Murder trial hears police interview with victim’s daughter
Four-year-old told officer she saw her mom asleep in the shower
NICOLE O’REILLY
Inside a small Hamilton police interview room, a camera positioned high on the wall captures a little girl walking in and hopping up onto a big, black couch.
Sgt. Kerry Strabac pulls up a chair close to the four-year-old and introduces herself.
It’s a little after 10 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2018, and the little girl’s mom, Holly Hamilton, is missing.
The girl has no problem telling Strabac her name, her age and that her birthday is in September. She talks about playing in the snow (sometimes the snow doesn’t stick together so you can’t make a snowman) and she asks Strabac why the police building is so tall.
She speaks in a sweet voice, with some of her words a bit hard to make out, like a typical four-yearold.
But there is nothing typical about why she’s at the police station that day. She’s there because she was with her mom, at her dad’s apartment, the night Holly went missing.
The video was played in court Thursday at the trial for her dad, Justin Dumpfrey, who is charged with second-degree murder. He’s accused of killing Holly, his onagain, off-again girlfriend, sometime between Jan. 14 and 15, 2018.
Court has heard they had a volatile relationship, including Dumpfrey twice being convicted of assaulting Holly before her murder. Friends and family have testified she would never leave her daughter alone with Dumpfrey.
In January 2018, Strabac worked in the child-abuse branch where detectives are given special training to interview children, who are often susceptible to suggestion.
Holly’s now eight-year-old daughter was spared having to testify at trial because the defence conceded she would have adopted her old video statement. The courtroom was packed with Holly’s friends and family watching the heartbreaking video.
Holly and her daughter left their home on the evening of Sunday, Jan. 14, 2018, and went to Dumpfrey’s Barton Street East apartment. In the video statement the little girl says her mom let them in with her key. She recalled her dad
saying that he missed her.
Court has already seen numerous images from inside Dumpfrey’s small bachelor apartment. The only room separate from the living area is a small bathroom.
The little girl told police her mom and dad were in the bathroom. Then — it is not clear at what time — she saw her mom “sleeping” in the shower.
She knew she was sleeping because she could see her mom’s legs. Her mom was laying down, she said. On the video the little girl lays down on the couch to demonstrate.
“I see her in the shower but when I got back Mama wasn’t there anymore,” the little girl says.
“Where did she go?” the officer asks
“She just disappear ...”
She doesn’t know where her mom went, only that she’s gone.
“Now I don’t have mom,” the little girl says.
At these words, Holly’s family and friends in the courtroom burst into tears.
On the morning of Jan. 15, Dumpfrey took his daughter shopping. Court has already seen surveillance video from taxi cabs and from inside a Rexall pharmacy, Walmart and FreshCo.
The little girl remembered that her dad bought her a tea pot and other toys.
Receipts showed he also bought cleaning supplies, food and a new purple coat for his daughter. Police later found cleaning supplies, items dotted with blood, Holly’s car keys and her daughter’s old black jacket stained with bleach in a garbage near Dumpfrey’s apartment.
That night her dad took her to her grandparents’ house. They got a ride from a man, who the little girl didn’t know, in a white car.
The little girl said she rang the doorbell and her grandmother answered. Court has already heard from Holly’s mom, Angela Hamilton, about finding her granddaughter on the doorstep and yelling to Dumpfrey: “Where’s Holly?”
But the little girl doesn’t remember her grandmother and dad talking. She only knows that she misses her mom.
Strabac tells the little girl there are no secrets, she has to tell her anything that can help police find her mom.
Do you know where I can find Mama? Strabac asks.
“I think you have to look everywhere,” she replies.
The next day, Holly’s frozen body was found in the trunk of her car abandoned in an east-Hamilton parking lot. She had been stabbed 17 times, including a fatal wound to her neck that pierced a major artery.
No murder weapon was ever found. But police did find specks of Holly’s blood all over Dumpfrey’s apartment.
Both Holly and Dumpfrey’s phones were never found. But phone data presented by experts showed Holly last used her phone at 7:01 p.m. on Jan. 14 to text Dumpfrey.
The police interview with Holly’s daughter marked the last evidence for the prosecution.
The trial continues Monday when the jury will hear whether the defence is calling evidence.