Crown claims Downey killed girl after killing mother to keep her from talking
Little Taliyah Marsman was murdered because she witnessed her mother’s slaying and the killer wanted to silence her, a prosecutor said Monday.
In her opening address to a fiveman, seven-woman jury, Crown lawyer Carla MacPhail detailed the case she and co-prosecutor Ryan Jenkins intend to call against accused double murderer Edward Downey.
“The Crown’s theory is that the accused before you, Mr. Edward Downey, is guilty of first-degree murder for the killing of Sara Baillie and her daughter, Taliyah Marsman,” MacPhail said.
The prosecutor told jurors that Baillie’s body was found stuffed in a laundry bag in her daughter’s bedroom closet in the northwest basement suite they shared, with duct tape wrapped around her face, neck and wrists.
Analysis later found three fingerprints on the tape, although one couldn’t be identified.
“The other two prints on that duct tape were identified,” the prosecutor said. “They were made by the left forefinger of Mr. Downey.”
An autopsy was subsequently performed by medical examiner Dr. Bamidele Adeagbo, showing Baillie “died of asphyxiation, through both neck compressions and smothering,” the prosecutor said.
Missing from the home along with Taliyah was Baillie’s Ford Fusion, which was found a short distance away. Witnesses had seen a short male park the car, retrieve a little girl from the rear and take her to a grey car with tinted windows similar to one driven by Downey, MacPhail said.
Analysis of Downey’s cellphone usage indicated the device “was in the area of Sara and Taliyah’s residence the morning of July 11, 2016.”
Cellphone tower records also suggested the device was taken east of the city, helping police establish a three-kilometre area in which they looked for Taliyah. Shortly after 7 p.m. on July 14, her body was found. She, too, died from asphyxiation, Adeagbo determined.
“The Crown’s theory is that Taliyah’s killer took her and killed her 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.”
As for the motive for killing Baillie, MacPhail suggested it might have been related to the dead woman’s friendship with Downey ’s then-girlfriend, a woman who can only be identified by the initials A.B.
MacPhail suggested Downey may have been angry at Baillie for influencing A.B.’s decision to break up with him and her refusal to work for him as an escort.
Meanwhile, in evidence, court heard about the search for Baillie after she failed to show up for work. Baillie’s aunt, Marilynne Hamilton, said a group of family and friends called police after going to the residence and finding Baillie’s purse on the child’s bedroom floor and her car missing.
“He (an officer) 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 made the grisly discovery.