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Commission
of Inquiry Into the Wrongful Conviction of David Milgaard:
(Page 12)
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
Cadrain given $2,000
reward
Betty Ann Adam, The StarPhoenix,
June 15, 2005
Albert Cadrain, the youth who
first implicated David Milgaard in a murder he didn't commit,
was already an informant to one of the investigators.
Retired detective Jack Parker
told the commission of inquiry into Milgaard's wrongful conviction
that Cadrain had previously given him information about people
in other cases, and that Parker sometimes paid Cadrain "a
few dollars."
After Milgaard was convicted
in Gail Miller's Jan. 31, 1969, death, Cadrain applied for and
received a $2,000 reward. He had told police he saw blood on
Milgaard's clothing the day of the killing.
Milgaard spent 23 years in
prison before the Supreme Court of Canada quashed his conviction
in 1992. DNA evidence exonerated him in 1997 and was used to
help convict serial rapist Larry Fisher of the crime in 1999.
Four police detectives trying
to solve Miller's death were at the Avenue O and 20th Street
bus stop where Fisher was waiting to go to work on the first
working day after the crime, the inquiry heard Tuesday.
Two detectives questioned Fisher,
who told them he had taken the bus to work on the morning of
the murder and hadn't heard or seen anything unusual.
Fisher, a construction worker,
wore a yellow hard hat. At that point police didn't know who
he was, but he had already raped two young women and had gotten
scared off as he attempted to rape a third, the commission has
heard.
On the morning of Feb. 3, 1969,
two other detectives got on the bus, where the driver told them
that a man in a red construction hat normally got on at the same
stop as Miller but that he hadn't gotten on the day of the murder.
The driver pointed out a different young man, who wore a red
ski-hat. Police pursued that lead but it turned out to be a dead
end. The bus driver later told police he must have been mistaken
about the hard hat.
Police notes also show that
someone also questioned a construction worker with an orange
hard hat on 22nd Street.
One of Fisher's rape victims
said her assailant had a hard hat and construction worker boots.
Commission counsel Doug Hodson
questioned investigators about who was responsible for co-ordinating
the investigation and ensuring all connections were examined
and followed up.
The two detective-sergeants
in charge of the Gail Miller murder investigation downplayed
their involvement in the case when questioned about it years
later by RCMP.
Det. Sgt. George Reid and Det.
Sgt. Raymond Mackie were among four officers of their rank who
normally supervised ordinary detectives assigned to investigate
files, but in the Miller case, they were the ones assigned to
do the actual investigation.
Both also denied being the
"all-knowing" file co-ordinator who was responsible
for reading all of the investigation reports and witness statements,
and who could see connections and delegate tasks.
Reid said it was Mackie's job.
Mackie said it was the job of his superior, Supt. Jack Wood,
or his fellow detective-sergeant, Jack Ward, who is now deceased.
In 1993, after Milgaard's release
from prison, RCMP looked into Milgaard's allegations of police
misconduct in the 1969 investigation. RCMP reported that Reid
said he had very little to do with the investigation.
Reid said Mackie had responsibility
to put the file together toward the end of the investigation.
Mackie said Tuesday he was
"basically just another investigator" on the case.
One of the first officers at
the scene of the body added new, incriminating information about
Milgaard when the federal Justice Department was looking into
his application to have the case reopened.
Parker was one of the first
two officers on the scene the day of the murder. He wrote in
his notebook at the time that the snow around the victim's body
was trampled as if there had been a scuffle right there.
Later that day, he returned
and searched the alley. He found Miller's cardigan and a boot,
buried in the snow around the corner from where the body was
found. Parker took the boot to the hospital to compare with the
boot still on the victim's body and found that it matched.
Parker also walked the alley,
looking for footprints or vehicle tracks, but the snow was grainy
from the extreme cold and he found none.
Yet in 1991, Parker changed
his story, adding bits of information that Milgaard's lawyer,
Hersh Wolch, suggested bolstered Milgaard's guilt.
Parker told RCMP he had seen
moccasin footprints in the alley and later, when he learned that
Milgaard was said to have been in his stocking feet that morning,
he began to think it was a relevant bit of information.
He also said for the first
time that he observed ruts in the roadway, which could have been
made by a stuck car. He said he didn't mention them in his notebook,
investigation report or during the preliminary hearing or trial
because the ruts were somewhat obliterated by hoar frost on the
foggy, -33 C morning.
Parker acknowledged his memory
could have been faulty.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Parker
Detective had 'tunnel vision,'
Milgaard lawyer says
Jamie Komarnicki, The StarPhoenix, June 16, 2005
Charged with making progress
in the Gail Miller murder case after investigators seemed to
hit a roadblock, a police detective in charge of the 1969 investigation
zeroed in on David Milgaard as a prime suspect in a document
that contains both theory and fact.
