Convicted killer denies role in 1969 slaying
Fisher testifies at Milgaard inquiry Offers little more than short answers
SASKATOON— With terse responses, offering little more than “ no,” convicted serial rapist Larry Fisher maintained yesterday he had nothing to do with the murder of Gail Miller.
Testifying at the public inquiry looking into David Milgaard’s wrongful conviction, Fisher was asked directly by inquiry lawyer Doug Hodson about whether he raped and then killed the young Saskatoon nursing aide on a frigid January morning in 1969.
“ No, I did not,” Fisher replied, in a hushed, barely audible tone.
Fisher was convicted of Miller’s murder in 1999 on the strength of DNA evidence that said his involvement was a virtual certainty.
His trial heard the odds were 950 trillion to one that the semen stains found on Miller’s clothes did not belong to him.
Blood consistent with Fisher’s DNA was also found on Miller’s glove. Fisher, however, has always maintained he didn’t do it.
It was a crime Milgaard spent 23 years in prison for before his conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1992 as suspicions about Fisher emerged.
Fisher’s testimony at the inquiry could be key, not only because he was the person that was actually convicted of the murder, but because he attacked several other women in Saskatoon before and after Miller was killed.
Fisher, however, was not linked to those crimes until after Milgaard was already convicted. The Milgaard family has long maintained investigators kept Fisher’s convictions quiet so as to not cast doubt on the case they had already made against Milgaard.
It’s the second time Fisher, 56, has been on a witness stand to face questions about Miller’s murder. The first time was in 1992, when the Supreme Court reviewed Milgaard’s conviction after a campaign by his mother, Joyce, to have him freed. By that time, Milgaard’s family had raised questions about Fisher’s possible involvement in Miller’s murder, backed by Fisher’s ex- wife Linda, who said she had once accused her then husband of the murder and he reacted suspiciously. On the stand yesterday, Fisher said his memory of what happened back in 1969 had faded, but he did say he remembers all the crimes he committed.
“It’s pretty hard to forget,” Fisher said. He said the first time he had heard of Miller’s murder was when he was questioned three days after the crime by police who were canvassing the bus stop Miller used to get to work. Fisher used the same stop. “They just said there was a death there and they were inquiring,” Fisher recalled. “ They asked me how I was, where I was going, what I was doing, where I was a couple days prior.”
Throughout Fisher’s testimony, Joyce Milgaard sat at a front table, only metres from the witness stand. Earlier, she said she was apprehensive about seeing Fisher again, indicating she was disturbed by him the last time she had seen him in person when he testified at the Supreme Court in 1992.
“ He looked at me with such hatred I felt I was encased in ice,” she said. “ I’m scared.”