No body, no murder, accused argues

Greg Mitchell Fertuck says the fact that his estranged wife's body has never been found helps prove that he lied to undercover officers when he said he shot Sheree Fertuck twice in a Saskatchewan gravel pit and used a loader to move her body into the back of his truck.

“Show me the body, Mr. Bliss. You said I shot her in the shoulder and in the head, but there is no body,” Fertuck, who is self-representing, said in response to Crown prosecutor Cory Bliss's closing arguments on Monday in Saskatoon Court of King's Bench.

Fertuck made brief final arguments about the June 2019 conversation with an undercover officer.

The officer was pretending to be the boss of a fake criminal organization.

Fertuck said any details he provided during that 2019 conversation with the undercover officer were to “make my story believable” because he was a “lonely alcoholic” who said what he needed to stay in the organization.

Bliss argued Fertuck was telling the truth because the crime boss offered to clean up the police investigation, and because he had internalized the group's message about the importance of honesty.

Fertuck, 70, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and offering an indignity to human remains after confessing to Sheree's murder at the end of a 10-month undercover police operation known as a “Mr. Big” sting.

Bliss argued that Fertuck had an obvious financial motive to kill Sheree. Witnesses testified that she was filing for divorce and preparing to split their assets.

Fertuck wanted $15,000 from his pension, but Sheree refused to consent until they had worked out the property division, Bliss told court.

Although they were separated, she still let Fertuck work for her gravel-hauling business. The morning of her disappearance, Bliss said, Sheree was angry because she believed Fertuck had logged more hours than he had worked.

Phone records show she called him as he was leaving an appointment at 11:28 a.m., and then called the bank to cancel his payment.

Bliss said Fertuck then drove to the pit where Sheree was hauling gravel to confront her about the money, noting that his cellphone pinged off a tower near the pit around 1:20 p.m.

Fertuck wasn't bragging or exaggerating when he told the fake crime boss that he regretted shooting her because she was being unreasonable about finances, Bliss said, noting Fertuck told the crime boss “she was taking everything that I worked all these years for.”

He told court Fertuck tried his best to show undercover officers where he left Sheree's unburied body in a rural area northeast of the pit, but admitted that coyotes may have got to her remains in the four years that had passed. It's possible that Fertuck was never entirely sure about where he left her, Bliss argued.

“His confession is reliable. It accords with the evidence that the police had already found. It accords with the evidence he turned over and (the evidence that) was discovered.”

Fertuck argued that many people were in the pit after Sheree went missing, that ammunition found in his home were brass while casings found at the pit were nickel, and that there was no conclusion if shells found in his house were fired from a Ruger 10/22 he told undercover officers he had bought and thrown away in a field near Struan, Sask.

A Saskatchewan couple discovered a Ruger 10/22 while moving a storage bin off their rural property near Kinley, Sask., 40 kilometres south of Struan, in November 2021. A ballistics expert determined the gun had fired the shells found in the gravel pit.

Justice Richard Danyliuk admitted the Mr. Big sting evidence last year. He will deliver his verdict on June 14.