Red River Girl

by Joanna Jolly

  After the chief justice had finished speaking, Jim Ross stood up to make the Crown’s opening address.

  “Tina Fontaine was a fifteen-year-old girl who made a series of poor choices,” he began. He explained how Tina had left the safety of her home in Sagkeeng for the Winnipeg streets without fully appreciating the danger she was in. Tina had used drugs and alcohol and worked in the sex trade, Ross continued, but that was not what had killed her.

  “The Crown’s theory is that what led to Tina Fontaine’s death was her friendship with Raymond Cormier,” he said. He outlined the witnesses he planned to call and explained that this was not a case that could be proven or disproven by forensic evidence. If the jury was hoping for the certainty of television shows like CSI, they would be disappointed. The evidence against Cormier was indirect, but it would point towards him as the killer if they considered all the circumstances.

  As its first witness, the Crown called Thelma Favel. Her voice loaded with emotion, Thelma described how Tina had been a sparkling, happy, and polite girl who had always tried to lift everyone’s spirits. When Ross asked about Tina’s final visit to her biological mother in June 2014, Thelma’s voice began to crack. As the court heard Tina’s 911 call to report that “Sebastian” had stolen a truck, Thelma’s sobs echoed through the courtroom.

  “That was Tina,” she said, confirming the identity of the speaker.

  In their preparation for the trial, Ross and Passler had considered a number of different strategies. One option was to go straight to the duvet cover and Project Styx intercepts and wrap up their argument quickly, hoping the jury would be convinced. But the prosecutors believed they needed to explain the lack of forensic evidence. They knew this ran the risk of overwhelming the jury with days of dry and often academic testimony, all of which essentially led nowhere. But they wanted to emphasize that everything that could be done to solve Tina’s case had been done.

  After Thelma’s emotional opening testimony, the jury heard a list of expert witnesses testify about how Tina’s body had been found and recovered, how medical, DNA, and forensic tests had been conducted, and how the results had been analyzed. When it was their turn to cross-examine, the defence team of Kavanagh and Synyshyn tried to inject doubt wherever possible.

  When the captain of MS River Rouge described how his boat engines had churned up the riverbed when he had moored at the Alexander Docks—an action that had likely freed Tina’s body from the mud underneath—the defence asserted that no one knew for certain exactly where Tina had been put in the water. When forensic expert Constable Susan Roy-Hageman described how she made cuts in the duvet cover to drain out the water, then tested it and other pertinent materials, the defence team asked her if any of the results had pointed to Cormier. Roy-Hageman replied that she had not found anything to suggest Cormier or any other individual had been the perpetrator.

  When the toxicology expert told the court that drugs and alcohol had been found in Tina’s blood but not at a fatal level, the defence argued that it was possible the prescription drug gabapentin might have also been there but didn’t show up on tests. It was a possibility they raised again with forensic pathologist Dr. Dennis Rhee, who described the cause of Tina’s death as “undetermined.” When Rhee stated that Tina had likely died from being smothered or drowned, Kavanagh suggested it might have been possible for Tina to have self-smothered by rolling over onto a blanket.

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  After the opening day, the trial was moved back to the smaller, more intimate space of the original courtroom. The numbers watching had dwindled until just Tina’s family, reporters, and a handful of public spectators were left. Thelma attended on most days, sitting in the same seat on the front bench with her children and a foster daughter who had known Tina growing up. Tina’s biological mother, Valentina Duck, was also present, choosing to sit away from Thelma at the back of the public seating. Despite the smaller audience in court, interest in the case remained high. When a number of newspapers headlined the fact that Tina had been found with drugs and alcohol in her system, social media flooded with outrage. The papers were accused of victim blaming and not holding the real perpetrator to account. Summing up the anger, the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs called out one newspaper for a “sensationalistic headline” that gave the impression that Tina “had it coming.”

