Murder trial hears accused tried to get ex-girlfriend to escort
A former girlfriend of a man on trial for a double murder has testified that their relationship began to fall apart after he struck her in the face and that he tried to get her into the escort business.
Edward Downey, 48, is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Sara Baillie and her fiveyear-old daughter Taliyah Marsman in 2016.
The ex-girlfriend can only be identified as A.B. due to a publication ban. She testified Tuesday from behind a screen so that she would not have to face Downey in the prisoner’s dock.
The woman said she and Baillie were best friends.
“We were together all the time,” she told jurors. “We did everything together.”
Prosecutor Carla MacPhail has suggested Downey blamed Baillie for the relationship breaking up and for his then-girlfriend’s refusal to work for him as an escort.
A.B. described how, about a month before Baillie’s death, she and Downey argued through open car windows outside a downtown Calgary night club.
Downey was driving his thengirlfriend’s vehicle while she was in Baillie’s car.
Downey got out of the car, the woman recalled.
“That’s when he struck me in the face.”
Eventually she got out of Baillie’s car and went home with Downey, but saw Baillie again the next day, she said.
“She was afraid for me.”
The woman told court she financially supported Downey throughout the roughly two years they were together and provided a home and a vehicle.
“Money was getting tight and he wasn’t making any money at all,” she said.
That’s when Downey asked her if she wanted to work as an escort and they put up an online ad.
She told court they went together to purchase massage oils and condoms and drove up to Edmonton in her car.
She went into the home of one client and was paid upfront. But they only talked and had a drink while Downey waited outside.
The second night in Edmonton, she got sick, she said.
“He was not happy about that,” she testified. “I came there to work and it didn’t happen.”
She decided she didn’t want to try escorting again. MacPhail asked her why. “Because I couldn’t do it,” she replied.
MacPhail read aloud text messages between A.B. and Downey nine days before Baillie was found dead on July 11, 2016.
“She is bad,” she said Downey wrote, referring to Baillie. “Just be you and not look at the way she is.”
MacPhail said in her opening statement Monday that A.B. had told Downey she was leaving him a day before Baillie’s death.
Baillie’s remains were found in her suburban basement apartment stuffed in a laundry hamper in her daughter’s closet.
She had duct tape wrapped around her face, neck and wrists, court heard.
The child was missing and an Amber Alert was issued.
Taliyah was found dead under a bush in a rural area east of the city three days later.
The Crown has suggested the girl witnessed her mother’s murder.
Mother and daughter died by asphyxiation, the trial heard.