The jury doesn’t know
Judge tried to cool emotional temperature over 13-year-old’s death
Vampirism, blood-sucking details kept from trial of pair accused in teen’s stabbing death,
A poster on the bedroom wall of accused schoolgirl killer Rafal LaSota read, “I’ll stop stabbing when you stop screaming.”
The poster wasn’t allowed into evidence in the first-degree murder trial of Lasota, 28, and his former girlfriend Michelle Liard, 22, in Brampton court.
They were both charged in the stabbing death of Grade 8 student Aleksandra Firgan-hewie, whose body was found in a garbage bag behind Lasota’s home on Dec. 11, 2008.
Justice David Corbett also didn’t allow the jury to see a thick binder of Liard’s highly personal writings, which suggested an intense fascination with vampirism and bloodsucking, and that she might also have had a sexual attraction to the 13-year-old victim.
The jury began deliberating the fate of Lasota and Liard on Friday.
The judge’s reason for excluding the poster and violent writings was a well-regarded and long-standing legal principle: Trials should be decided by facts, and not intense dislike for the accused.
“I would like to see the emotional temperature reduced and not heightened,” Corbett said at one particularly tense point in the fiveweek trial.
Even without the poster and lurid writings, the emotional temperature of the trial was high.
One juror became ill when blackand-white autopsy photos of the teen were shown. There were 37 stab wounds and two dozen bluntforce trauma wounds on her tiny body.
At another point in the trial, the queasy juror needed a break to take Gravol to control her upset stomach.
Lasota didn’t deny that he stabbed Firgan-hewie to death, but his lawyer argued that it wasn’t the criminal offence of murder. On the first day of the trial, Lasota attempted to plead guilty to the lesser offence of manslaughter, but the plea was rejected by assistant Crown Attorney Brian Mcguire. Lasota cried non-stop when his mother took the witness stand to describe her horror at learning her son had slain a young girl in his bedroom in their family home. In the end, Lasota didn’t testify and defence lawyer Gary Grill didn’t call any other witnesses. No explanation was offered for the decision not to call a defence. Early on in the trial — and without the jury present — Grill had suggested he might present a selfdefence explanation for the killing. “You’re kidding,” the judge replied. Aleksandra was 5-foot-4 and slightly over 100 pounds. Lasota was 6-foot-2 and 170 pounds. In the end, Grill dismissed speculation that it was a “thrill killing” and suggested his client snapped under stress, fuelled by alcohol and marijuana. Mcguire bristled when Liard’s lawyer, Daniel Brodsky, described his client as a “typical Clarkson teenager” who was led astray by the “wanton Rafal Lasota.” “There’s very damaging material in our possession that could rebut any question of her good character,” Mcguire told the court at another moment when the jury was absent. He directed the judge to a thick binder of Liard’s writings, which he said included accounts of her interest in vampirism and blood sucking. “Some of the stories will curl your hair,” Mcguire said. The only story written by Liard that was shown to the jury was one in which the narrator — who shares her nickname of “Meesh” — gleefully abducts, confines and tortures a young woman, who is eventually carved to death by a male accom- plice. Her lover and co-conspirator in the story is a man named “Rafal.”
The judge noted the story was written before Aleksandra’s killing but said it must not be regarded as a confession. He also cautioned the jury about reading media reports about the case.
At one break in the proceedings, the victim’s mother, Milena Firgan, noted how news accounts about the highly publicized murder of Victoria (Tori) Stafford contained disturbing similarities to Aleksandra’s death.
In both cases, the accused killers were drug abusers and the victim was a young girl.
In both cases, the victims were led by a trusted woman to somewhere where they could be isolated and killed.
In both cases, investigators found chilling writings by the female coaccused.
Terri-lynne Mcclintic, who has already been convicted of first-degree murder in Tori’s death, wrote disturbing letters and journal entries replete with torture imagery.
In the Aleksandra case, Liard argued that her story of a sadistic abduction and murder wasn’t even original. She told the court she lifted themes from American film director Rob Zombie and his horror movies House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects.
Liard argued she was guilty of nothing more than plagiarism and a bad choice of boyfriends. “I’m not a very good writer,” she testified.