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Trial
in Florida, 2005 | Extradition,
Dec. 16, 2004 | Ralph Crompton: Pants
on fire!
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Monique Turenne
Part two of a two-part
series "The Monique Turenne Story"
The sheer torture of
nagging doubt (1)
by Dan Lett, Winnipeg Free
Press, May 6, 2000
PANAMA CITY, FLA. -- The first
time Det. Dan Bates laid eyes on Monique Turenne was just before
sunrise on Feb. 9, 1996. Less than an hour earlier, Monique had
found the body of her husband, David Turenne, in the front yard
of their rented house. Now, sitting in the den, Monique wore
the horror of that discovery. "When I first saw her,"
Bates said in a thick southern drawl, she was visibly shaken,
crying and sobbing." As Monique began to compose herself,
however, she painted an intimate and unflattering picture of
her life with David Turenne.
Separate bedrooms
According to Monique, David
had a severe drinking problem, was disinterested in sex and possibly
impotent. She recounted how in both North Bay, Ont. and Panama
City, David slept in a separate bedroom. One detective reported
that Monique commented that it had "been so long since my
husband penetrated me sexually, I can't remember."
Monique does not deny discussing
the unflattering aspects of her marriage, but claimed it was
the result of the police prying into their personal lives. When
police discovered David slept in a separate bedroom, Monique
said, they interrogated her about their sexual habits.
Senior Canadian military officers
who worked with Turenne at a NORAD installation at Tyndall Air
Force Base portrayed Monique as distant and unemotional in the
aftermath of the murder. "She didn't fit the grieving widow
stereotype," said Col. Pierre Forgues, a senior Canadian
officer in Panama City, now assigned to CFB Winnipeg. "I
don't have a lot of experience dealing with expressions of grieving
widows."
Others made similar observations.
"I never ever heard her once say, 'Who killed Dave? Who
could have done this?'" Maj. David Kiley, who was assigned
to see to Monique's needs after the murder, told the Free Press.
"She was more concerned
about going back to Canada. She broke down a couple of times,
but not as much as we expected."
Monique's behavior may have been unusual, but it was not enough
to make her a suspect. In fact, during those first few days immediately
after the murder, police had no suspects. Those who knew Turenne
could not think of a single reason anyone would want to kill
him. Even the method of murder was unclear. The damage to Turenne's
skull was so severe, for the first two days police searched the
neighbourhood for a gun, theorizing he had been shot. An autopsy
revealed he had been bludgeoned. "We were at a dead end,
but we didn't have much to go on right there," said Bates.
Anonymous call
That would change on Sunday,
Feb. 11 -- two days after the murder -- when Bates said he received
an anonymous phone call claiming Monique had been having an affair.
The caller did not identify the lover, so Bates canvassed co-workers
at West Building Materials and Applied Research Associates (ARA),
a private engineering firm located at Tyndall Air Force Base,
the two places Monique had worked since moving to Florida.
By Monday, Bates said he had
been pointed in the direction of Ralph Crompton, a retired U.S.
air force master sergeant who had worked with Monique at both
West Building Materials and ARA. Bates discovered Crompton was
in Aiken, S.C. on assignment with ARA, testing ground samples
for radiation. Aiken was more than 700 kilometers away from Panama
City and it seemed implausible Crompton could have been involved.
Still, with nothing else to go on, Bates contacted aiken police
to check on Crompton's whereabouts over the previous four days.
In less than a day, Aiken police discovered Crompton missed work
on Thursday and Friday. They even found out he had rented a car,
paid cash for it and racked up enough mileage to get to Panama
City and back.
Unfortunately for police, Monique
and her children were preparing to return to Winnipeg for the
funeral. And even with the Crompton lead, police didn't have
enough evidence to risk a confrontation with the widow. Monique
was interviewed three times before leaving for Winnipeg. At no
time did Panama City police indicate they suspected Monique,
or ask her if she was having an affair. "Certainly, if we
had enough to keep her here, we would have," said Bates.
"As I remember, 24 or 36 more hours we would have had enough."
