ron Wilson, had contradicted himself,
even as he added new information.
Karst noted that in a May 1969
statement implicating Milgaard in the murder, Wilson said he
didn't see blood on Milgaard's clothing. The next day, Wilson
said he did see blood.
Fox raised the topic in response
to suggestions last week by Milgaard's lawyer, Hersh Wolch, that
police had "tunnel vision," in which they ignored any
information that tended to weaken the case against Milgaard,
while focusing on and exaggerating information that supported
the case.
Karst told Fox he thought Wilson
was a "dubious" witness, but Karst took comfort in
knowing that a senior interrogator from Calgary had subjected
Wilson to a lie detector test and was satisfied with his story.
Senior officers in the Saskatoon
Police Department, not Karst, decided the direction of the investigation,
he said.
Karst said he thinks Detective
Sgt. Raymond Mackie, Detective Jack Parker, Detective Sgt. George
Reid and Lieut. Joe Penkala were the principal leaders of the
investigation.
Karst didn't know what role
Supt. Jack Wood played because Karst didn't attend meetings in
Wood's office where most of those officers met to discuss the
investigation.
Also on Monday, Karst agreed
with Fox that Wilson and Nichol John could have obtained information
about the murder, which they included in their false statements
against Milgaard, from news reports or from people who had read
the news.
Last week Joyce Milgaard's
lawyer, James Lockyer, suggested police must have fed information
about the crime, along with their theory of Milgaard as the murderer,
to Wilson and John. Lockyer suggested there was no other way
the Regina teens could have known details about the crime.
Fox showed several articles
which appeared in The StarPhoenix and one from the Regina Leader-Post,
which revealed that Miller had been stabbed and her throat slashed,
the exact location where the body was found, the murder weapon
and that Miller's purse had been found in a nearby garbage can.
Fox also reminded Karst that
a friend of John's, Barbara Burrard, has said she and John talked
about Milgaard being suspected in the murder. It was possible
the teens had spoken to each other some time before they gave
false statements, Karst agreed.
On Karst's fifth and final
day on the witness stand, he gave answers indicating definite
memories of the day Wilson and John were interrogated by Roberts,
the Calgary polygraph expert. The memories stand in contrast
to Karst's many claims of little to no memory of many events
related to the Milgaard case.
Karst said he was called to
take Wilson from the Sheraton Cavalier hotel room, where he had
been questioned, to the police station, where Karst took a statement
from Wilson.
Karst also denied a statement
made about him by Roberts years later, when the Supreme Court
of Canada reviewed Milgaard's conviction. Roberts told the Supreme
Court Karst was present when Roberts went through Wilson's and
John's damning statements, with the teens present, to see if
there were any discrepancies in their stories.
"No sir. I was not there,"
Karst stated.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Former officer discarded
rape file
Betty Ann Adam, The
StarPhoenix, August 31, 2005
A former Saskatoon morality
officer tried to distance himself from knowledge of Larry Fisher's
rape convictions, saying someone else put his name on a report
that shows Saskatoon police were aware of Fisher's confessions.
"I don't think I left
that report . . . I didn't leave it," Stanley Weir told
the Milgaard wrongful conviction inquiry Tuesday.
Weir said a rape file he was
investigating had gone missing in the fall of 1970, and when
he asked his boss, morality unit Insp. H. Nordstrom, about it,
he received a terse reply.
"I was told summarily
by Nordstrom it was taken care of and it was no longer my concern,"
Weir said.
He said the incident happened
sometime after Eddy Karst, a detective, had gone to Winnipeg
to interview Fisher.
Weir said he didn't learn Fisher's
name until years later, when Karst told Weir that that he and
Nordstrom had gone to Winnipeg in October 1970 to interview Fisher
about his involvement in four Saskatoon sexual assaults.
Weir was the lead investigator
on one of the rapes, which occurred about three weeks after David
Milgaard was convicted of killing Gail Miller.
The concluding report on that
rape file shows a police officer returned the victim's belongings
to her and told her the assailant was in a North Battleford institution
with mental problems.
The officer also showed the
victim a single Polaroid photograph of a man she identified as
her assailant.
The woman told the commission
of inquiry earlier this year that she remembers a police officer
showing her a picture of Larry Fisher.
Other former Saskatoon police
have said they didn't know Fisher's name or that he had been
convicted in Regina of the Saskatoon assaults.
