It sounds like convincing testimony, but when the Crown gets hold of Silvia, all bets are off. Right from the start, Rob Scott implicates her in all sorts of inconsistent behaviour, suggesting that, in a bid to protect Eric, she simply inserted Maurice’s name into the mix. After all, the closer one looks at her relationship with Eric, the more one might question her testimony against Maurice. Scott digs up comments from her police interview when she told investigators she had, in fact, been romantically interested in Eric. “I liked him. I did have interest in him, but it didn’t go any further,” she told investigators. “Like, we never got any closer, because I had my kids.” Scott then raises the number of times the pair communicated in the lead-up to November 6 — 350 calls and texts over four weeks. Were they just close friends or lovers? Another troubling aspect of her testimony is her apparent refusal to implicate Eric in even the slightest manner.
When Scott begins questioning her about whether she knew Lenford Crawford, she says she knew “of him,” but insists she had no idea why Lenford would have her phone number in his phone under the listing “Gully Side” and refuses to admit that she let Eric borrow her phone to call him on November 8. Scott shows that on the morning of the murder, at 10:00 a.m., Lenford’s phone contacted her phone and then her phone contacted Lenford forty-six minutes later. But once more, Silvia refuses to admit it might have been Eric — instead, she says she didn’t know who used her phone. When asked whose friend Lenford is, she initially says: “I don’t know.” This leaves her vulnerable to attack, and Scott doesn’t hold back. “Well, you know whose friend he is,” Scott says, raising his voice. “He’s Eric Carty’s friend. So don’t tell us you don’t know whose friend he is, you know whose friend he is, he’s Eric Carty’s friend.”
“Yes,” she responds.
“Don’t tell the jury if you know it’s the truth, something that’s not true, okay?” he presses. “We’ll agree on that?”
“Okay,” she replies.
“Does it not make sense that your close friend Eric Carty was using your phone to talk to his friend?”
“No.”
“It wasn’t certainly you?”
“No.”
Scott eventually cuts to the chase, asking Silvia why she goes from not mentioning anything about Maurice in the first police interview to all of a sudden telling police about the bloody clothes in the second interview. “Did you substitute Maurice for Eric Carty?”
“No.”
“Would have been an easy thing to do right because he was at your house that night, right?”
“No, I did not.”
“Because you don’t rat out your friends. You’re not a snitch, right? Right? That’s a code you live by, isn’t it? Right?”
“I’m sitting here, so what does that label me?”
“Well, you’re not here because you want to be here, right? You’re not here ratting out your friend because you’re not saying anything that’s hurting Eric Carty, right? That you’re aware of?”
Although Silvia initially says she doesn’t remember talking to one of Eric’s girlfriends between the first police interview and the second one, while she is on the witness stand, Scott reminds her of what she told police. “She did ask me like, what I know,” she told Detective Cooke during her interview, “but I told her I don’t know nothing because I never told anybody, really, what happened with Maurice.”
“Did that discussion … influence what you said to the police the second time you went to them?” Scott asks.
“No,” is her response.
Before the end of their exchange, Silvia further admits that she also visited Eric in prison, throwing into question where her allegiances lie.
“Would you implicate your ex-boyfriend, Maurice, in order to get Mr. Carty out of trouble?” Scott asks. “Did you do that in this case?”
“No,” replies Silvia. In a bid to try to repair some of the damage that has been done to Silvia’s credibility after this injurious exchange with Scott, Bawden skillfully plays one of the most emotional videos seen during the trial, even more so than Jennifer’s manic police interviews. The police interview involves an inconsolably sobbing and weeping Silvia who has been asked to identify the man who gave her the bloody clothes. When officers leave the room, she repeatedly makes a number of audible grunting noises before she is seen saying to a picture of Maurice: “Oh, God. Oh, I love you.”
Bawden also asks a number of pointed questions concerning how she feels implicating Maurice in a murder. “I don’t know the words to use,” she says before describing Maurice as having been “very important” in her life.