Bates and fellow detectives
Joe Hall and MarK McClain set off Tuesday morning for the eight-hour
drive to Aiken just as Monique left the jurisdiction on a Canadian
forces Challenger jet. In accordance with military practice,
Monique was presented with a cheque for $128,000, the first installment
of David's death and insurance benefits.
---
There was no valentine waiting
for Ralph Crompton when he answered a knock on the door of his
hotel room on the morning of Wednesday, Feb. 14. Instead, Crompton
was greeted by a scrum of police officers -- some local and others
all the way up from Panama City -- armed with a search warrant.
As Crompton watched the police
invade his unkempt room, he had no idea that just three days
after David Turenne's murder, many of the details of his involvement
had been uncovered. As Bates grilled him for two hours, Crompton
denied everything. And each time he issued a denial, he was caught
in a lie.
Police had already discovered
he lied about being sick the previous Friday, that he had rented
a car with cash and put enough mileage on the odometer to get
to Panama City and back. At Crompton's trial, prosecutors would
tell the jury with glee the accused had told between 35 and 40
lies in that interview, surely the hallmark of a guilty man.
After the interrogation, police
ferried Crompton to a hospital and took hair and blood samples.
They then took clothing and other personal items out of his room,
including a pamphlet from the State of Florida on divorce laws,
and a books-on-tape mystery called the 13th Juror, a courtroom
drama about an emotionally unbalanced psychiatrist who kills
his lover's husband to free her from an abusive relationship.
Police were still not sure
they had enough to arrest Crompton and told him to stay put until
further notice. After a sleepless night, next morning Crompton
discovered two Panama City police officers staked out in the
hotel parking lot. At that moment, Crompton said he suffered
a complete breakdown. The horror of the murder, the deception
and the humiliation all came thundering down, crushing his will.
Crompton sat down at the tiny
desk in his room and composed a note to his family:"My whole
life has been to protect freedom, now mine is gone and so is
my life. Marilyn and kids, I'm sorry. Please don't hate me. I
love all of you so much that it hurts. Love, Ralph (Dad)."
Crompton ran a bath, took off his clothes and climbed in. Using
a Leatherman tool he carried at work, he slit one of his wrists.
Less than an hour later, the blood had stopped seeping from the
initial wound. Crompton then stabbed himself in the chest, near
his heart.
Outside the hotel, Det. Mark
McClain was standing vigil to ensure Crompton didn't try to escape.
At 6.30 p.m., John Clark, Crompton's boss from ARA, arrived to
drive him to the worksite near Aiken. However, Crompton didn't
answer the door. Two hours later, when there was still no sign
of the suspect, McClain called hotel staff to access the room.
In the bathroom, McClain found Crompton in a tub of tepid water
and blood. McClain immediately called for paramedics.
McClain, who had been a detective
only a few weeks at that point, would later testify that as he
waited for the ambulance, Crompton confessed. "He said,
'Monique had nothing to do with it. She was a modern day slave
and I did it just trying to set her free.'" As Crompton
was loaded on a gurney and taken to hospital, McClain dictated
notes about the encounter into a tape recorder provided by another
officer.
Crompton was taken to an Aiken
hospital, where he spent a few hours in the intensive care unit
before being released. In an unusual twist, police later admit
they did not arrest him until the next day to avoid being charged
for the hospital fees. "He did it to himself and he can
pay for it," a spokeswoman said.
When Crompton was finally arrested
----already buried under a pile of circumstantial evidence -
- police apprehended him in his rental car. They say his hotel
telephone records showed several calls to Monique at work, including
one the day before the murder. If the evidence didn't make an
iron-clad case, a grand jury held Crompton so stand trial for
first degree murder. The state announced its intention to seek
the death penalty. ---
Monique Turenne was preparing
to turn in for the night when there was a knock at her parents'
front door. Winnipeg police detectives asked her to step outside.
It was late, nearly 11 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 14. As she grabbed
her coat and a pack of cigarettes, she had no idea that Ralph
Crompton in South (---) She was also unaware a Panama City detective
and a Bay (---) assistant state's attorney had followed her to
Winnipeg.
