Escort unaware friend was going to be killed, jury told

A former sex trade worker said she had no idea her friend Alex Fraser was going to be killed when she helped to lure him to remote area along the Niagara Parkway on Boxing Day 2014.

Victoria Harvey, 23, testified in Welland Superior Court on Thursday at the first-degree murder trial of Brad MacGarvie, 26, Thomas Nagy, 26, and Duran Wilson, 30, all of Niagara Falls. The three men have pleaded not guilty to the charge.

Harvey told the court she worked as an escort and would pay Fraser $10 to drive her to meet clients. Fraser, 49, was a driver for an illegal cab company.

She described Fraser as being a close friend, adding there was never anything “romantic” between them.

On Boxing Day 2014, she said MacGarvie, whom she had met only the month before through a former boyfriend, told her to call Fraser and to tell him she and her mother needed a ride.

She said she was apprehensive to make the call because Fraser had been assaulted by a group of males including MacGarvie at a Morrison Street apartment in Niagara Falls in November because her boyfriend at the time was upset the cab driver had been texting her.

Harvey said MacGarvie and others planned to confront the cab driver because MacGarvie had heard Fraser was going to have people beat him up in retaliation for the previous assault.

“I kept telling (MacGarvie) I didn’t want to do it,” she told assistant Crown attorney Graeme Leach. “He said you’re going to do it or else.”

After Fraser had driven Harvey and her mother to a secluded area known as Gonder’s Flats in Fort Erie in the early morning hours of Boxing Day, he was confronted by MacGarvie and Nagy.

The mother and daughter were instructed to go and sit in a truck driven by Wilson.

A short while later, the court was told, MacGarvie and Nagy walked Fraser to the truck, and the three men entered the vehicle.

Harvey, sitting in the front passenger seat, glanced back at Fraser.

“He had his hands behind his back,” she said. “His eyes were taped. His mouth was taped as well.

“I was scared. I didn’t know what was going on.”

When the truck began to drive away, Harvey said she looked in the passenger side mirror and saw Fraser’s car on fire.

She said no one talked during the drive from Gonder’s Flats to a location in Niagara Falls near a set of railroad tracks.

“It was pure silence,” she said.

She testified MacGarvie and Nagy took Fraser out of the vehicle and walked into a wooded area. She said Wilson drove her and her mother to a nearby convenience store and then back to the railroad tracks.

She said MacGarvie and Nagy came “running back to the truck” without Fraser.

Fraser’s body was discovered two months later floating in the water near the Sir Adam Beck Generation Station.

Harvey admitted she wasn’t truthful when first questioned by police because she was fearful of MacGarvie.

“I don’t know what happened to Alex,” she said. “I didn’t know what he did to him. I didn’t want to be the next person in line for it.”

Harvey was also originally charged with first-degree murder in connection with Fraser’s death.

She pleaded guilty in February 2017 to manslaughter and received a four-year sentence.

She spent some time in a penitentiary and is now serving out the remainder of her sentence at a halfway house.

The trial, which began in July before Judge Robert Reid, continues today.