Court sees 1995 video of police’s discovery of 12-year-old’s remains

A jury has been shown a video of the police recovery of remains on a remote mountain near Merritt in 1995 that the Crown asserts were those of a murdered girl.

Retired RCMP officer Steve Gehl told a B.C. Supreme Court jury that he was on his day off on June 2, 1995, when he got the call to join other officers investigating the discovery of the remains.

Court has heard that 12-year-old Monica Jack went missing in May 1978 while riding her bicycle along Nicola Lake near Merritt.

Garry Taylor Handlen, who was arrested following a “Mr. Big ” police undercover operation in 2014, has pleaded not guilty to one count of first-degree murder in connection with Jack’s slaying.

Gehl said that he and a colleague turned off Highway 5A near Merritt and travelled about six kilometres up a mountain road.

They got out of their vehicle, walked up a hillside, and then through the trees for a distance before the area opened up to a clearing that had plastic barrier tape placed around some of the trees.

Gehl, a forensic identification specialist, said that earlier that day forestry workers had been doing some slash-burning (burning off an area that posed a fire risk).

A video of the scene that had been shot by Gehl was played in court.

Gehl said that there were two areas where remains were located: an area where a skull was found and an area where there were three bone fragments.

Part of the difficulty was that the ground had been burned, leaving the bone fragments white and grey, he said. “So it’s hard to look at it and say where the bone fragments were,” he said.

The video showed what appeared to be a human skull with a large crack in the side.

Gehl told the jury that neither he nor any of the other officers moved or touched the skull before it was videotaped. Under questioning from Crown counsel Tim Livingston, Gehl said that the skull had also been burned in some way.

The remains were taken away by RCMP officers after the video and some photographs were taken of the scene, he said.

Officers returned three days later with more specialized equipment and searched the area with metal detectors in hopes of finding further evidence, including jewelry, rings and necklaces.

A grid system was set up where the remains were located.

Earth was excavated and then sifted through screens, in a bid to locate trace evidence, but nothing further was found, said Gehl.

Monica’s mother, Madeline Lanaro, was in court for the beginning of Gehl’s testimony, but left the courtroom before the video was played.

The Crown’s theory is that the remains that were discovered were those of Monica and were later positively identified through dental records.

Earlier, the jury heard Handlen confessing on videotape to the undercover officers that he had grabbed a girl, sexually assaulted her and taken her up a hill near Merritt and strangled her before leaving the body.

Gehl’s cross-examination is expected to conclude today, followed by testimony from a forest worker who was at the scene when the remains were found.