Retired Det. Sgt. Raymond Mackie,
78, took the stand Wednesday at the commission of inquiry into
Milgaard's wrongful conviction. Milgaard spent 23 years in prison
for the crime he didn't commit. DNA evidence proved his innocence
in 1997 and was used to convict serial rapist Larry Fisher in
1999 of killing the 20-year-old nursing assistant.
Mackie put together the summary
document sometime in late April or early May 1969, the commission
heard. Miller was killed on Jan. 31 that year.
The document created a chain
of events that highlighted Milgaard's possible role in Miller's
death, a role that was later apparently confirmed in a critical
eyewitness statement from Nichol John on May 23.
Since that statement, John
has never repeated her claim that she saw Milgaard stab Miller.
In the summary, Mackie theorized
that Milgaard would have approached Miller in order to steal
her purse, but his sex drive took over and he forced her down
an alley where she was raped and stabbed.
"What would cause you
to hypothesize that?" commission lawyer Doug Hodson asked.
"It's a theory, an assumption,
a possibility," Mackie replied.
But Hersh Wolch, Milgaard's
lawyer at the inquiry, suggested the summary shows Mackie had
"tunnel vision," fixing on Milgaard as a suspect, then
focusing on how to "make it work" in his interviews
and gathering of evidence.
He also pointed out a discrepancy
in Mackie's police report, which said John had seen a nurse walking
down a street near the crime scene before she had actually made
that statement.
"Is it possible that you
got a little ahead of yourself?" Wolch asked.
John, Milgaard and Ron Wilson
made a trip to Saskatoon on the day of the murder. On May 22,
1969, John was brought back to Saskatoon for further questioning
and was transported around the city by Mackie. He took her to
the murder scene, without telling her what it was, possibly to
jog her memory, the commission heard.
Mackie said he remembers seeing
a "change in demeanour" when John saw the two garbage
cans in the alley where Miller had been killed.
"Fear, or I don't know
how else you'd describe it," he said.
On May 23, John gave her incriminating
statement to a Calgary polygraph expert in a hotel room. Although
earlier testimony placed him in that room, Mackie said he had
no recollection of hearing John's damning account. He said he
would have remembered if he had been there. His police report
contains no information on that day.
Although Mackie can't recall
the day, it wasn't until May 24 that he took John's official
police statement containing the new information pointing to Milgaard's
alleged role as killer, a statement matching Mackie's purse-snatching
theory.
When asked if someone would
have tested John's statement against other evidence, Mackie said
he doesn't remember.
"You wrote that down,
that she told you, and didn't question her on it?" Hodson
asked.
"No, it's her statement,"
Mackie replied. He agreed he was working with the theory that
John had a "mental block" of what had occurred that
day, which was one of the reasons why in his summary document
he'd suggested either hypnosis or polygraph tests be used.
Mackie denied allegations that
police wrote John's key statement the way they wanted it to read,
and that the summary document was a "script" of what
police wanted to find.
As for the fact that John was
kept in a police cell overnight before she gave her statement,
Mackie said John was offered hotel accommodations, which she
refused because she said she was scared of Milgaard.
After retiring from the force
in 1978, Mackie said he was satisfied Milgaard was properly convicted.
He didn't know Fisher had later confessed to several Saskatoon
rapes, he said, possibly because he had cut off ties with the
police force after his retirement.
He said he didn't know John
had never repeated in court her statement to him about seeing
the murder.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Milgaard memories fuzzy
for retired police officer
Jamie Komarnicki, The
StarPhoenix,June 17, 2005
Retired detective Raymond Mackie
wrapped up testimony Thursday of his vaguely remembered role
in the 1969 Gail Miller murder investigation, saying he is not
sure any more whether he wrote a summary of the case that highlights
David Milgaard's possible role in Miller's death.
Mackie produced the summary
document after he was charged with reviewing the "stagnant"
investigation file about four months after Miller was killed
on Jan. 31, 1969.
But Mackie, who cut all ties
with the police force after his retirement in 1978, told the
inquiry into Milgaard's wrongful conviction that has no memory
of when he might have written the document, or if he even penned
it at all.
"I'm not even sure that
I authored it, even now," Mackie said Thursday under questioning
from Catherine Knox, who represents Milgaard prosecutor T.D.R.
Caldwell.
Mackie often neither agreed
nor disagreed with questions, simply saying he couldn't recall
what had happened.
Milgaard was convicted of first-degree
murder in Miller's death in 1970. Serial rapist Larry Fisher
was eventually identified as the killer on the strength of DNA
evidence, but not before Milgaard had served 23 years in jail.
