Police put the heat on Perrin murder suspect Terry Pearce

With little to show after 16 months of investigation into the murder and rape of Beverley Perrin, Hamilton police focused on prime suspect Terry Pearce.

Police had a tip from a witness that Pearce was driving the Perrin vehicle on Feb. 13, 1989, the night she was killed.

A malicious prosecution lawsuit Wednesday heard transcripts from police wiretaps between Pearce and girlfriend Tammy Waltham and his aunt Laura Pearce. In those transcripts an increasingly desperate Pearce, who had been led to believe police had his fingerprints from the car, tried to concoct an explanation for that. And Pearce believed unless he could remember who was in the car with him, police might pin the murder solely on him.

Christopher McCullough and Nicholas Nossey, who both served time in connection with the Perrin slaying, are suing Hamilton police for more than $10 million. McCullough was originally convicted of second-degree murder and served nine years in prison before having a new trial ordered. The police opted to stay the prosecution.

Nossey was acquitted at trial, but served 19 months of pre-trial custody.

The plaintiffs have suggested that police relied on the contradictory and mostly unreliable testimony of Pearce, Waltham and fellow accused Steven Clarke in their prosecution of McCullough and Nossey.

Perrin was last seen alive walking across the parking lot of the A&P on Barton Street East at Centennial Parkway. Police suspect four men drove her to a field off Cascade Avenue where she was beaten and raped. She was then strangled with rope. The partially clad body of the 55-year-old mother of five was found two days later in a frozen field off Tapleytown Road.

Pearce pleaded guilty to manslaughter and would receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Clarke pleaded guilty to forcible confinement and received four years.

Plaintiff counsel Neil Jones aired an intercepted tape recording Wednesday between Pearce and Waltham in which Waltham suggests she has received information that McCullough has tipped off police about Pearce’s involvement.

“Now they have reason to be angry with Christopher McCullough because they believe he set them up,” Jones put it to former Hamilton police investigation head Gary Clue.

“That may very well have been their thoughts,” Clue said.

Another wiretap transcript reveals Pearce telling his aunt Laura that he is struggling with memory block and fears he has to come up soon with the identity of the others in the car on the night of the killing.

“He seems to think he has to name a person or he will be convicted of murder?” Jones suggested to Clue, who agreed.

The lawsuit is being heard by Ontario Superior Court Justice James Ramsay.

Clue told the court Tuesday that he disagreed with the Crown’s office decision to lay a range of charges against the four accused. Clarke, for example, was charged with forcible confinement and being an accessory after the f act of murder.

“They all should have been charged with first-degree murder as far as I was concerned,” Clue said.

Perrin was a Grade 1 and 2 teacher at Tapleytown Elementary School. The lawsuit continues Thursday.

They all should have been charged with first-degree murder …

GARY CLUE

FORMER POLICE INVESTIGATOR