Silvia isn’t the only controversial witness to be called. Another one of Maurice’s girlfriends, Ashley Williams is also the subject of much consternation and debate in the courthouse. Although she claims to be unavailable for a proper examination in court and under oath because she is still living in the United Kingdom, the video statement she gave to the police is played for the jury. During Ashley’s interview in September 2013, she implicated Maurice in the murder of Bich and the attempted murder of Hann, telling investigators that he told her: “I shot this man in his head and I messed up. He didn’t die.”
When it comes time for the suave and stylish Maurice to take the stand, all eyes are fixed on him. Unlike many of the other witnesses — who respond in a variety of fashions to the glare of spectators, judges, court staff, the jury, and the accused, ranging from nervousness to belligerence — Maurice seems perfectly at ease. He is well dressed and polished and clearly accustomed to the spotlight.
Taken at face value, some of the evidence presented to the court paints a damning picture of Maurice, but there is plenty more to the story, as he soon describes. He maintains his cool under questioning, speaking in a calm and collected voice, responding to questions in his deep baritone. His reply to the accusations is simple — Ashley’s comments are blatant lies to get back at him for cheating on her and then breaking up with her.
Maurice tells the court that Ashley visited him once or twice a year, making the trip across the pond from her home in London. And, although they talked about marriage, he explains that because she never ended up moving to Canada, the chatter about a family never grew overly intense. He says he ended the relationship after she hacked his emails one too many times. Although the subject of philandering comes up countless times in this trial— most notably involving Maurice, Eric, Daniel, and David — it is with only Maurice that it turns into an actual defence. He admits to having at least two other girlfriends during the time he was dating Ashley, including one woman with whom he had a child, and Silvia.
For many people testifying, these sorts of details might harm their reputations, especially with female jurors; however, for Maurice it raises significant doubt concerning the veracity of Silvia’s and Ashley’s statements. After all, he says, he broke both their hearts. Essentially, he testifies that their statements to police are those of two women scorned, and that neither can be trusted. Maurice and Ashley eventually broke up in 2013 after six years together. It is only afterward, when she hacked all his social media accounts — deleting information and changing settings — that she discovered his infidelities, he says. It was at this point that she began threatening not only his life with statements to Maurice like “my mom’s going to be crying over a son” but his livelihood, personal relationships, and freedom — “I should hope for jail, rather than death.” Furthermore, he says, Ashley began contacting his loved ones and slandering his name. It was her lust for revenge, he says, that prompted her to investigate the details of the murder online, call police, and then use media reports to lie about his behaviour. She made a number of statements to police, many of which are played for the court, that he takes issue with. It is in these accusations, Maurice says, that one can see the deception she is so well versed in.
He agrees that he might have told her that police were looki
ng for him at some point and that he had to attend court. However, he denies her allegations of a Facebook video in which he can be heard bragging about conducting robberies and home invasions. Maurice also refutes the suggestion that he owned a gun that he nicknamed “Karma.” After a lengthy clip of Ashley discussing Maurice’s involvement with guns and hiding out from police, Bawden doesn’t have the opportunity to speak before Maurice asks, “Can I tell you what’s on my mind?”
Bawden agrees, and Maurice continues. “What’s accurate with what she’s saying is the part when I told her that I had court in May 2012, with the homicide detective coming to my mother’s house. She’s very powerful. For instance I told her why I went to court, she’ll go searching on the Internet … and read the whole description of everything and try to implicate me. She’s putting on this innocent woman act, but behind closed doors she is not who you think she is. She’s very dangerous. She’s a hacker … I lost my Instagram. She deleted everybody. She went in my Twitter, tweeted stuff, made up fake profiles. She went on my Facebook, changed my settings. She went crazy from there. She ‘so-called’ put a hit out on me.”
