Rage

by Jerry Langton

  Crown Attorney Hank Goody is a small, energetic man who is always perfectly coiffed. He has an extra sense for details and a flair for the dramatic—he seems tailor-made to lead the prosecution in a high-profile murder case. He had already warmed the jury up by reminding them that Johnathon had been “stabbed, cut and chopped 71 times.”

  He told them about the tape and how it had been made by a team of frightened and concerned girls, including Ashley. Goody addressed the jury directly and told them: “By their own words which you will hear spoken in their own voices, you will know that the three young persons before you now were responsible for Johnathan’s death.”

  Then he pushed play on the tape recorder. The recording begins with the electronic purr of a phone ringing from the caller’s side. There’s some murmuring. Then Kevin answers. Goody played the entire tape Ashley had made without stopping. The courtroom fell silent. The jury was aghast. Even Kevin stopped goofing around and paid attention.

  To some it seemed like nothing less than the kind of courtroom confession you see in movies or on TV. All three boys say quite plainly that they intend to kill that day, and two of them identify the planned victims, with Kevin specifically mentioning the murdered boy. Pierre only obliquely talks about his part in the plan, laconically answering “since today,” after Ashley asks him “Since when do you kill people?”

  The tape appeared to say that the boys had promised her five murders and delivered on one.

  Goody wisely waited for the effects of the tape to sink in on the jury before questioning Ashley again. He established that she had made the tape after she had received a similarly distressing call earlier in the day. He asked her why she taped the second call, which seemed to him an odd thing for someone her age to do. She replied: “To make sure this wasn’t a total lie or joke.”

  On the following day, Goody then questioned Heather, at whose house the tape was made. She told the court about how the girls had hatched the plan in drama class and repeated Ashley’s belief that they needed hard evidence of what the boys were planning before they would be taken seriously. “We didn’t want to worry anyone unless we had evidence,” she said. “We didn’t want to blow this out of proportion in case it was a practical joke.” She seemed a bit embarrassed when Goody asked her if she had ever taped phone calls before and admitted she had, but just for fun.

  Then Goody brought Heather’s mom to the stand. She testified that the girls seemed extremely agitated when they arrived at her house and ran upstairs that day. Heather gave her instructions that they were not to be disturbed because something “very serious” was going on and that she couldn’t tell her what it was until they had it all figured out. “Frankly,” the mother told court, “I thought one of them was pregnant.”

  When the call ended, the court heard, the girls “freaked out.” Heather dashed down the stairs, explained the situation to her mother and played her the tape. Her mom immediately called 911.

  Police officers Paul Wildeboer and Glenn Gray corroborated all of the day’s testimony.

  The next day, two of Johnathon’s friends were called to the stand. Dressed in a black Nike hoodie and jeans, 11-year-old Jeffrey was questioned by the judge, David Watt, as to his understanding of the legal system and the importance of his testimony. He passed the judge’s approval.

  Jeffrey described Johnathon’s life in glowing terms. He spoke about how the two of them played and talked and shared interests, about how they did “almost everything together.” Then Jeffrey detailed the last time he saw Johnathon. It was the afterschool snowball fight on the day Johnathon was murdered. After a short detention when school was finished, he told the court, Jeffrey ran outside. There he saw Johnathon with Jamal (a younger boy he would later escort home) and another boy about their age. Goody asked him if he went straight home, as he lived just across the street from the school. “No,” the boy said excitedly. “We had a snowball fight.” His enthusiasm drew a laugh from the audience when he described Johnathon as being hard to hit because he was “moving around like something out of The Matrix.”

  Jeffrey then testified that his mother called him in to punish him for coming home when he wasn’t supposed to earlier in the day. Jeffrey had a short debate with his mother in which he asked if he could go to Johnathon’s house. She said no. Jeffrey complained a little but accepted his fate. Johnathon told him he was going to take Jamal home and go to the cyber café.

  Later, Sean, Johnathon’s older friend, painted a similarly idyllic picture of the boy’s life. He talked about how they played basketball and other sports together and how they had been friends for as long as either could remember. Sean told a story about how Johnathon’s mother had taken them to the annual Santa Claus Parade about a week before he died.

  He then recounted the events of November 25, 2003 as he saw them. Johnathon’s class got out late, so Sean played basketball with other friends. Later, he still couldn’t find Johnathon, so he went home. Sean called his best friend’s house, but he got Kevin, whose voice he recognized, who told him Johnathon wasn’t home. Bored, Sean went to the cyber café himself, hoping his friend would show up. Eventually, he did. But Johnathon was out of money and Sean had just spent the last of his, he testified.

  “What did he do then?” Goody asked him.

  “He left,” Sean replied.

  “Did he come back?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever see him again?”

  Sean paused and then said: “No.”

  Goody asked him what he did after Johnathon left. Sean told the court that he played the rest of his game and at a time he estimated to be 5:20, he left for home. He pointed out that he could see Johnathon’s house from the corner as he passed Dawes on the way home.

  “Did you see anything there that night?” Goody asked him.

  “Yeah,” Sean replied. “There were lots of police cars.”

