Susan Clairmont on covering the case,
A 1981 murder in Hamilton could make legal history. But what intrigued me most of all was the victim, Diane — long after all others had moved on
HAMILTON— It was the nail polish that got me. A 30-year-old bottle of Revlon. Red. A vibrant shade chosen with great care, perhaps. Or maybe on a whim. It was tucked into her bag along with the other sorts of things a woman keeps there: a yellow hairbrush, sunglasses, nail files, some coins.
And a one-dollar bill, a testament to the time that has passed since that bag was last flung over her shoulder on the way to a nearby bar for a few beers. These are Diane’s things. As I viewed these intimate objects in a nearly empty courtroom, they had a profound effect on me. Even more so than the actual pieces of Diane Werendowicz — strands of her blond hair, drops of her blood — that had been passed from juror to juror as if they somehow held the key to finally solving her murder.
By comparison the items from her bag are so mundane. So real.
Diane was murdered on June 19, 1981. I moved to Hamilton and began working at the Spectator in the autumn of 1997, just as a police task force was struck to find Diane’s killer.
Diane, a pretty nursing assistant, was three days shy of her 24th birthday the night she died. She had been out at Malarkey’s bar in the Stoney Creek area with some girlfriends and left around midnight, alone, to make a short walk home that would prove fatal.
Her partially nude body was found a day later in a creek by children playing in the ravine. She would have been able to see her own apartment building as she took her last breaths.
I was just a few years older than Diane when I wrote my first story about her. I have written many more since.
I was in a Kitchener courtroom for months in the fall of 2011 as a former steelworker named Robert Badgerow was tried for the third time for Diane’s murder. It was not lost on me that the only people in that courtroom were those who were either paid or subpoenaed to be there.
Diane’s parents have died. Her brother, who attended Badgerow’s first trial, did not come to the ones that followed. Diane never married. Or had children.
As a journalist who has written about crime my entire career, there are many things that intrigue me about this case. The forensic science that unlocked the DNA mystery lurking in the semen inside her body. The clue buried years ago by a shoddy police investigation into an attack on another woman, who was stabbed through the ear with a screwdriver. The disturbing number of sexual predators all living in one neighbourhood. The legal complexities of interconnected police investigations and trials.
And the possibility that this may be the first case of first-degree murder in Canada to go to a fourth trial.
Badgerow, now 54, is already one of a small number of first-degree murder cases that have been tried three times. While a few have even been ordered to have a fourth trial, none has actually done so — the accused has generally pleaded guilty to a lesser offence or the charge has been stayed.
The case is currently before the Court of Appeal for Ontario.
But what intrigued me most of all about this case, was Diane. She never had justice. In the eyes of the law, Diane’s murder remains unsolved.
Badgerow was convicted at his first trial, but two juries after that could not come to a unanimous decision, resulting in mistrials. In September 2012 the first-degree murder charge against him was stayed. That means he is still an innocent man. A free man.
Badgerow and his lawyers will tell you that for him, justice has been served.
I was there in court the day the charge was stayed. I interviewed Badgerow. We have always had a cordial relationship, beginning in 2009 when I showed up at the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre hours after he’d been granted an appeal.
After the stay was handed down, I was in my editor’s office talking about an idea I’d had for a long time.
I wanted to write the story of Diane’s murder. The whole story. Everything three sets of jurors have and haven’t known over the years. I wanted to piece together a narrative that began long ago in a way that would make readers care now. I wanted to talk to those who had never talked before. When I got back to my desk my phone rang.
It was Debbie Robertson calling. The woman Badgerow was alleged to have stabbed with a screwdriver, just a few weeks after Diane’s murder. From her hospital bed, Debbie had given detectives Badgerow’s name. But it took 17 years for them to charge him with her attempted murder. And to connect him to Diane.
Debbie — who I had never spoken to — was calling because she wanted to tell her story. I wish it was always that effortless. Convincing Brian Miller to talk was another matter.
He is a convicted serial rapist, and the man Badgerow’s defence team has put forward as the alternate suspect in Diane’s murder. He had never spoken to the media. I went to his place of work, but he wasn’t there. I went again and left a letter in a sealed envelope. I told him I was writing a story and he would be part of it. I would like to give him a chance to tell me his side.
Aweek went by. Then another. I wasn’t surprised.
Then, when I’d given up, Miller phoned. After several long phone calls, he agreed to meet me in person. Not for an interview, but rather — at my own suggestion — to decide if he felt comfortable with me.
We met, incongruously, at a dainty tea shop. I had no notebook. We just talked.
That chat skirted around his history and focused on my story. On Badgerow. On the murder trials that keep sucking Miller back into the justice system even though he had served his own time.
By the time we parted, he had agreed to an interview.
As of my writing it is unclear whether Badgerow will go before a jury a fourth time or not.
If not, I hope he, too, will grant me an interview.