Maurice’s phone records are next on tap, showing that he was in heavy contact with both Eric and Demetrius Mables in the lead-up to the murder. The data revealed there were four calls from Eric on November 6, two days before the murder, leading eventually to a twelve-minute conversation at 7:25 p.m. that night. There are also two calls to the phone of a girl by the name of Ayan Mohamed, another of Eric’s girlfriends, on October 29; three phone calls to Demetrius’s phone on the day of the murder; and eleven text messages with Eric on November 16. When asked on each occasion if he told Ashley Williams about these calls and texts, Maurice replies no. So the question becomes: Did he tell her he was so heavily involved with so many of the alleged conspirators in the days leading up to and immediately following the murder?
Maurice is eventually faced with a disquieting question. “If I understand your evidence correctly,” Bawden says, “Ashley has essentially fabricated an allegation against you of murder. Are you aware of any means by which Ashley could have possibly known that your phone records would demonstrate links with so many of the characters who appear in this murder trial?”
In response, Maurice returns to his faithful line, essentially “hackers are going to hack.”
It is later put to Maurice that, while it is his testimony that Ashley is vindictive, he’s never said that about Silvia. “Well, I thought she wasn’t, to be honest with you. These are angry people here. After our relationship, it seems that she did [go crazy]. Silvia got a tattoo on her chest with my name a month after I met her. For me that’s too soon for someone to do such a thing like that, and it’s big, right across her chest. She put M and spelled out my last name with a heart. Maybe I have a bad choice in women. She’s very angry that I cut it off … maybe she’s angry and went off.”
Maurice will eventually do his best to put an end to the rising tide of vexing coincidences. Courtroom drama rarely gets better than what happens next. A frustrated Maurice — continuing to insist that the Ashley the jury sees on the screen is not the same one he witnessed after the breakup — finally plays his ace card, whipping a USB drive out of his pocket. “This is the angel [Ashley] you guys are going off of,” he says. “This is the angel that you’re taking information from. She’s out to get me and I have proof of that.”
On the drive are saved conversations and photos and screen grabs that Judge Boswell suggests make Ashley “appear to be a little unbalanced.” The images not only prove that Ashley made harassing phone calls, but repeatedly contacted Maurice’s girlfriend, sending between thirty and forty texts a day before threatening to blow up her house, forcing her to move three times. But she didn’t stop there, also posting “racist and deplorable” photographs to social media, juxtaposing one of the girlfriend’s children beside a picture of a baboon, and calling another a “devil child.” In other screen grabs, Ashley threatens Maurice’s life, alleging her father is in the Mafia and she is going to put a hit out on him.
In its closing, the Crown sums up its reluctance to put its faith in either woman. “I am not going to review the long list of problems and inconsistencies with the evidence of Ashley Williams and Silvia Powell,” Assistant Crown Attorney Michelle Rumble says. “Our position is you can’t rely on their evidence. It wouldn’t be safe to do so.”
Maurice Green is never charged as part of the proceedings and remains an innocent man.
18
Judgment Day
After the ten-month trial ends, the jury is sequestered to a hotel room, where they will review all the relevant facts in the case — and there is a lot of information and testimony to discuss. The twelve jurors debate for four days before reaching a decision on the fates of each of the accused. Judgment day finally arrives for the four defendants on December 13, 2014.
The packed courtroom buzzes with fervour as the four men and eight women file in and take their seats. Lenford, Daniel, and David reveal almost no emotion, choosing instead to look only bewildered, perhaps knowing deep down that their worst fears will soon to be realized. Jennifer, on the other hand, tries to hide her fear with an outward display of playfulness. Dressed in black with a frilly white silk blouse and her long black hair tied in a ponytail, the twenty-eight-year-old does her best to appear as if her spirits are high. At one point, with her lawyer Paul Cooper alongside her to show support, she smiles nervously and picks lint off Cooper’s robe, brushing her hand across the fabric to make sure any trace of it is gone. It doesn’t take long for her expression to change, though. She stands and gazes straight ahead as the ruling is uttered.
