Crown piecing together last days of victim’s life in trial
The Crown continued its case against Michael Durant Thursday using witness testimony to piece together the final days and nights of the victim’s life.
The first-degree murder trial heard from one of Durant’s friends, Peter McMillan, who said he was “partying ” with Durant and using cocaine at his home in Niagara Falls. When they ran out of drugs, McMillan told assistant Crown Attorney Andrew Sabbadini that he drove his pickup with Durant in the passenger seat to pick up more cocaine. McMillan said Durant was excited to see the victim and asked him to stop the truck.
McMillan said he heard the victim tell Durant she had a fight with her boyfriend and needed a place to stay.
“She was hyper and wanted to leave with Mike,” McMillan said.
McMillan was adamant that he didn’t want the victim in his truck. He wanted to leave before they attracted attention.
“I was sketched-out and paranoid . ... I was stopped on the side of the road, I had dope on me, and my license was suspended for unpaid tickets,” McMillan said. “There was no way she was getting in my truck.”
The victim’s body was discovered on Aug. 9, 2003, in a ditch on the outskirts of Niagara Falls.
A jury convicted Durant, 45, of Niagara Falls of the murder in 2012, but the Court of Appeals overturned the verdict and ordered a new trial.
A publication ban protects the victim’s name, as well as any information that might identify her.
The difficulty for both the Crown and the defence of conducting a new trial more than 16 years after the murder and seven years after the first trial, was never more apparent than during McMillan’s cross-examination by Durant’s lawyer, Joe Wilkinson.
McMillan was adamant that he couldn’t recall observing an altercation between the victim and her boyfriend on Frederica Street near the old Stamford Arena — or testifying about it at the first trial.
Wilkinson tried different tactics to jog McMillan’s memory before having him read the transcript of his testimony from the first trial.
That transcript contains more than 5,000 pages from a trial that lasted more than three months.
The first witness Thursday was a woman who spent time with the victim in the days before the murder.
Wendy Deburg-Thomas told the court the victim arrived at her home seeking a place to stay after a fight with her boyfriend. Deburg-Thomas also testified about seeing the victim and her boyfriend walking hand-inhand a few days later, enjoying each other’s company.
The beginning of the week was taken up with legal arguments setting the parameters for the defence in presenting its theory that someone else committed the murder.
The trial is being held in Kitchener because Justice Stephen Glithero granted Durant a change of venue at a preliminary hearing.