  On the fourth day of the trial, Ida and Chantelle Beardy were scheduled to testify that the Chloe Green duvet cover that Tina had been wrapped in belonged to Cormier. The Crown were hoping this would be a compelling day of evidence, but the Beardys proved challenging witnesses. At first, they failed to turn up, forcing the Crown to notify O’Donovan, who in turn dispatched a team of detectives to find them. Jim Ross suggested that Chief Justice Joyal switch the order of witnesses, as he had spoken to Ida Beardy on the phone and thought she sounded intoxicated. But after Joyal agreed to a brief pause, Ross was able to tell the court that detectives had located both women and they were on their way in.

  Ida Beardy was the first to take the stand. When Crown attorney Breta Passler asked her to identify the man who had stayed in her garden, she pointed across to Cormier and said, “That sick bastard over there.” Ida recalled how, when she was shown the photo of the duvet cover and recognized it as belonging to her former lodger, it “sent shivers up my spine and still does.”

  Under cross-examination by Tony Kavanagh, Ida Beardy’s conviction turned to irritability as she was asked the same questions repeatedly. When she referred to Cormier as a “sick bastard” for a second time, Chief Justice Joyal intervened, telling her she needed to be polite and patient. For his part, Kavanagh seemed to be enjoying himself, pointing out how much Ida disliked Cormier and throwing doubt on her memory. Ida raised her voice and seemed rattled but stood firm on her identification, insisting she was not confused at all.

  When it was Chantelle’s turn, she recalled how Cormier used to hang his bedding on the fence and that she remembered a dirty white bedcover with a pattern of leaves. She described it as having burn holes, a detail she had not mentioned in any previous interview. During his cross-examination, Synyshyn picked up on this immediately. Chantelle repeated that she remembered two thumb-sized burn holes on the front of the fabric, as if Cormier had fallen asleep holding a lit cigarette. Although she insisted that her recollection was accurate, she also admitted that her memory often suffered because she smoked weed “all the time.”

  The Beardys’ testimony was reinforced by Detective Sergeants Jeff Stalker and Myles Riddell, who walked the jury through the process of showing the women the photo of the Chloe Green duvet cover. Stalker described the emphatic response of both mother and daughter and how he had been taken aback by the strength of their conviction. But in a long and detailed cross-examination, Kavanagh threw doubt on Stalker’s methods, pointing out that he had failed to follow the police procedure of showing a full lineup and that this meant the identification had not been neutral. In his defence, Stalker replied that no one in his office had done anything like this before and that he had been dealing with a piece of property, not a person. Kavanagh pointed out that because Stalker had already visited the Beardys in connection with Tina’s murder, his mere presence might have prompted them to connect the duvet cover with Cormier.

  Chantelle’s description of the burn holes raised an exciting possibility for the Crown. If they actually existed, they could prove to be the smoking gun the prosecution lacked. As the trial adjourned for the weekend, Ross returned to the disclosure to study the duvet cover photos. Early on Saturday morning, he emailed Kavanagh at home.

  “Gentlemen, you may wish to take another look at the forensic photographs of the duvet as we intend to have them submitted as evidence on Monday,” he wrote.

  Kavanagh immediately forwarded the email to Synyshyn, who downloaded every photograph he could of the cover onto his home computer. After an hour of scanning the images, he noticed two small indents that looked exactly like the burn holes Chantelle
had described. But on closer inspection, he wasn’t sure. Chantelle had said the holes were on the front of the cover, but these were on the back, and they appeared more like frayed cuts. Synyshyn sent the images back to Kavanagh, who also studied them carefully, knowing that what he was looking at could lose him the case. Early on Monday morning, he met Ross to discuss what he had found. Kavanagh pointed out that the brown discolouration at the side of the holes was perhaps not from a burn but from river mud and that the edges looked clean, as if made by a knife. Studying the pictures himself, Ross agreed that what they were looking at were the two cuts made in the fabric by Constable Roy-Hageman when she drained the water out of it. Chantelle’s recollection had been wrong.

