N.B. man dies months after he’s exonerated
FREDERICTON • A New Brunswick man who spent decades fighting a wrongful murder conviction that landed him and a friend behind bars had only a few months to relish his victory, the organization that helped in his legal battle said Saturday as it announced his death.
Innocence Canada, which led the legal fight to exonerate Walter Gillespie and his friend Robert Mailman of their 1984 murder convictions, said Gillespie died Friday in his home in Saint John, N.B., at the age of 80.
Founding director James Lockyer lamented the fact that Gillespie had such a brief time to enjoy the fruits of his decades-long fight.
“It’s very sad,” Lockyer said. “I’m just glad that he managed to have his name cleared before he died. That was so important to him.”
Details about Gillespie’s cause of death were not immediately known.
In January, New Brunswick Court of King’s Bench Chief Justice Tracey Deware acquitted Gillespie and Mailman, 76, of the 1983 murder of Saint John resident George Leeman and apologized for the “miscarriage of justice.”
Her ruling came after federal Justice Minister Arif Virani ordered a new trial on Dec. 22, saying evidence had surfaced that called into question “the overall fairness of the process.”
Ron Dalton, co-president of Innocence Canada, took up the men’s case when he was fighting for freedom from his own wrongful conviction.
He called Gillespie a “study in strength of character and friendship.”
“For 40 years (Gillespie) refused to falsely implicate his friend, Robert Mailman, and paid dearly with his freedom,” Dalton said. “A sad end to a difficult but honourable life.”
In an interview in January, about a week after he was formally exonerated, Gillespie recounted the offer of freedom dangled before him a year after Leeman’s murder.
He said he was told by Saint John police that if he signed a statement against Mailman, he would be charged with aiding and abetting and only face three years in prison.
“I said I was not going to do that,” he said. “(The officer) said, ‘if you’re going to protect (Mailman), you’re going down with him.” ’
He spent 21 years in prison.
Gillespie was born on Aug. 31, 1943, in Saint John and had a Grade 6 education. Most of his immediate family died in a house fire when he was about 20.
Gillespie is survived by a daughter with whom he only recently began to reconnect.