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Guess
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Gillian Guess
She's blinded by passion
After having an affair with
an accused murderer while sitting on the jury for his trial,
Gillian Guess now faces jail time
By HEATHER
BIRD -- Toronto Sun
"Just
sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful tryst,
"That started in provincial court and led to grinding hips,
..."
"Now this is a tale of her judgment day, she might serve
a long, long time,
"She'd have to dress in prison clothes, made by Calvin Klein,
...
"So join us here each day my friend, you're sure to get
a smile,
"With sex and bites and negligees, here at Gilliiaaaaaaaan's
trial,"
-- sung to the tune of Gilligan's Isle.
VANCOUVER -- The song's not
getting much airplay now that the circus has all but left town.
But up until the recent conviction of Gillian Guess, it was a
mainstay of one local morning show.
When the 43-year-old bombshell heard about it, in typical Guess
fashion, she called the radio station directly to ask for a copy.
Far from being embarrassed, she found it quite funny.
But then, what's a little song when you're already famous for
being the juror who did the dirty with the accused? During the
trial?
"What the hell were you thinking?" she was asked in
a TV interview this week. Later, over dinner, she attempts to
clarify.
"I wasn't thinking," she says. "That's my answer.
"Was it wrong? Morally? Ethically? Absolutely. But I still
don't think it was criminal."
With that answer, Guess
is telling the truth, but not the whole truth. She was thinking
about whether she should be sleeping with accused murderer Peter
Gill during his trial. She was thinking about it a lot.
Mainly, she was thinking that
she might be in a lot of trouble if they got caught. The evidence
of these thoughts can be found in the titles of the books she
still keeps on the first-floor landing of her North Vancouver
home.
There is every published work she could find on the duties of
the juror in the criminal justice system. Nowhere could she find
the admonishment, thou shalt not fall in love.
At first glance, Guess' townhouse complex looks like all the
others in the area, clean and cookie-cutter cute. A closer inspection,
however, reveals it's worn around the edges, with aging cars
in the driveways and large numbers of kids in the street. It
turns out the units are subsidized on a sliding scale and, as
an unemployed single mother of two teenagers, Guess is at the
bottom end.
Her private life is in sharp contrast with her public persona.
Although much has been made about her champagne taste in tight-fitting
clothes and glamorous sunglasses, considerably less has been
mentioned about how the three of them are surviving in that tiny,
cluttered environment on $1,000 a month in child support from
her second husband. (She refuses to apply for welfare.) Her clothes
are hand-me-downs from well-to-do friends or else carefully culled
from consignment shops. Her hairstyle -- now dyed the shade "innocent
red" -- came free courtesy of the publicity around her trial.
Legal aid is paying for her defence. She has absolutely no savings
and no job prospects. And on Aug. 20, she may be going to jail.
It is a decided downturn from a few years ago when she started
work on her MA in criminology at Simon Fraser University. Then
there were student loans and a part-time job with the RCMP, in
addition to the child support. (Her undergraduate degrees in
psychology and socioanthropology helped snag the job counselling
crime victims.) When she got a notice in April '95 calling her
to jury duty, she thought it would dovetail with her studies.
And when she saw the jury pool was in Courtroom 55, she became
excited because her birthday is May 5, 1955. "When double
fives come up, I think something's going to happen."
And something did. Her eyes fell on a well-dressed handsome man
sitting at one of the tables and she felt "an instant attraction."
At first, she assumed Peter Gill was a lawyer and only later
learned the truth. Gill, now 32, was one of the six men on trial,
accused of the gangland slayings of two local brothers with links
to organized crime.
As the trial wore on, that attraction grew. But love wasn't blind
in this case; it was a mirror. Guess looked at Peter Gill and
what she thought was love was actually a reflection of her own
fantasies and desires.
Through the first three months
of the trial, Guess obsessed on Gill. Since he was out on bail,
she encountered him frequently, one time passing him so closely
she became intoxicated by his scent.
"I started to really
romanticize that he was a victim," she says.
To pass the long hours in court, she began to experiment with
non-verbal communication, trying to send him messages through
eye contact and body language.
Soon, she began to see him everywhere, in the lineup at McDonald's,
in the places where she parked her car, in the square where she
ate her lunch. Awash in good feelings, she chose to see these
encounters as happy accidents; not evidence of stalking. And
if he was waiting for the right moment to make a move as it turned
out, he didn't have too long to wait.
