|
 January
25, 2005: The
Federal government released the first
national examination of the reasons for so many wrongful convictions
in Canada. This
should be required reading for every prosecutor, cop and criminal
defence lawyer in the country. News reports
Update on wrongful convictions in Canada, October,
2004
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May 6, 2003: Leon Walchuk continues to challenge
Wawanesa insurance who is taking advantage of his wrongful conviction
to deny paying him what they owe him.
Walchuk
hired an independent expert to look over Wawanesa expert Cheriton's
report on the fire in which his estranged wife died. The report
concludes:
CONCLUSION "Mr. Cheriton
wrote a report that was flawed from a scientific, investigative,
and logical perspective. In more than one instance he appears
not to have understood the science involved. After
having both read Cheriton's report and investigated the
scene of the fire myself, I see no reason based on the physical
evidence to doubt the testimony of Mr. Walchuk. The physical
evidence at the scene points to an accidental fire and not arson.
The evidence purported to show arson does nothing of the kind.
This is a classic case of a finding of arson which could only
be reached by ignoring the teachings and admonitions of NFPA
921 and other well-accepted learned treatises in the fields of
fire investigation and fire dynamics."
Leon
Walchuk, Melville, Saskatchewan: wrongfully convicted. Fresh
evidence of his innocence keeps coming up.
After posting this story in
November, 2000,
injusticebusters received
hate mail. This is the only story we have posted which has got
us hate mail. It came from Cori's friends and family and contained
character assassinations of Leon Walchuk. Having grown up myself
in a rural Saskatchewan town, the mindlessness of it all had
a familiar ring.
The posthumous portrayal of
Corinne Walchuk as an angel is troubling. She was not. She left
the farm and her marriage of six years, moved to town and entered
into a delayed adolescence as have many women who have left unhappy
relationships.
The arrangement lent itself
well to her new "freedom." She had the kids in town
during the school week and Leon had them on the week-ends. Party
time. A lot of her partying and drinking was with police officers.
Like the song says, "Breaking
up is hard to do" and Cori, like many before and since,
trash-talked about her ex. Some people in Melville got involved
in that favorite rural sport (along with curling, hockey and
driving around in the ditch in all-terrain vehicles): gossip.
As the divorce date neared,
Cori found it hard to accept that she was not going to get a
big lump of cash. In fact by the time she had paid out her legal
bills she would be getting nothing. How this went down among
her partying friends we can only speculate. It is safe to say
she was in an angry state the Sunday evening she went out to
the farm to collect the kids; the night she drove the car into
the porch of the house; the night she died.
All the evidence points to
Cori Walchuk as the initiator of the reckless chain of events
which led to her death. It was a horrible accident. It was not
murder.
Among the police and firefighters
who showed up at the Walchuk farm that night were Cori's party
mates. Leon Walchuk was wounded and in shock.
Evidence disappeared (the car
and the hockey stick) and was tampered with. Queen's Bench Judge
Barclay was enlisted to overturn the child custody order which
had been made by another Queen's Bench judge.
The trial occurred in a hysterical
atmosphere climaxing in a hysterical statement by Judge Larry
Kyle where he suggested some outside-the-planet authority would
explain the lack of motive and contradictions in the case. Kyle's
judment will go down among the worst in jurisprudence. But for
now, Leon Walchuk has been in jail for almost three years.
After receiving the report
of an independent fire expert, which confirmed events happened
as Leon Walchuk had always stated, his webmaster received hate
mail and viruses and he received noticeably harsher treatment
in prison.
injusticebusters
original coverage |
Leon Walchuk's Saskatchewan
Gold website |
New fire report contains
cause and origin of the fire. . . . further proof that Leon Walchuk
is innocent.
The Crown had
evidence supporting an alternative theory of case, as demonstrated
by this January 24, 2000 letter. After he was sentenced
and convicted, Walchuk became aware of this letter and hired
an independent investigator to look at the fire which killed
his estranged wife, Corinne. The 11 page report contains a very
different analysis from that provided by the Crown's expert,
Jim
Fairbank
, at Walchuk's trial The fire report: page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Statement
from Leon
My initial
reaction to the fire report prepared by Jim Fairbank, was that
of total disbelief. I sat wondering why someone would take such
an unsubstantiated and serious attack on me. Based to some extent
on information provided both by Fairbank's report and his testimony,
Judge Larry Kyle found me guilty of second degree murder. This
ruling was later rubber stamped by the Court of Appeal.
After the appeal,
my lawyer suggested that I have an independent fire investigation
done. I felt Fairbank's past as an RCMP officer and his new job
with Wawanesa insurance, were good enough reason to get a second
opinion. It was also felt that there were too many things wrong
with this aspect of the case and an arms length assessment was
in order.
During the
summer of 2001, Mr. Peter Pendlebury of Fire Investigations &
Analysis was contacted. All information regarding this case was
sent to Mr. Pendlebury for his review. Following his review of
the file, a thorough examination of the site was completed. The
finished report was available in December 2001.
While the reports
like Fairbank's make for great fiction reading, something the
police and our legal system may subscribe to, they do little
to explain what really happened. In reading the conclusion of
Fairbank's report, I find little or nothing that is correct.
The following
statements tend to strongly support my thinking:
"it is
my opinion that this fire was deliberately set." At the
trial under oath, Fairbank admitted to not knowing the origin/cause
of the fire.
"there
was a 20lb propane bottle from the gas barbecue located in the
porch, but this is not an issue." The propane tank would
most certainly have had an impact on the fire. Burn tests done
later by Fairbank, for the trial, show that the propane tank
likely had a great deal to do with the speed and intensity of
the fire.
"It is
my opinion that the victim was put/thrown into the basement and
flammable liquid was poured from the victim to the top of the
stairs." Flammable liquid was not found to be poured on
the deceased, as well as flammable liquid was not found on tests
done on the stairs.
"It would
not have been possible for her to exit the car and end up in
the basement due to the position of the car on in relation to
the house." It has been proven with photos and video, that
there was sufficient room for someone to get by the car into
the house with little or no difficulty.
While the ideas
found in Fairbank's report make for great theatrics, they fall
a long way short of reality. Given the huge difference between
Pendlebury's report and that of Jim Fairbank's, it would appear
to me that either Fairbank has a lot to learn about fire investigation
or he had some personal stake or vendetta in regards to this
matter. Whatever the case, I look forward to getting to the bottom
of this someday!
Leon Walchuk
Evidence that
Cory was not going to get as much money in the divorce settlement
as she had previously expected is in these documents:
Letters to
Cori, from her lawyer, dated August
1997
and dated November
1997,
regarding the impending divorce trial.
Letter to Cori's lawyer, Fred Fisher, from
the Court House regarding the Judge's comments about the Pre-trial
Conference.
Proposed divorce settlement offered at the Pre-trial
Conference.
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