They took Monique to the Public
Building and interrogated her for seven hours. When it was over,
the detectives had secured a confession of the affair with Crompton
and a plot to rough up David that graduated unintentionally to
murder. Monique now claims the confession was coerced and that
police forced her to sign a statement they concocted. She said
she wrote on the back page of the original hand-written statement:
"I do not believe any of this."
The police statement landed
like a hand grenade at David Turenne's funeral. On Thursday,
Feb. 15, several hundred mourners, including military colleagues
from all over North America, had come to pay their respects.
After Monique left the reception David's immediate family were
summoned to a small room away from the main gathering and Monique's
statement was read aloud. Police suggested returning to the home
of Turenne's parents to go over the police statement in detail.
Family and a few close friends
gasped as the statement was read out. Others broke down in tears.
"The police said it was extremely unusual for to (read the
statement), but they said, "You all seemed so convinced
she had nothing to do with this,'" recalled Pat Turenne,
David's sister. "When I heard the statement, I felt bad
about the grief we felt for her when we should have been feeling
grief for ourselves."
It is not clear if Monique
was ever aware that Crompton had tried to end his life earlier
in the day. It is more certain she did not know her statement
was being read to the Turenne family. But left alone in her parents'
St. Boniface home, Monique wrote a note to her family, took most
of a bottle of Tylenol and lay down on her bed.
Monique was discovered by her
father a short time later and rushed to St. Boniface General
Hospital, where her condition was stabilized. "She's very
distraught," Bernard Desautels, Monique's brother-in-law
would tell reporters at the hospital. "You would be, too,
if you lost someone you love. The pressures of all this questioning
have taken their toll on Monique and that's why we're here."
---
For the whole of his first
week in jail, Ralph Crompton was naked. His cell had only a mat
and blanket on the floor, and a sink and toilet in the corner.
The lights were kept on 24 hours a day so closed-circuit cameras
could se if he tried to kill himself again. The second week,
they allowed him to wear pants and a shirt.
An early appraisal of Crompton's
case produced little cause for optimism. In conference with Crompton's
wife and children, the public defender assigned to the case offered
a chilling assessment. It was an election year for Jim Appleman,
the state attorney, and this was a crime of passion crying out
for punishment. "He told them," Crompton recalled,
"Innocent men go to prison all the time and your husband
is going to be one of them.'"
Realizing the public defender
was probably right, Crompton's brothers and sisters scraped together
$20,000 to hire a private lawyer -- Waylon Graham. After consulting
Graham, Crompton became more hopeful, even telling some friends
he had a chance to beat the rap. Most of those friends were skeptical.
"All Ralph said was that, "When I get to trial, the
truth is going to come out," said Gary Wagner, a longtime
friend and coworker. " He said there was enough reasonable
doubt. I guess the O.J. Simpson trial was going on at the same
time and he could see how that turned out. I told him, "Ralph,
you're not in L.A., you're in Bubbaville. Somebody is going to
get convicted for this thing. That's the way it is in the South."
Crompton had to face the fact
that Panama City is a lot closer to Birmingham, Ala. than Disney
World, both in terms of geography and culture. Located in the
heart of the Florida Panhandle only 100 kilometers away from
the borders of Alabama and Georgia, Panama City is the capital
of what locals call "the Redneck Riviera." In this
place, where tiny churches nearly outnumber fast-food restaurants,
infidelity is a sin of enormous gravity. The local media had
already feasted on the tale of a love-sick adulterer beating
his lover's husband to death. Crompton suffered from the added
indignity of being from Boston -- a Yankee by any other name
and an easy target for a jury of his Confederate peers.
Crompton's lawyer, however,
could see first-hand the authorities were having trouble deciding
what happened the night of the murder. Before retaining Graham,
Crompton claimed he was offered a plea bargain -- a sentence
of 10-12 years for manslaughter -- if he would testify that Monique
hatched the murder plot. State Attorney Appleman denied making
such an offer, but Crompton's claim is backed up by several witnesses,
including Crompton's family and Panama City police.