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  In the trial’s second week, the Crown walked the jury through Tina’s final days. They called family and friends who had seen the teenager in Winnipeg in the weeks before she died. In often emotional testimony, Tina’s uncles and aunts remembered how she had dropped by if she needed something, sometimes just to say hello. The prosecutors made a point of asking if they had given Tina food or noticed if she changed her outfits often. They replied yes, that Tina had been loved and looked after whenever she had wanted to be.

  More witnesses were called to describe the last days Tina was seen alive. The jury heard how she was found asleep in the University of Winnipeg car park on the morning of Friday, August 8, and taken to hospital in an ambulance. Thelma sobbed loudly as the court heard that Tina was tested for drugs and alcohol before being released into the care of a CFS worker and taken to the Best Western Charterhouse hotel, where no one had prevented her from walking out into the night alone.

  The jury also heard how, earlier that Friday morning, Tina had been briefly apprehended by Winnipeg patrol officers while in a truck with an older man, and how the officers had let her go. The driver, Richard Mohammed, had tried to keep his name out of court, but Chief Justice Joyal dismissed his request. He ruled that the public stakes were too high, as Tina’s killing had become the focus of a national debate on how the justice system dealt with cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Mohammed testified that he had asked Tina if she wanted to party and she had got into his car, but they had not gone far before being stopped. The officers, former Constables Brock Jansen and Craig Houle, both recalled how Mohammed had become abusive and said that this had distracted them from studying Tina’s details properly.

  “Hindsight being twenty-twenty…” Jansen replied when asked why he had not reacted to the missing persons alert that had been placed on Tina’s name. After failing to protect the teenager he had been dismissed from active service, but continued working for the police in a civilian role. Houle had been allowed to retake his field training but later was found to have stolen from police lockers and left the force. He said he had been traumatized by what had happened with Tina.

  As the witness statements progressed, Cormier was conducting intense, whispered conversations with his counsel over the side of the prisoner’s box, telling them he was desperate to take the stand himself to say that he had not killed Tina. Both Kavanagh and Synyshyn worked hard to dissuade him.

  “I would be failing miserably as a lawyer if I put you on the stand,” Tony Kavanagh told his client. Cormier’s criminal record and tendency to lose his temper would not come off well, he explained. Instead, he reminded Cormier that the jury would have the chance to hear him deny killing Tina in the video the police had made of his first arrest interview in October 2014. This was the interview in which Cormier had lain on the floor in the fetal position, refusing to answer questions, and then stripped naked. As the video was played to the court, Cormier sat with his head bowed and his face devoid of expression. Chief Justice Joyal reminded the jury that Cormier did have the right to stay silent during the police interview and told them not to view his refusal to speak as an admission of guilt.

  The day after the tape was played, a small group of Indigenous activists gathered outside the Winnipeg courthouse, writing the words “Justice for Tina” in the snow. They were there in part because across the Prairies, in Battleford, Saskatchewan, the jury was already deliberating in the trial of the man accused of killing Colten Boushie. That Friday afternoon, the Saskatchewan jury announced that it found Gerald Stanley not guilty of second-degree murder. The verdict was met with disbelief and anger across the country, with Boushie’s supporters saying they felt Canada’s reputation for fairness and tolerance had been undermined. Thousands gathered in rallies to denounce the decision. “Little about the Stanley investigation and murder is exceptional,” read a joint statement by the Native Studies faculties at three Canadian universities. “It needs to instead be understood as yet another link in the centuries-long colonial chain of injustices that Indigenous peoples—and, in this instance, prairie Indigenous peoples—are well aware of.” Now all eyes were focused on the Tina Fontaine trial in the hope that it would deliver a different outcome.

  Meanwhile, in Winnipeg, the jury number was reduced to eleven after one member was forced to leave because of a personal emergency. For its final week of evidence, the Crown called on those who had spent time with Tina at 22 Carmen Avenue. Sarah Holland was the first to testify. Since Tina’s death, she had kicked her addiction and seemed to be putting her life back together. On the stand, she insisted that the accused had had a predatory sexual interest in Tina. Listening from across the courtroom, Cormier shook his head. When she got up to leave, Holland was careful not to meet his gaze.

