Mr. Big

by Colleen Lewis

  The Crown went on to ask Nelson’s mother about her relationship with Nelson after he and Jennifer had moved back from PEI, two months prior to the girls’ deaths. They went from talking every day to no contact at all, and the Crown wanted to know why.

  “He came back empty-handed,” Pearl explained. “When he arrived he came to me. He was trying to get accommodations for him, Jennifer, and the children.”

  “And how did that conversation go?” asked Mr. Linehan.

  “Well, because of a past incident, I was told that Nelson (I’m sharing a place with a common-law husband) was not to come. I told Nelson that Eric wasn’t in favour of him coming,” she explained.

  “How did he take that news?”

  “He responded by being very disappointed,” Pearl continued. “He said he was stuck. And I said to him at that time I had a fear, too, as well as Eric. It was because of the problem I’ve had before with getting help for Nelson from social services. I was afraid that, if I took him and his wife and children, that social services would deny him an apartment in the future. And I couldn’t accommodate four people.”

  “How did Nelson react?”

  “Nelson was upset,” she said. “He said, ‘Mom, I can’t believe it. Your own son, you won’t take him in.’ I tried to explain my fear, and he reminded me that when he did get things straightened out not to come and see the girls, I wouldn’t see them because he wouldn’t let me in. Which was exactly what he did do.”

  Pearl went on to tell everyone in the courtroom that for a couple of days she was driving around looking for them. She was concerned for the children, so she contacted social services.

  “I contacted them to see why Nelson was denied an apartment,” she said. “They said if Nelson doesn’t have anywhere to go, the kids will be taken from them. I told them those kids will never go out into a foster home.”

  Jennifer watched as Pearl continued on. Linehan suggested that she take a break.

  “Those kids weren’t going out in a foster home. I loved them too much for that,” she explained. “And because I was working, and couldn’t take them, I contacted my son Mervin. He was well able to provide for them.”

  “What was Nelson’s reaction?”

  “Well, he wasn’t happy about it,” said Pearl.

  The attorney went on to ask her about Nelson’s new job and his reluctance to talk about his work.

  “He said he got it on the Internet,” she said. “I found that hard to believe, because Nelson hardly knows what a computer looks like.” Though he didn’t talk about his work, Pearl noticed he was dressing better and looking good.

  Next it was Derek Hogan’s turn. Jennifer looked on anxiously.

  Nelson had been diagnosed with epilepsy when he was nine months old.

  “Would it be accurate to say that you became over-protective of him?”

  “Yes, I did,” said Pearl. “Nelson . . . it was a fight from day one. Financially. To get help for him. Any time I ever contacted social services for help, I was told that we made too much money. I was encouraged to quit work. Then they would look out to him a hundred per cent. I didn’t want to go on welfare, I was looking for help for my child. There were months Nelson cost us a thousand dollars.

  Pearl continued to explain the expensive trips to St. John’s he required for doctors’ appointments. And though they were never hungry, there were sacrifices because of his seizures. There were times he didn’t even get a birthday gift.

  “Were there times when you thought Nelson shouldn’t be alone with the children?” asked Mr. Hogan.

  “I was always uneasy of him being alone with the kids, because of his epilepsy,” Pearl explained.

  She went on to describe the various seizures Nelson had. There were three types varying in severity.

  “Did he tell you that he had a seizure on August 4, 2002?” the lawyer asked.

  “He told me he didn’t have one.”

  “Sometime later did he tell you?”

  “Yes. I don’t know, exactly. I think it was about a month and a half or something,” Pearl answered. “He sat down in the kitchen one day and started to cry. It wasn’t surprising to me, because I had seen him do that a couple of times. He said, ‘Mom, I got something to tell ya.’ He said he had a seizure down there that day.”

  Pearl told the courtroom she had thought Nelson might have had a seizure when the girls drowned, but she didn’t want to press him. She was the one who phoned the police, and Nelson explained that he wanted to change his story. She said Nelson had always tried to hide his seizures.

  “What grade did Nelson go to in school?”

  “Five. He did grade five. For three years.”

  100

  The next person to take the stand was an RCMP officer, Cpl. Phil Matthews.

  Jennifer thought she could feel Nelson’s mother tense up as they listened to him explain the sting operation that would lead to Nelson’s arrest.

  “The first phase of the traditional investigation had been conducted in the summer of 2004,” he said. “For the lack of a better term, it had bottomed out.”

  That’s when the talk of an undercover operation began. Cst. Dave Chubbs had transferred to Gander in the spring of 2004, and he had previously worked in an undercover homicide unit in British Columbia. With Chubbs being available, it was the opportune time to start.

  In the fall, they began the process of submitting an operation plan in order to get authorization.

  “We anticipated we would need ninety days to run the plan, and we sought $173,575,” said Cpl. Matthews.

  By late November they had their approval. But things wouldn’t go as planned.

  Instead of taking ninety days, the operation was going to take longer. In mid-April, they requested an additional $148,837.