Graham could see other weaknesses
in the prosecution's case. Forensic evidence, including blood
found in Crompton's car, was ambiguous, if not inconclusive.
And prosecutors initially tried to utilize two jailhouse informants
who claimed to have overheard Crompton confess. The informants
offered detailed descriptions of the plot to kill Turenne, the
weapon that was used and how Crompton and Monique planted evidence
to lead police off the trail. An inherently unreliable source
of evidence, informants tend to arise regularly where prosecutors
have trouble making their case.
Part one: 1|
2 | end
of part two
|
 Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
Truth suppress'd, whether
by courts or crooks, will find an avenue to be told. Sheila Steele, injusticebusters.com
Publisher Sheila
Steele
New: injusticebustersblog. Participate!
Monique Turenne
Extradition
order comes down: 2003
The incredible persecution
of Monique Turenne previous
Nov. 2002: Monique Turenne's
father writes to Law Enforcement Review Agency
Beyond a coerced
confession
injusticebusters gets a letter from Winnipeg
Police Chief
Monique Turenne has been denied
disclosure of material which would assist her in fighting extradition.
The law regarding disclosure in criminal cases had been clearly
laid out in Stinchcombe. Extradition
law is not so clear -- and not so fair. In the coming weeks injusticebusters will clearly explain the differences
-- and show why the law must change.
Monique
Turenne speaks out for the first time
Dan Lett wrote a week-end feature
in the Winnipeg Free Press, May, 2000. This story, almost three
years old is the most thorough investigation of the murder of
David Turenne. We have it on the following four pages: Part 1:
a | b
Part 2: a | b
Monique Turenne:
the headlines
- 1996,
June 19: AP, Panama City, Fla.-- Turenne
to face more charges?
- 1996,
Oct. 12: AP, Panama City, Fla.--
Confession Detailed: Police say Turenne killing admitted
- 1996,
Oct. 16: Winnipeg Free Press -- Woman's
ex-lover convicted in killing: Widow hopes pain is over | Woman
advised not to testify | Winnipeg
Sun -- Monique to face trial predicts killer's lawyer: Says
Canada will extradite her to Florida 'sooner or later' |
- 1997,
Mar. 20, Winnipeg Free Press --
Turenne indicted in U.S. slaying: Winnipeg woman could face death
penalty in husband's murder
- 1998,
June 12: Winnipeg Free Press
-- Turenne arrested in 1996 murder: Faces Florida trial in husband's
slaying (p.A1) | Turenne to contest extradition warrant
- 1998,
June 13: Winnipeg Free Press
-- Turenne gets bail: Extradition decision on Florida murder
charges may take year (Front page) | Legal hurdles still ahead
for Turenne
- 1998,
October 23: Winnipeg Sun
--- Florida hides game plan: lawyer (scanned image of paper)
- 1998,
Nov. 21: Winnipeg Sun
-- Judge rules release of statement: Local Turenne interview
unprotected
- 1999,
Mar. 27: Winnipeg Free Press -- Extradition
law unconstitutional: Turenne's lawyer; Don't breach her rights
to fair trial, he pleads
- May
5, 2000: Winnipeg Free Press
-- A Soldier's Murder by Dan Lett: Part
1a | Part 1b
- 2001,
Nov. 12: Winnipeg Free Press --
Turenne fights to get murder trial in Canada
- 2001,
February 21: Winnipeg Sun--
'Playing the system': Victim's sister sick of Turenne delays
(scanned image of paper)
The gutter press has continued
to feed on the lies originally planted by Florida police with
eager co-operation of Winnipeg Police Detective Sergeant Loren
Schinkel (now head of the Winnipeg Police Association) and fueled
by in-laws looking for ju$tice.
James
Driskell
| 2003:
Tokarchuk killing in Winnipeg (a case which shows how a few
bad cops, a powerful -- and misguided -- police union and lack
of communication within the force can be a deadly mix)
|
