‘I felt bad, it’s an innocent little girl dead’
Emotional trial of alleged killer of mother, child
There was at least one thing an accused killer of both a five-year-old girl and her mother said at his trial that everyone in Calgary likely identifies with: “I felt bad, it’s an innocent little girl dead.”
For three weeks, jurors and spectators at the double murder trial of Edward Downey, 48, have heard distressing evidence of the July 11, 2016, deaths of Taliyah Marsman, 5, and Sara Baillie, 34.
Baillie’s body was found stuffed inside a laundry hamper inside her daughter’s bedroom closet that day, after friends and family alerted police she had disappeared.
Her face and neck were wrapped in duct tape and her wrists were bound.
Her five-year-old daughter’s body was found three days later in a stand of trees on a rural property northeast of the city. Jurors heard she was killed the same day as her mother. Both had been asphyxiated, medical evidence showed.
Downey was arrested the same day the girl’s body was recovered. He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder.
Three fingerprints were pulled from the sticky side of duct tape used to wrap Baillie’s head and neck, jurors heard during the trial. One print couldn’t be identified but the other two were from Downey’s left forefinger, court heard.
The prosecution’s theory, said Crown lawyer Carla MacPhail, is that Downey killed Baillie because she was interfering in his relationship with his girlfriend at the time, a woman who a judge ordered can only be identified by the initials A.B. She and Baillie were best friends.
And, MacPhail told jurors, Taliyah was then likely abducted and killed because she was a witness to the murder of her mother.
“She was almost six, old enough to identify her mother’s killer, especially if she knew him,” MacPhail told the jury at the start of the trial.
The fingerprint evidence left Downey with some explaining to do.
He insisted on the stand last week that he is wrongfully accused.
Downey said he was at Baillie’s home the day she was murdered but did not kill her. He had gone there to meet a drug dealer, who Downey knew only by the name Terrance, to buy cocaine from him to resell on the street, he said.
As he was leaving Baillie’s basement apartment, he said, Baillie was having an argument with Terrance and one of Terrance’s friends.
Downey told court the drug dealer’s friend, whom he didn’t know, asked him to cut off a piece of duct tape for him. He pulled off a strip of tape about 18 inches long and handed it to Terrance’s friend, he said. He didn’t think much about it, he said.
His defence did not sit well with everyone in court.
“Mr. Downey, I’m going to ask you some very direct questions,” said Gavin Wolch, Downey’s lawyer, near the end of his questioning.
“Did you kill Sara Baillie?” Wolch asked.
“No, I did not kill Sara Baillie,” Downey answered.
“Mr. Downey, did you kill Taliyah Marsman?” Wolch continued.
“No, I did not kill Taliyah Marsman,” Downey replied. “Do you know who did?” “No, I do not,” Downey said.
Continuing his testimony, Downey said he only learned of Taliyah’s death after his arrest.
“I didn’t feel good,” he said. “I felt bad, it’s an innocent little girl dead.”
The child’s father, Colin Marsman, angrily cursed Downey from the courtroom’s public gallery during the accused’s testimony.
“F--- you, you piece of s---,” Marsman said. “You f------ coward,” he added before storming out of the courtroom as Justice Beth Hughes admonished the crowd to remain quiet.
It was not the only emotion in the court during the trial.
Family members wept as a retired couple described seeing a young girl in polkadot rain boots drive off with someone resembling Downey. Douglas Jesson testified the man was carrying a red suitcase. The girl looked like she had been crying, causing an outbreak of loud sobbing in court and spectators reaching to embrace one another.
Prosecutor MacPhail later accused Downey of fabricating the story of Terrance to cover up his slip-up of leaving his fingerprints behind. She told jurors there was no evidence Terrance exists.
Downey also made money through women working for him in the escort industry, his former girlfriend, A.B., said in her testimony. The day before the murders, A.B. sent Downey a text saying their relationship was over.
Court also heard from Baillie’s aunt, Marilynne Hamilton, who told jurors of the search for Baillie by family and friends when she failed to show up for work and her daughter did not attend daycare. They went to her apartment and found her purse on Taliyah’s bedroom floor. Her car was missing.
They called police and an officer joined the search.
“He went into Taliyah’s bedroom and then we heard him gasp and he told us not to come in,” Hamilton said of the officer who found Baillie’s body.
By Monday, after weeks of often-emotional evidence, Downey’s lawyer wrapped up his case, saying the Crown failed to prove his client killed the two.
He said DNA evidence from inside the apartment suggests there really were three people in the home, as Downey testified, and evidence of Downey being angry with Baillie over damaging his relationship with A.B. wasn’t there.
MacPhail reminded jurors that Downey’s cellphone pinged off towers near where the girl’s body was found. In fact, tracking his cellphone helped uncover where her remains were.
“The police found Taliyah’s body using Mr. Downey’s cellular phone tower activity,” MacPhail said Monday in her closing.
A five-man, seven-woman jury will decide on Downey’s guilt or innocence.
HE WENT INTO TALIYAH’S BEDROOM AND THEN WE HEARD HIM GASP.