  Tyrell Morrison gave a straightforward account of what he could remember about the activities at the house. The defence had been planning to suggest he could be a suspect himself, but Kavanagh judged his testimony less hostile than they were expecting so had left him alone. When Ernest DeWolfe recalled how Cormier told him he had slept with Tina, Thelma, who was sitting in the front row of the public gallery, burst into tears and quickly left the room. In his cross-examination, Andrew Synyshyn reminded DeWolfe that he had told police he was not “a hundred percent sure” that Cormier owned the Chloe Green duvet cover. DeWolfe replied by flourishing a tissue and saying that he wasn’t “a hundred percent sure” it was the same as the next tissue in the box, but it looked pretty much the same. When Synyshyn questioned his motives in coming forward, pointing out that he had an extensive criminal record, DeWolfe insisted he had acted because “it’s a little girl dead here.”

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  Finally, at the very end of its case, the Crown presented the recordings from Project Styx. Although the Mr. Big operation had spanned six months, Ross had allocated it just one day in court, saying there was no point in giving it more time because it had not produced a confession.

  Mo was the first officer to be called. Despite still working undercover, he testified openly. As he walked into the courtroom Cormier eyed him with hostility, his arms crossed defensively against his chest. Mo explained how his friendship with his target had been set up and how he had played out a number of scenarios designed to manipulate him. The Crown played a recording of the conversation in which Cormier threatened to cycle home to New Brunswick and ranted about Tina.

  With his evidence given, Mo privately mused that part of him felt bad about tricking Cormier, who had viewed him as a true friend. “But it’s my job, and these aren’t good people,” he said.

  Jenna was the next witness to testify. The jury listened to the recording of Cormier trying to calm her down as she banged on Mo’s door, pretending to be distressed. Ross had chosen it because he wanted to show how charming and seductive Cormier could be.

  “He was right close to my face, in my personal space,” Jenna told the court.

  Finally, the Crown called the police officer whom O’Donovan had asked to transcribe the often scratchy-sounding intercepts. After the officer described how he had used high-quality headphones and listened over and over until he was sure of what he was hearing, the Crown played a selection of Cormier’s recorded conversati
ons. The jury were handed the transcripts to follow as they listened, though were cautioned to remember that the recordings themselves were the evidence and the transcripts were merely the police’s understanding of them.

  “When I found out, that was it. Said I’m not gonna bang her no more,” Cormier was heard saying in one.

  “Don’t overdose here ‘cause then your body’s going be wrapped up in a fucking carpet and thrown in the river,” said another.

  “It’s right on the shore. So what do I do? Threw her in.”

  “Tina finds a knife…She got angry and…get the fuck away from me.”

  “By sunset she died. That’s why I don’t joke.”

  “Unfortunately, there’s a little girl in a fucking grave someplace screaming at the top of her lungs for me to fucking finish the job. And guess what?…I finished the job.”

  “You think you’ll get the murder out of me?”

  When the final recording had played, Ross asked the police officer to confirm that all the clips were original. In cross-examination, Synyshyn questioned the officer’s work, asking him whether he was sure that everything he had written was accurate. The officer replied that he was, and if he had not understood something, he had not included it in the transcript. When Synyshyn said he had no further questions, Ross stated that the Crown had concluded its case.

  The next day, Cormier’s defence counsel entered a motion for a directed verdict, asking the judge to instruct the jury to acquit Cormier. Synyshyn argued that the Crown’s case was based on “inference over inference over speculation,” and that even the forensic pathologist’s opinion on how Tina had died was based on a suspicion rather than fact. But Joyal disagreed, saying there had been other successful convictions where no body had been found and that circumstantial cases often drew on inferences. He dismissed the motion. When he did, Cormier appeared extremely agitated, shouting out that he wanted to speak to his lawyers. Kavanagh and Synyshyn crowded around him, trying to calm him down. They had already voiced their decision not to call any witnesses of their own.