Guess' weekend job was proving to be difficult. At the beginning
of May, she was called upon to counsel a woman whose estranged
husband threatened to kill both her and her two children. Six
weeks later, he made good on part of his promise, bludgeoning
the kids with an axe, killing one and leaving the other severely
brain-damaged. Guess, who identified strongly with the woman
because their children were the same age, unravelled at the news.
Her attempts to talk it through with her boss, her friends, her
mother, even her ex-husband, were unsuccessful. At 1 a.m. the
phone rang and it was Peter Gill. "I heard what happened,"
he said. "Do you want to talk?"
To say that Gillian Guess is vulnerable is accurate but an understatement.
While her harshest detractors paint her as a publicity hound
who is savoring the spotlight, the flipside is that her brazen
sexuality masks a cry for attention, a deep neediness which cannot
be assuaged. According to Guess, her childhood in Britain was
free from abuse and relatively happy. She describes her father
as a "majorly handsome" man who ruled the roost while
her mother was the dutiful wife. All that came apart at age 11,
when her distant father suddenly left his wife and four kids
for a much younger woman.
"He gave up everything for love," says Guess. "I
idolized him."
After he left, her mother began to drink.
While she insists there was nothing extraordinary in the family
dynamic, it was an environment where the children chose not to
linger. One sibling left at 15 and has been out of touch for
many years while Guess herself moved out at 16 to first live
with, then marry, an older man. It failed and she married again,
this time to a man a dozen years older. When their children were
small, he took a job in Saudi Arabia where Guess willingly embraced
the stringent dress code for women. (It was the constant exposure
to the bright sun there that made her eyes so sensitive, she
says, and that's why she sports her trademark black sunglasses.)
Anti-climactic
When that marriage fell apart at 35, she was on her own for the
very first time and was anxious to begin to live. She discarded
her married name and rejected her maiden one, settling on the
surname "Guess." (That's because, explains son Adam,
when people ask her name, she can reply: "Guess." He
adds, "not that many people think it's funny.")
At the age of 39, despite two marriages and two kids, Gillian
Guess felt she hadn't really lived. Until Peter Gill came along.
About two weeks after the fateful
phone call, the affair was under way. Their first physical contact
was anti-climactic. ("I've had vaccinations which lasted
longer," says Guess. "Don't write that.") But
soon it developed into a grand passion, and much like her father's
romance, she was prepared to risk everything for love. She was
swept away, she says, unable to stem the flowing tide of emotions
which she was experiencing for the first time in her life. In
the short term, Gill was able to give her all she ever needed
-- a strong, powerful man who wasn't going to leave.
In the long-term, things were becoming problematic. Gill was
nothing like her fantasy, he was often crude and, at times, rough.
Intellectually, Guess knew she had crossed a line. What she didn't
know was whether it was illegal. She felt powerless to stop herself.
"My intellect and my emotions have always been polar opposites,"
she says.
So she continued the affair.
Guess may have thought her troubles ended with the trial but
she was wrong, it was only the beginning. Although she had been
scrupulous (in her mind) about not allowing her personal feelings
for Gill to interfere with the jury's deliberations, not everybody
saw it that way. Their non-verbal communication had not gone
unnoticed and it was only a matter of weeks before the police
began to record the first of some 18,000 conversations in her
home and on her phone. Their net was so wide that it captured
dozens of people over hundreds of hours, including details of
her niece's overlapping relationships between Vancouver Canucks
superstar Pavel Bure and X-Files hunk David Duchovny.
But the police weren't her only problem. She had become physically
afraid of Gill.
"He was always a little
control freak," she says. "There was no point ever
that I wasn't a little afraid of him."
And with good reason, as it turns out. On one occasion, she says,
he grabbed her around the throat and squeezed for a long time.
Another time, when she was trying to sever the relationship,
he bit her so severely on the leg that he broke the skin and
left huge bruises which lingered for days.
The problem was resolved when she was charged because her bail
conditions said she was to have no contact with Gill.
However, that didn't stop him from leaving encouraging messages
on her voice mail throughout her trial.
It was that contact which added an extra sting to his remarks
after her conviction for obstructing justice, where he said she
has a "big yap" and called her a publicity hound. (In
a surly voice message, Gill refused an interview request for
this piece.)
"It was like somebody just punched me really hard in the
stomach," says Guess of how she felt when she learned of
his remarks, although she denies still being in love with him.
"(But) I guess, (I did) think he would always be in my life."