Milgaard's supporters have
said Saskatoon police deliberately suppressed information about
Fisher's confessions to avoid questions about possible connections
to Miller's death.
Milgaard's appeals of his conviction
were still ongoing when Fisher first confessed. Information about
the confessions might have helped Milgaard's case, they have
said.
Weir contradicted himself during
testimony Tuesday. He said he sought more information about the
rape case, but then said he was too busy to bother.
He also said he sought the
files on other rapes Fisher committed, but later said he didn't
because he didn't know Fisher's name.
Weir said he didn't believe
Nordstrom about the file being taken care of so he went to central
records and got a copy of the file.
It did not contain the concluding
report or any reports about anybody confessing to the crime.
Although he was curious enough
about the outcome of the case to carry the copy of the file with
him for several years, Weir said he never asked the officer who
filled out the documents when an accused person was officially
charged, if charges had been laid in that rape case.
"Why would I? I had other
fish to fry," Weir said.
The hours of questioning Tuesday
appeared to take an emotional toll on Weir, who sometimes sat
with his arms tightly crossed in front of him.
The inquiry took a short break
early in the afternoon, when Weir was overcome by emotion.
His voice cracked and he wiped
his eyes as he responded to questions about a 1991 Globe and
Mail article in which he was quoted criticizing senior police
officers.
Weir said he threw away his
copy of the rape file after Karst told him in 1977 about the
1970 Winnipeg trip to interview Fisher.
Weir said all the rape files
were missing by then.
When asked by commission counsel
Doug Hodson if he told a commission looking into missing police
files in 1991 that he had thrown away what might have been the
only remaining copy of that file, Weir replied, "No. What
was the point?"
Weir returns to the witness
stand today.
Hearing transcripts are available
on the commission's website at www.milgaardinquiry.ca.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Witness statement didn't
match evidence, Milgaard inquiry hears
Betty Ann Adam, The
StarPhoenix, Thursday, September 01, 2005
A major discrepancy in the
murder case against David Milgaard was never discussed with the
officer who took care of the physical evidence.
Identification officer Thor
Kleiv told the Milgaard wrongful conviction inquiry Wednesday
it was obvious to him that Gail Miller's nurse's uniform had
been removed to her waist and her coat put back on before she
was stabbed to death on a bitterly cold morning in January 1969.
Kleiv said he didn't hear investigators
talking about an inconsistency in witness Nichol John's statement
that she saw Milgaard stab a woman after grabbing her purse.
The statement didn't provide any opportunity for the dress top
to come off before the stabbing.
Kleiv was among the first officers
on the scene. It was his job to gather and photograph evidence,
store it and keep track of who had it when it was out of his
possession.
Miller's stylish black coat,
with its fur collar and cuffs, had five holes in it, which pathologist
Dr. Harry Emson matched to stab wounds on her body. There were
no knife holes in the uniform dress, but its zipper was broken
and there was a tear in the front.
Kleiv said he thought the rapist
might have allowed the young woman to put her coat back on after
her dress top was pulled down because it was so cold outside.
He said he wasn't present at
meetings where higher-ranking officers made decisions about the
investigation, but he did learn that John had said she'd seen
the stabbing.
When Joanne McLean, lawyer
for Milgaard's mother, Joyce, asked Kleiv if he had casual conversations
with other police about the clothing's disarray, he replied,
"I don't recall anything that was said."
When asked if he recalled hearing
anybody else talking about John's story being "troublesome,"
Kleiv said he "may have."
He said he doesn't recall anything
specific and had "no direct conversation" about it.
Milgaard's lawyers have alleged
that John, then 16, was pressured into signing a statement containing
a story first laid out in a previously drafted police theory.
That theory also ignored the question of how the dress top came
off before the stabbing.
John never again acknowledged
seeing the stabbing.
When her statement was shown
to her at Milgaard's trial, she said she didn't remember it.
She has continued saying she
doesn't remember through numerous legal hearings in the 36 years
since then, including at a 1992 Supreme Court review and at this
inquiry.
Kleiv's documentation about
storage of the evidence also shows that Det. Sgt. Raymond Mackie
came and borrowed Miller's coat, dress and bra from Kleiv on
May 23, 1969, and returned them the next day.
The commission of inquiry has
heard that the items were given to Calgary police interrogator
Art Roberts, who showed the dress to John.
At the sight of the blood-stained
dress, John suddenly declared she remembered seeing the stabbing,
the inquiry has heard.
