Wife blames husband in murder trial
The witness looks up constantly at the ceiling, as if the answer is written there.
Shifts her eyes left, shifts her eyes right. Mumbles. “Umm . . .” Segues from sullenness to scorn to flashes of temper.
Asked repeatedly how her stepdaughter looked in those final days before the 17-year-old disappeared, Elaine Biddersingh says the same thing over and over: “Sad.”
Yes, all right, Crown attorney Anna Tenhouse persists, patiently, in court Monday. But how did the teenager appear, physically? “Sad.” Melonie Biddersingh had 21 “healing fractures” at autopsy. Her charred remains, discovered in a suitcase set aflame, weighed a mere 50 pounds. Even given the shrinkage that had occurred as the skin peeled off and the bones retracted, the girl — healthy when she’d arrived from Jamaica three years previously — would not have been much heavier in life, not towards the end, after months and months of malnourishment, “food rationing” as it has been described, for punishment, out of cruelty.
But Elaine Biddersingh hadn’t been paying much attention to her stepdaughter’s steady deterioration.
“She liked to sit on the ground sometimes,” the witness recalls, as if this had been a preference. “It’s like a habit.” Except the victim’s halfbrother testified last week that Melonie was forced to sleep on a piece of cardboard in the living room, when she wasn’t exiled to the balcony, stuffed into a barrel.
Or, as Elaine Biddersingh acknowledged, locked away in a narrow cupboard, for up to six hours at a time.
This wasn’t her doing, Biddersingh insists. It was the girl’s father who laid down the parameters of torture.
Everton Biddersingh has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in his daughter’s 1994 death. Elaine Biddersingh has been charged with the same offence, but her trial won’t be held until next spring. At this trial, Elaine has been called as a witness for the prosecution.
At the first opportunity, she shunts the blame for mistreatment to her spouse, the man she married at 18, mere weeks after they met.
From the beginning of their marriage, Elaine says, “I was fearful. He didn’t waste time to beat me, punch me, kick me, spit in my face.”
Three children they had together, Elaine and Everton. Three others, from her husband’s previous relationships, were brought from Jamaica to live with them in 1991. One, Dwayne, died within 18 months — an accident, the jury has been told. One, Cleon, testified last week that he was made to deliver crack cocaine to his dad’s customers. One, Melonie, ended up in a suitcase behind a building in Vaughan — the body unidentified for nearly two decades.
None were allowed to attend school, Cleon testified. None were allowed to make friends. Melonie was never permitted outside the family’s Parkdale apartment.
“(Everton) was resentful about Melonie,” Elaine explains. “He would beat her with a belt, saying she has no manners. She disrespected.”
There was that one occasion, only once, when Elaine struck Melonie, she says, smashed her in the head with a mug. Melonie laughed, says Elaine.
Under questioning from Tenhouse, Elaine Biddersingh recounts the last time she saw Melonie alive. It was Aug. 31, 1994 and listless Melonie was just lying there on the floor, as per usual. Elaine went into her bedroom with her kids, read the Bible. “What I always do in my room.”
Around 5 p.m., Elaine continues, Everton came in. “He said, ‘She’s dead.’ I said, what do you mean, ‘She’s dead?’ ”
Everton led his wife to the cupboard. Melonie was inside. Everton kicked the girl. “She was stiff.”
Elaine describes her reaction. “What happened to her? What are we going to do? We have to call the police, right?
“He said, no, are you crazy? They’re going to take your children away from you.”
This, Elaine testified, was the dread hanging overhead. Because when she’d summoned cops previously — after the couple had fought, after Everton had pounded on her — they’d done nothing.
So there was Everton, says Elaine, just standing there, “asking me what to do.”
She came up with a plan, the witness admits. Because there’d been an item on the news recently about a body found in a suitcase. Melonie’s suitcase was down in the basement. They could use that to get rid of the body, couldn’t they? Tenhouse: “Did you suggest it?” Elaine: “Yeah. What else can I do? He’s acting dumb, like he doesn’t want to be the one to say it. He was waiting for me to say it.”
Everton and Cleon placed Melonie in the suitcase, says Elaine. But last week, Cleon testified that Melonie was gone when he woke up the next morning. His father said she’d run away.
Elaine testifies that Everton and Cleon jammed Melonie’s body in the suitcase, then placed it inside Everton’s Pathfinder. She, with the youngest child in tow, was compelled to accompany them as they drove around aimlessly, looking for somewhere to dump their load.
They stopped at a service station; Elaine says she heard Everton and Cleon discuss whether they had gasoline, a lighter. Then they proceeded to an industrial park and the suitcase was removed, though she didn’t touch it.
“I just saw when the flame caught. The place just light up!”
And then they went home. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.