He will be there for
some time, although not in the way Guess had expected. Legally,
their futures are inextricably entwined. The Crown appealed the
acquittals of four of the men, primarily on the grounds of Guess'
involvement with Gill. Although she didn't testify in her own
defence, it is likely she will be subpoenaed to do so at the
Court of Appeal. Her evidence would all but guarantee the four
men would face a retrial on murder charges. As a key witness
in a gang-related killing, she may be in peril.
Her own conviction will be appealed after the Aug. 20 sentencing,
defence lawyer Peter Ritchie says.
In the meantime, it's not all sex and bites and negligees. Serious
legal issues are beginning to emerge about the handling of this
case. Why, for example, was Guess allowed to stay on the jury
after court officials expressed reservations to the judge about
her behavior? (A jury can be allowed to render a verdict with
as few as 10 members.) At what point, if any, did the Crown know
the process may have been tainted and why didn't they act? And
who authorized the recording of confidential material between
a lawyer and a client? Why was Guess excluded from hearing evidence
at her trial -- the first time in Canadian legal history an accused
was barred from the courtroom?
And why was the gag order of that star chamber extended to cover
her lawyer so that even he can't act on her behalf? And finally,
if Guess was charged and convicted under section 139 of the criminal
code, why wasn't Peter Gill?
If the speculation is correct, Guess is going to have some time
to ponder the answers to those questions -- about two years'
worth. The notion of a jail term has been deeply upsetting for
Guess' two children -- Adam, 13, and Alana, 15. They are both
charming people, bright, polite and devoted to their mom, even
if they don't always understand her.
On a recent night, as a mini-skirted Guess drew open stares of
recognition on a downtown street, Alana wondered aloud about
why her mother hasn't tried to disguise her peacock tendencies,
even just a bit.
"I wouldn't do that," Alana says, nodding to her mom's
big heels and small skirt. "I'd put my hair down maybe and
wear sweats." There is no contempt in her tone, just concern.
She moves towards her mother to protectively link arms. "I
think there must be some part of her that likes the attention."
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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
Truth suppress'd, whether
by courts or crooks, will find an avenue to be told. Sheila Steele, injusticebusters.com
If you hold the mouth
of Truth, It will burst out its rib-cage. Somali proverb
Publisher : Sheila
Steele
Got something
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- injusticebusters
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- How
to walk yourself through the justice system
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- Why
you should dump your preliminary hearing (written July 1998 and still valid)
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- Sermonette:
The
Naked Truth -- (You
will find links to many more sermonettes in the sidebar on this
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Another target
of Dueck's malice: : Wilf Hathway
Our activism
contributed greatly to the good vibes which happened around the
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Index
to the stories on this website
This is not
regularly updated so if you are looking for a particular story
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the bottom of the page) which IS regularly updated
Index to Saskatoon Police stories
This is a pretty good scrapbook
for the 1998-2002 period.
Inquiry into the malicious prosecution of David
Milgaard untanling 36 years of Saskatchewan police and Crown
misconduct: : Opening day 1 | 2
| 3 | 4
| 5 | 6
| 7 |
- Stephen Williams:
Canadian writer subject to Stasi-like treatment by Canadian police
- Terry
Arnold: : Snitch a
suicide?
- RCMP
scenario stings: Brian
Hutchinson starts digging
- Gary
wells: Faulty eye-witness
testimony
- Tulia,
Texas
- Gilmer,
Texas
- Willie
Upshaw
- Wrongfully
convicted in Canada
- Foster
Parent false accusations
- Martensville
- Don
Smith obscenity trial: an obscene conviction
- James
Lockyer
- Hurricane
Carter
- Johnny Cochran speaks up for
Bill Sampson
- Vopnis
- Abdulai
Mohamed
- Nfld Defamation story:
- Wanda
Young
- Racism
in the Federal Civil Service
The Terrible Story behind the Atif Rafay and
Sebastian Burns convictions
Trial
set for June 15
We
know part of this disclosure is a forged statement and perjured
affidavit from a Winnipeg cop
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-
-
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The
Crown is still fighting Fred Poirier -- and they are losing.
Secret Commissions Case from Northern B.C.
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-
- 2005: In
the United States the proven wrongful convictions just keep coming
at us!
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- Brandon Morin:
- Convicted in Oregon
- of rapes which did not happen
- This website has good information
about Measure 11 -- Oregon's Mandatory Sentencing requirements
which have been in place since 1994. In this case we see how
the combination of a flawed grand jury system and prosecutors
who seek not justice but convictions is a recipe for wrongful
convictions.
-
Canadians who
have been wrongfully convicted because of improper investigations
combined with zealous Crown
A round-up of wrongful convictions in Canada
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