The foreman makes a point to look each of the defendants in the face as he reads out the verdict he and his co-jurors have come to. The accused don’t return his stare. Instead they glare into the abyss of their futures. None show any emotion as the word guilty is repeated over and again for each of them for first-degree murder and attempted murder.
When it is David’s turn, one of his relatives takes the news particularly hard, screaming at the top of her lungs before running from the courtroom and hollering as she races through the hallway, heightening the tension hanging heavily in the courtroom. Upon her return, she stands with her arms spread, mouthing “Why?” to which David, from behind a thick panel of glass, mouths to her the words “It’s okay.”
When Jennifer’s news is delivered, she simply bows her head. One lawyer later says that Jennifer waited until the press left before shedding her fair share of tears, “shaking and crying uncontrollably.” In the aftermath of the verdict, another lawyer says the words she repeated included “They didn’t even give me a chance,” a reference to the jury’s four short days of deliberation.
After the trial, Jennifer’s lawyer stands with his legal team in front of the courthouse, a huge crowd of reporters hanging on his every word, snapping pictures and shouting out questions as he speaks into the microphone. “[Jennifer] has no relationship with her father,” Paul Cooper says. “She has reached out to him. For her, this has been exhausting. For everyone involved it’s been a very long time. She’s absolutely devastated by the verdict.”
A post-trial press conference outside the front doors of the court building.
Detective Courtice, sneaking a smoke away from the cameras and spotlight after attending the entire trial, admits he doesn’t know what to think. “I have mixed emotions,” he says. “Reflecting back on the night it happened, Mrs. Pan was murdered and her husband badly wounded. In that sense there’s some closure, but it was a tragedy.”
When she is sentenced about a month later, on January 23, 2015, Jennifer is given the maximum penalty the Canadian law allows: twenty-five years without the chance for parole. She will be in jail until 2036. Jennifer listens to the sentence in her usual seat in courtroom 401, but this time with her head between her knees.
Justice Boswell is suc
cinct in his judgment, stating that Hann and Bich did not deserve “the death penalty [Jennifer] imposed on them. This was a business transaction … the commodity, death.”
The following morning, a large photo is published on the front page of the Toronto Sun, Canada’s largest tabloid, next to the headline “Daughter from Hell.”
The headline from December 14, 2014, after Jennifer Pan was given a life sentence for plotting the murder of her mother and the attempted murder of her father more than four years earlier.
Edward Sapiano, Eric Carty’s original lawyer, later remarks on the “brilliant” performance by Michelle Rumble and Jennifer Halajian. “I told the Crown at some point in the trial that the two of them had raised the bar on significant prosecutorial performance. It was an exceptionally complicated case, the most complicated case I have worked on. They did a massive amount of work and analysis in which the smallest detail was not overlooked. They worked harder and better than any Crown I had ever seen. They locked themselves in their office day after day sifting through line after line. It was a maze. I think they will get a judgeship and I think they should get it after this.”
19
Epitome of Evil
Away from the sensational stage of the first trial, Eric Carty stands alone in the five-seat prisoner box in a grey vest, suit pants, and burgundy collared shirt on December 7, 2015, to meet his own fate. It is in the same Newmarket courtroom where his mistrial was declared more than a year earlier. There is just a handful of people present and only two reporters left from the fifteen-odd from before. Eric’s shackles are removed before he takes his seat. His trial was originally slated for February 2016 and was scheduled to last six months. But, intent on sparing the Pan family another gruelling trial, it was the Crown’s opinion that it was best to move on. Faced with fifty consecutive years in prison for two murders, if found guilty for the Pan homicide, Eric put his belligerence toward authority aside and cut a deal with the state. It remains unclear how much his decision was influenced by the actions of his co-accused, whose defence team firmly placed the blame on him for the crime in the initial trial. As a result of his admissions, during the proceeding, he is held in protective custody.
A Daughter's Deadly Deception Page 17