Saskatoon police lawyer Richard
Elson said Mackie's summary, put together in the weeks just before
Milgaard was arrested, was likely based on impressions gleaned
from an extensive police file.
"There are certain gut
instincts that come to the fore in an investigation such as this,"
Elson put to Mackie.
Mackie was the officer who
took Nichol John's incriminating statement in which she says
she witnessed Milgaard kill Miller. John has not repeated that
statement in court.
Earlier, Mackie testified he
would have been working with the theory that John was blocking
out frightening or painful memories before finally admitting
to him she'd supposedly witnessed the crime.
"Back in 1969, was the
term hysterical amnesia known to you?" Knox asked.
"I know those two words,
but if I used them in this file, I don't know . . . I had some
knowledge of things like that happening," Mackie said.
Vern Passet, 78, a sergeant
with the K9 section in 1969, also took the stand Thursday, testifying
how he was called to the crime scene on Jan. 31 with his tracking
dog. He said the dog ran straight to an indentation in the snow
in front of a funeral chapel where officers on the scene told
him Miller's body had been found. The dog then went to an alleyway
entrance where it appeared a car had been stuck in the snow.
Passet said he filed a report,
but no record of that exists today. Assistant commission lawyer
Jordan Hardy pointed out that Miller's body was actually found
in a different location.
"Is there any chance you're
mistaken in that attendance?" Hardy asked, but Passet denied
it, maintaining the accuracy of his memory.
Passet also testified he'd
interviewed three sexual assault victims in the months after
Miller's murder, case reports he included in his investigation
file.
"I thought maybe if this
person was apprehended, it might help out the Gail Miller file,"
he said.
The serial rapist theory was
discarded by police in the weeks before Milgaard's arrest on
May 30, 1969.
The inquiry is on an eight-week
hiatus following testimony Thursday. It resumes Aug. 15.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Days added to inquiry
Betty Ann Adam,The StarPhoenix, Tuesday, August 16, 2005
The expected cost of the Milgaard
wrongful conviction inquiry climbed to $7.7 million Monday with
the announcement of an additional 32 hearing days.
The commission, which resumed
Monday after an eight-week summer recess, was already scheduled
to sit four days per week and for about three weeks per month
through December. The new dates are scheduled for January, February
and March 2006.
The commission of inquiry,
headed by Justice Edward MacCallum of Edmonton, is looking at
the 1969 police investigation and criminal prosecution that led
to David Milgaard's 23-year wrongful imprisonment for the rape
and murder of Saskatoon nursing assistant Gail Miller. It is
also considering whether the case should have been reopened when
new information came to light.
Milgaard was released in 1992
after a key witness recanted his damning evidence and the case
was reviewed by the Supreme Court of Canada. DNA evidence was
used to exonerate Milgaard in 1997 and to help convict serial
rapist Larry Fisher of the crime in 1999.
Milgaard's family has said
justice officials deliberately ignored or suppressed information
that could have led to his release years earlier.
Commission counsel Doug Hodson
said he was not surprised by the need for additional hearing
dates because the original 12-month schedule was based on rough
estimates, before the number of parties was determined and before
it was known how much time would be needed for all of the 11
parties with standing to cross-examine the witnesses.
"In all fairness, it is
a moving target at the outset," Hodson said. "I think
we have been very efficient and cost-effective."
The commission identified more
than 300 people who may have had some relevant information pertaining
to the case, which spans 36 years. Commission staff have interviewed
more than 200 of those people and have managed to eliminate some,
Hodson said.
Those who are called often
must answer questions related to several subjects and their recollections
from the time of the January 1969 crime, the year-long investigation
and prosecution and subsequent investigations by police and journalists
over the next 28 years until Fisher's conviction.
The inquiry, which began in
January, originally was expected to cost $2 million. That rose
to $4.8 million by the spring.
The commission has heard from
76 witnesses so far and 63 remain on the list at present.
In testimony Monday, retired
Regina police superintendent Ken Walters recalled being asked
to sit in on some interviews with two of Milgaard's teenage friends,
who had travelled with him to Saskatoon the day of the murder.
Walters, who headed a youth
section in the Regina police department, knew Ron Wilson, 17,
and Nichol John, 16, as hippies who sometimes gave police information
about the drug subculture and minor property crimes.
Wilson sometimes told police
what he thought they wanted to hear, Walters said. The kid was
cocky and may have embellished what he knew in hopes of gaining
status with the police, Walters said.
Friendships among the transient
teenage hippies were fleeting and it was not uncommon for informants
to give information about their associates, Walters said.
Walters said he believed Wilson
when he said Milgaard was not separated from him and John long
enough to have committed the murder. Yet Walters did not have
any reservations when he later heard that Wilson had implicated
Milgaard. Wilson often withheld information the first time he
was asked about a matter and he was reluctant to talk about incidents
he had been personally involved in, Walters said.