Kleiv said it was not unusual
for investigators to borrow evidence to show to witnesses.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Investigator
suspected Milgaard had guilty conscience
Betty Ann Adam, The
StarPhoenix, September 2, 2005
When David Milgaard's girlfriend
told Saskatoon police Sgt. John Malanowich that Milgaard wanted
to repay a Regina girl he had cheated in a marijuana deal, Malanowich
thought Milgaard was actually admitting a "guilt complex"
for killing a girl in Saskatoon.
Malanowich had an open mind
when he went to Edmonton to see Sharon Williams, he told the
Milgaard wrongful conviction inquiry Thursday.
He said police must avoid "tunnel
vision" when investigating crime.
Milgaard's lawyer, Hersh Wolch,
has accused Saskatoon police of such a failure, suggesting they
over-emphasized information that tended to implicate Milgaard
in the 1969 death of nursing assistant Gail Miller and ignored
or downplayed information which tended to exculpate him.
Milgaard had visited Williams
the day after Miller was killed in Saskatoon.
Malanowich was sent to interview
the 17-year-old girl three weeks after Albert (Shorty) Cadrain
told police he had seen blood on Milgaard's clothing the day
Miller was killed.
Milgaard and two other teens
had given independent statements saying they were never out of
each other's company long enough that morning for Milgaard to
have committed the crime.
Nor did Williams provide any
evidence to support a murder charge against Milgaard.
She did not see blood on any
of Milgaard's clothing and he hadn't said anything about his
hours-long stop in Saskatoon the day before, her statement shows.
"David said something
about a girl was going to buy some marihuana (marijuana). She
gave him some money but that he took off without giving her the
marihuana and he also kept the money. He said that this happened
in Regina just before they came to Edmonton. . . . He mentioned
something about getting a bag of marihuana back to the girl in
Regina, to me it seemed not like David to do something like that,"
Williams' statement says.
The remarks took on a sinister
meaning for Malanowich.
"I think that in a way
David Milgaard possibly did in this way admit a guilt complex
and instead of saying that he killed a girl, he shared his guilt
by talking about it substituting marihuana for sex and the money
he received as the money he took from the murdered girl's purse,"
Malanowich wrote.
Malanowich's report contains
other opinions attributed to Williams but which are not supported
by her statement.
"It is quite obvious from
talking to her that she thinks that David Milgaard is capable
of murder. She was queried twice on this point and she definitely
without hesitation stated this," Malanowich's report says.
Those answers are not in Williams'
statement, nor is there a record of her calling Milgaard "abnormal."
"She made it quite clear
he seemed to be running away from something, she sensed this,"
Malanowich wrote.
Williams' statement says, "Ron
(Wilson) wanted to stay on in Edmonton to get a job and Shorty
wanted to go on. It seemed to me David just wanted to go right
now. They said they wanted to go to Calgary."
When asked about the opinions
which don't appear in the statement, Malanowich said Williams
may have said those things after he finished writing the statement.
"You get that gut feeling
when you interview people," he said.
Before going to Edmonton, Malanowich
had been briefed by Supt. Jack Wood and detective-sergeants George
Reid and Raymond Mackie about the Miller murder investigation
and Cadrain's allegation.
Malanowich began his interview
with Williams by telling her the seriousness of the rape and
murder.
The inquiry also heard Thursday
that Saskatoon police sought information about convicted rapist
Larry Fisher, after he confessed in Winnipeg to two Saskatoon
offences in October 1970.
Retired morality officer Beverly
Cressman had investigated a rape in the fall of 1968. It was
originally thought to have been committed by the person who killed
Miller in January 1969, but that theory was dropped after Milgaard
was identified as the prime suspect in the murder.
The rape file was concluded
the day Milgaard was charged with murder in June 1969.
Cressman said he concluded
the file because there had been no new leads for a long time.
He said he didn't know Milgaard was charged the same day.
More than a year later, when
Fisher confessed in Winnipeg to two other Saskatoon sexual assaults,
Cressman was sent to check out an address where Fisher had lived
at the time of Cressman's unsolved rape.
Cressman had heard that Det.
Eddy Karst had gone to Winnipeg in connection with Saskatoon
rapes.
Fisher lived within two blocks
of two rape victims.
Cressman said he assumed that
Fisher was charged with the rape. Other Saskatoon police have
said they never heard of Fisher until years later.
Cressman said he never told
rape victims when their assailants were caught.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
