Fisher refuses to admit he killed nurse
MILGAARD INQUIRY Killer’s testimony sheds little light on wrongful conviction
SASKATOON • The man convicted of the crime for which David Milgaard was wrongly imprisoned for 23 years provided little insight yesterday at an inquiry into how the miscarriage of justice occurred.
Larry Fisher tersely denied any involvement in the murder of 20-year-old nursing assistant Gail Miller.
Fisher, 56, was convicted in 1999 on DNA evidence in the 1969 death of Ms. Miller, whose body was found in a back alley in Saskatoon. She had been raped and stabbed.
“No, I did not,” was Fisher’s quiet reply when asked if he killed Ms. Miller.
David Milgaard, at the time of the murder a young drifter, was imprisoned for the crime and spent more than two decades behind penitentiary walls.
Mr. Milgaard’s mother, Joyce, sat in the hearing room listening to Fisher’s testimony.
“ I went in there very frightened. But after being in there for very few minutes I suddenly lost my fear of him and I just thought he was pathetic. I didn’t see the venom. I didn’t see the hate,” Ms. Milgaard said.
The crime has been the focus of national attention for many years, since Mr. Milgaard’s case was granted a federal review and was later overturned. He was released in 1992 following a Supreme Court hearing.
Fisher will be spared having to describe the three rapes and one attempted rape he committed in Saskatoon in the time period from before Ms. Miller’s death to after Mr. Milgaard was convicted of the murder, commissioner Justice Edward MacCallum ruled this week.
However, the circumstances of those assaults are known. They were outlined in a 1971 letter from Saskatoon’s deputy chief of police to the deputy attorney general. Fisher pleaded guilty to those crimes in Regina Dec. 21, 1971.
He was released from prison in May, 1994, and remained free until July, 1997, when he was arrested in Calgary after new DNA tests implicated him in Ms. Miller’s murder.
He was convicted in November, 1999, after a six-week jury trial in Yorkton, Sask., and was sentenced to life in prison. His appeal to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal was dismissed in 2003 and he was denied leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada in Aug. 2004.
In 1980, Fisher’s ex-wife told the police she confronted him about the murder during an argument, causing him to fall silent and look guilty.
Fisher also is expected to be asked about his admission of having groped five or six young, female strangers on the streets in Winnipeg in 1970.
Fisher dragged his victims into back alleys, forced them to remove their clothing and raped them. He threatened some of them with a knife and sometimes took articles of clothing or money.
The inquiry has also heard similar details about two rapes Fisher committed in Winnipeg in 1970.
He was caught during the last of those assaults. He later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 13 years in prison. After pleading guilty in Saskatchewan, he was sentenced to four years for each of the three rapes and six months for the attempted rape.
Fisher was granted parole in Jan. 1980. Three months later, he raped a woman in North Battleford, stabbing and slashing her in the process.