John was a sullen, introverted
girl who often became upset about difficulties she got herself
into, he said. He considered her a good person who was "playing
with the wrong crowd."
In 1993, Walters told RCMP
revisiting the Miller murder investigation that he recalled finding
a paring knife in the trunk of Wilson's car the day Wilson was
first questioned about the Saskatoon trip. Walters still had
that recollection Monday; however, RCMP in 1993 and the current
commission of inquiry have not been able to find any documentary
evidence to support that recollection. Instead, the record shows
that nothing of significance was found when Wilson's car was
searched in early March 1969.
The record does show that a
pair of grey pants was found in the car, but those pants and
another piece of clothing, a jacket, which Milgaard may have
worn the day of the murder, were not retained by police.
Walters said he gave Wilson's
mother permission to destroy a brown, acid-damaged jacket that
was left at her home after the teenagers returned from the road
trip to Saskatoon and Alberta.
The inquiry has heard that
Milgaard was wearing a brown jacket when he and Wilson stole
a leaking battery for Wilson's car prior to the trip. Witnesses
have said they saw holes in Milgaard's jacket. Wilson and Albert
Cadrain said they saw blood on Milgaard's clothing. The clothes
were not presented at his trial.
© The StarPhoenix
(Saskatoon) 2005
Technician stands by 1969
semen test
Betty Ann Adam, The
StarPhoenix, Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Lumps of yellow snow found
at the Gail Miller murder scene contained human seminal fluid,
not dog urine as some have speculated, the technician who did
the original tests in 1969 told the Milgaard inquiry Tuesday.
Tests were done to confirm
the seminal fluid came from a human, said retired RCMP staff
sergeant Bruce Paynter, who conducted the 1969 forensic serology
lab tests on the samples.
"There is no doubt in
my mind then, or since, that that is what I found," Paynter
said.
Paynter also identified the
spermatazoa in the fluid as human and could tell the difference
between human and canine spermatazoa, he told the commission
of inquiry looking into the wrongful conviction of David Milgaard.
Milgaard spent 23 years in
prison for Miller's murder before he was released in 1992, following
a Supreme Court of Canada review of the case. In 1997, testing
of DNA evidence, which was not available in 1969, proved Milgaard's
innocence and, in 1999 it was used to help convict serial rapist
Larry Fisher of the crime.
The inquiry, headed by Justice
Edward MacCallum of the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench, is reviewing
the murder investigation, the prosecution and the whether the
case should have been reopened after new information came to
light.
Winnipeg's chief medical examiner,
who reviewed the scientific case against Milgaard years later
in support of his application for a judicial review, suggested
the lumps of yellow snow were dog urine. Dr. Peter Markesteyn
suggested the samples should have been subjected to certain tests
to confirm they were of human origin.
Paynter did conduct the tests,
he said Tuesday. He said he wondered how the other experts could
argue with his findings when they never saw the samples or asked
him about his work.
Paynter's analysis of the seminal
fluid indicated it came from a man with a type A blood group
and from a sub-group known as secreters. Other tests Paynter
conducted showed Milgaard may have been a non-secreter.
Those findings tended to exculpate
Milgaard.
"I found nothing to indicate
he was the donor (of the seminal fluid). If all was as it appeared,
he probably wasn't," Paynter said.
That scientific evidence was
not accepted by Saskatoon police, who then sought advice from
Dr. Harry Emson, the pathologist who had made the mistake of
throwing away the semen he found in Miller's body during the
autopsy.
Paynter said Monday the discarded
semen would have been much better evidence than the yellow snow
because there would have been less chance of contamination from
other sources.
After learning that Paynter's
findings tended to eliminate Milgaard as the semen donor, Lieut.
Joe Penkala, then head of the Saskatoon police identification
unit, consulted Emson.
Emson came up with two scientific
theories that could undermine Paynton's findings and which Emson
suggested might explain how a non-secreter could provide a secreter
semen sample.
Emson suggested the thawing
and re-freezing of the yellow snow may have caused the fluid
to release the secretion at issue. He also suggested some secreters
might secrete into semen but not into other bodily fluid, such
as saliva.
Emson acknowledged there was
nothing in the medical literature to support his theories. Markesteyn
said he had never heard of any cases such as Emson proposed.
Paynton did conduct a test
that undermined his previous findings. He found that one of the
yellow snow samples could have been contaminated with blood,
which rendered the earlier findings inconclusive, he said.
Ironically, saliva tests done
on Milgaard years later found that he was a secreter, after all.
Those findings became irrelevant
when modern DNA tests ruled Milgaard out, Paynter said.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
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Truth can never be
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