  Cpl. Matthews said that in April, after playing out thirty-three scenarios, they expected they would need another twenty-seven scenarios in order to obtain a confession from Nelson. Specifically because Nelson was paranoid.

  “We didn’t realize that we were going to have to move the operation from Newfoundland to the Montreal and Halifax area,” he told the court. “It was getting too problematic to continue running the program in Newfoundland, because it is so small and there are so many policemen.”

  The operation ended up costing $413,268.

  101

  For an entire week, Jennifer sat in shock. She listened to both Pat and Steph recall the months they had spent with Nelson.

  Nelson had thought they were his friends. He thought he had a good job. Instead, the police had lured him in. As she looked between Nelson and his former friends, she felt sad for her husband.

  She was stunned as she listened to the details. Nelson was travelling all over the mainland. And then there was the money. While he was hiding $20 bills around the house, he was getting paid thousands.

  But through her anger, Nelson’s mother was there to reassure her. Nelson had been tricked. It was all a lie. A lie with a goal of obtaining a false confession, in her view.

  But Jennifer trembled with fear on this Thursday morning. A videotape had been loaded into the machine at the front of the courtroom, and Jennifer was worried about what she was preparing to watch.

  A man named Sgt. Haslett was on the stand, and he described what they saw on the screen.

  “That’s the picture of the hotel room that we were in. It’s obviously a smaller couch and one chair there. The drapes are closed,” he stated.

  The man who was on the stand was also on the screen. He’s walking back and forth and speaking on the phone. Steph is sitting on the couch. Nelson comes into the frame.

  Jennifer struggled to hear the conversation on the tape. She listened as Nelson told the man in the other chair that he hadn’t hurt his daughters. But his words rang in her ears
when he admitted to killing them.

  She couldn’t take any more. All she wanted to do was run to the front of the court, grab Nelson, and haul him to the floor. She ran from the courtroom as quickly as she could. As she bolted through the courtroom doors, she was aware of someone following her.

  She felt an arm around her shoulder, and she recognized the woman from victim services who had been sitting in the courtroom.

  She led her down the hallway into a small office. Jennifer couldn’t stop crying. The woman handed her a box of tissues.

  “Jennifer, are you sure you don’t want to do a victim impact statement, so you can tell the court how you feel about everything that’s happened?” she asked.

  Jennifer had no idea what she was talking about, and she didn’t care. She wasn’t giving the court anything.

  Jennifer stayed in the office until she felt strong enough to face the courtroom again. Especially Nelson’s mother. In her heart, Jennifer was afraid that Nelson had killed the girls. Why else had he said he had something in the back of his mind he would take to the grave? Why did he tell that man he did it? But before Jennifer could think about anything else, Nelson’s mother was by her side.

  “Don’t you worry. They trapped him into saying that.”

  Jennifer no longer had the energy to talk about it. She just wanted to go home.

  102

  “Is Nelson going to testify?” Jennifer asked Nelson’s mother.

  “He’s afraid he’s going to have a seizure. He’ll do it, but not in front of the courtroom. You know how nervous he gets in front of a crowd. He’ll probably have a seizure for sure.”

  Judge Wayne Diamond had actually offered Nelson a screen to block out the crowd. He had also offered to have a doctor present in the courtroom while Nelson testified. But the judge wasn’t about to let him testify in private, because he had lied about his seizures in the past to get more money from social services. He’d also lied about seizures to keep his driver’s licence.

  In the end, Nelson didn’t want to testify.

  But Jennifer believed there was another reason he didn’t want to testify. She believed he wouldn’t be able to lie in front of a big crowd. She also believed he was afraid that people would see through his story.

  103

  Guilty.

  Jennifer couldn’t believe it. She started to shake. All she wanted to do was run from this place. And that is exactly what she did. She ran out into the lobby so she could shed her tears in peace. Now, more than ever, she was convinced that Nelson’s mother was right. There was no way he could have ever done this.

  A few minutes later and the crowd began to pour out of the courtroom. Jennifer couldn’t remember ever seeing Nelson’s mother so mad. And so was she. What if they had set Nelson up? Now he would go to prison for an automatic life sentence of twenty-five years.

  Nelson’s mother reached out to her, and together they retreated to an office.

  “This is not fair,” Jennifer cried. “He didn’t do this.”

  One of the clerks opened the door. “It’s time to go back in,” she said.

  Inside the courtroom, Nelson was preparing to say a few words.

  “I was told not to go against the crime boss,” he said. “I tried to tell him the truth, but he didn’t believe that.”

  Jennifer was exhausted. As the crowd began to leave the courtroom, she followed.

  Outside, a crowd of reporters were interviewing Nelson’s lawyer. They waited until the interview was over and then went outside. Jennifer had nothing to say to the cameras and microphones, but Nelson’s mother had plenty to say.

  “There’s a lot about this story that’s not right,” she said. “My son faces a grim future behind bars.”

  Jennifer already knew that his mother was going to be fighting the decision all the way. Nelson’s lawyer made it clear they would be appealing.

