Charge against former town councillor dismissed
Timothy Blake was accused of stealing more than $70,000 from North West River
A former North West River town councillor who was charged along with his exwife of stealing over $70,000 from the town coffers had the charge of theft over $5,000 dismissed in provincial court in Happy Valley-goose Bay on Wednesday, May 11.
Timothy Blake, who initially confessed to the crime when police showed up to interview his former partner, Holly Flowers, about the missing money, testified during his trial in May 2021 he had made up the story, and a cocaine addiction, to protect Flowers.
Flowers, who was the town clerk for North West River when the money was stolen between 2014-2016, pleaded guilty to the two charges she was facing and was sentenced to three months in jail.
She testified at Blake’s trial, telling the court she had pleaded guilty because her lawyer told her to, and that Blake had taken the money for his drug addiction, threatening her with loss of custody of their children if his involvement was exposed. She was covering for Blake, Flowers said, when she previously told police she didn’t know if he had stolen any money.
The RCMP officers who had taken Blake’s statement also testified, with both saying they didn’t believe everything he told them when he confessed, and thought parts of it had been made up. He told them he had taken money a few times a week to feed his cocaine addiction, but the description he gave of the safe was not accurate, the officers testified.
When making his decision, Judge Rolf Pritchard noted that according to an analysis done by the auditing firm that discovered the missing money, some of the cash was sent from the town email to Flowers’ account and was engineered by Flowers.
“I find that her evidence was clearly self-serving,” Pritchard said. “Notwithstanding her conviction, she attempted to minimize her involvement to implicate, or to further implicate, Mr. Blake.”
Pritchard said Flowers was arguably trying to rehabilitate her reputation by placing most of the blame on Blake and that it would be dangerous to rely on her evidence in this case.
Blake recanting his statement and placing the blame on Flowers was also arguably selfserving, Pritchard said, because he may have stolen some of the money, but Blake would not be the first person to confess to a crime to protect a spouse and his rationale could not be discounted.
He referenced some of the other testimony the court heard, including that a witness had described hearing the pair argue, with Blake saying something to the effect of, “What are you going to do when they find out about the money you stole? $20,000 is a lot of money.”
Pritchard said that, along with other factors, led him to believe Blake was at least aware of the money being stolen, but it did not prove he stole it.
“I can’t say with certainty that Mr. Blake was not involved in this in some fashion, but absent his confession, I don’t view the evidence as proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” Pritchard said. “There are no witnesses to his alleged theft or alleged drug addiction other than Ms. Flowers, but her evidence, in my view, is unreliable.”