  His mother continued to make her case in front of the reporters as Jennifer listened in.

  Finally, the questions came to an end, and she was relieved to be sitting in the quiet of the car. Except Nelson’s mother wasn’t going to be quiet about this verdict at all. All the way home, she talked about how they would fight to have him released from jail.

  Jennifer went back to Mrs. Hart’s, and for the rest of the night she listened to the endless phone calls and questions from people who had watched the results of the trial on the evening news. Nelson’s mother had the same story for each of them. Her son was innocent and she was going to put things straight.

  Even though she had never felt so exhausted in her life, there was no sleep at all for Jennifer that night.

  104

  The next morning, Nelson’s mother made breakfast for Jennifer. But each bite of toast was nearly impossible to swallow.

  “I just need to go home right now and get things straightened out.” But all she really wanted was to be alone. She was tired of talking about Nelson, tired of listening to the constant ranting about him being framed.

  Even though Jennifer had stood by Nelson and his mother throughout the trial, there was still a part of her that questioned whether or not Nelson was guilty. She quickly put the thought out of her mind, packed her bags, and headed for home.

  Everything seemed different to her this morning. She felt like her ears were ringing from the weeks of being in the courtroom and listening to her mother-in-law. And as soon as things were quiet, she began questioning the voices she was hearing in her own head. By the time she made it halfway home, she had a splitting headache.

  When she finally got back to the apartment, she went straight to the cupboard to grab a couple of Tylenol, and then she lay down. At this moment she didn’t care if she ever moved again.

  Jennifer had missed having a telephone at the apartment, but right now she was glad no one could reach her. She knew the media from right across the country were trying to find her, and she certainly had no interest in hearing from Nelson right now.

  Two days after the sentencing, he had been transferred to the penitentiary in St. John’s, and Jennifer knew he was having a hard time. He claimed the guards didn’t like him there.

  As much as she pitied him for everything he was going through inside, Jennifer was battling her own demons.

  Then there were the lawyers. He believed the legal aid lawyers weren’t capable of representing him from day one. Halfway through the trial, he even talked about firing Mr. Hogan. Jennifer didn’t know which lawyer would end up fighting the appeal, but she had spent enough time thinking about the trial for now.

  For two full weeks she didn’t leave the apartment, until one morning she woke up and knew something wasn’t right.

  As she made her way to the bathroom, she got dizzy. So light-headed, in fact, she had to sit on the floor. Then her world went dark to the extent she wondered if she was going blind. But with no one around to help her, she had to wait out the symptoms until she felt well enough to go the doctor.

  “It looks like you’ve had a mini-stroke,” he told her. “No doubt, Jennifer, you’ve been under a lot of pressure, and you’re going to have to start relaxing. If not, you could very well end up back here with a much more severe stroke.”

  105

  As the weeks turned into months, there were fewer trips to see the Harts.

  Nelson had become agitated, and fighting the appeal was nearly impossible because he wanted to change lawyers every time progress was made. Each time Nelson demanded a new lawyer, his mother went to work to try and help him.

  But Jennifer was finding him more difficult to deal with these days. He was accusing her of working for the police. He believed she was trying to get information against him, and he even started refusing the money she was sending to him. He told her the guards were giving him a hard time, and he believed they had bugged his cell.

 
He was angry, and Jennifer couldn’t take much more. She was expecting any day he would kill himself.

  With Nelson’s unstable mental condition, an effort was put under way to give Jennifer power of attorney. But she no longer wanted anything to do with his appeal. The more time passed, the more she was convinced he was guilty.

  Since the sentencing, she had found it increasingly difficult to be so far away from the girls. As soon as Nelson returned to prison, she moved back to Gander to be closer to them. And just as her life began to settle, she got another call that would change things forever.

  “Jennifer, it’s Dad,” said Penny. “He . . . it happened this morning.”

  Jennifer had known her father was complaining about feeling sick all week, but there was no way to prepare for the shocking news.

  When she thought there were no tears left to cry, Jennifer began to cry and struggled to hang on to the receiver.

  Her father had been suffering gallbladder problems, and he was supposed to have surgery to have it removed. However, he cancelled the appointment, thinking it would go away on its own. But his gallbladder had been on the verge of rupturing all along.

  “He got up this morning and had two spoonfuls of soup and a slice of bread,” Penny explained. “Then he went back to bed, and the next thing we knew he was gone.”

  106

  At the same time Jennifer lost her father, another man came into her life. It was a taxi driver named Scott, who gave Jennifer hope that she could go back to having a normal, happy life.

  The two of them hit it off right away, and their friendship soon turned to a relationship. After the years of struggling with Nelson, she had never realized someone could treat her so well.

  When she suffered a back injury, he was there whenever he had a break. He fixed her meals and helped her with the simplest of chores. With the injury, it was difficult just getting out of bed. He brought her to visit the girls’ graves, sometimes without her even needing to ask.

  But her happiness failed to last once again.