  The next witness to speak was the neighbor whose house Ralston ran to after the attack. He testified that Ralston was pantless, bleeding profusely from the head and screaming that Kevin (who the man knew) had “tried to stab him with a knife and his friend hit him on the head with a baseball bat.”

  The witness then told the court that he was a friend of Ralston’s and saw the Champagnie family frequently. He noted that in the summer he would often invite the whole family—except for Kevin—over for barbecues. When asked why he didn’t invite Kevin, the witness said that he didn’t like Kevin and Kevin didn’t like him.

  Indicating that he had a plan, Goody asked the witness what color his skin was. The witness was black. Ralston is black. Kevin, Joanne and almost everybody else involved with the case are white. Johnathon was also white.

  But if Goody hoped to convince the jury that part of Kevin’s problems with Ralston were because of racism, the judge was having none of it. He told Goody to stop asking questions based on race, saying that he had “no idea” how it was relevant to the case.

  The police officer who responded to the neighbor’s call, Constable Stephan Charron, testified that he took Ralston’s report, which included the initial attack by Kevin and the subsequent assault by Pierre. He also noted that Ralston had told him about the condition of the house and the presence of, and hasty exit by, Tim.

  On the following day, the court heard testimony from the ETF officers who arrived at 90 Dawes and then eventually at Tim’s apartment. Constable James Hung, the team’s leader, described how he and his team “cleared” the house, using a battering ram to enter the building, shouting warnings before making any moves and using a mirror on a stick to see if anyone was in a room before entering. He told how the officers cleared the first floor room by room, moved first upstairs and then down to the basement. Hung described how he and his officers were unable to avoid stepping in the vast pool of blood at the bottom of the basement stairs and then had to trudge through the broken beer bottles. Goody then asked Hung if he knew what he’d find down there. “On going down, there was a bit of urgency,�
�� he said. “We didn’t know what was in the basement—we couldn’t avoid it.”

  Constable David Leck, an eight-year veteran of the ETF, was the first one down to the basement. He described following the blood trail over the broken glass to the crawlspace. It was slightly open, and Leck could see that there was a person inside. “It was a body; I alerted the team,” he testified. “I called out to the body. There was no response.”

  Paramedic Ron Bogle testified that the police directed him to the crawlspace and he saw a child’s body in full fetal position. “I could see blood all over the body,” he said. Immediately, Bogle checked for vital signs: “I couldn’t find anything.” Aware that he could not help the child in the crawlspace or the basement, he wrapped him up in what paramedics call a “drag sheet”—a specially designed blanket with handles intended for the safe and quick transport of severely wounded patients.

  Goody then questioned Atilla Bodo, Bogle’s partner, who had already treated Ralston before seeing Johnathon. Bodo saw the body and immediately thought the worst. “He was quite evidently vital signs absent.” The 16-year veteran paramedic noted that one of Johnathon’s eyes had a “fixed, dilated pupil” (not a good sign), while the other eye was swollen shut due to a large gash just above the eyebrow. It was just one of many “large, irregularly shaped lacerations” Bodo noticed on the boy. Although most were on the head and neck, there were also a few defensive wounds on the hands—one finger on his right hand was nearly severed. Those wounds, he testified, did not compare to those on Johnathon’s neck. Bodo told the court that the boy’s trachea was completely severed. He placed a cardiac monitor on Johnathon; it detected no signs of life. Normally, at that point, paramedics give up on trying to revive patients, but because Johnathon was so young, Bodo testified, he made what he called a “last-ditch effort.” He inserted a laryngoscope—a device that allows a medical professional to look down the throat of a patient—into Johnathon’s mouth, but he couldn’t see anything he could recognize. He was shocked to see the light from the scope shining on the opposite wall of the ambulance. Eventually, Bodo desperately inserted the laryngoscope directly into Johnathon’s open throat wound, but it was no use.

  Bodo testified that he asked Bogle to call Sunnybrook Hospital at 7:03 to ask for assistance. At 7:07, he said, he had no choice but to declare Johnathon dead.

  Earlier, Hung testified that they had just finished “clearing” the house when they received a call that one of the suspects had fled to another address—Tim’s apartment.

  One of the other ETF officers who testified that day was Constable William Cook, who actually arrested Tim. He told the court that the team had assembled in Tim’s back yard with shields and shotguns and were ready to break into the house when they were surprised. The back door opened, he said, and the officers could see Tim, with a mobile phone in his hand, just inside the apartment. Cook testified that he repeatedly ordered the boy to put the phone down and put his hands on his head, but Tim ignored him. Instead, the cop said, Tim walked toward the team “with a blank look on his face.”

  His actions, Cook said, “forced” the police officer to kick the boy in the ribs to immobilize him. “I wasn’t sure of his mind-set at the time,” he said. Then he paused and added: “I believe it knocked a little wind out of him.” Some of the audience, comparing the hulking cop to the skinny kid, chuckled a little.

  Cook also noted that another man—who appeared to him to be in his late 20s—emerged from the apartment and started arguing with and then threatening the officers. He too, was placed under arrest. Tim, according to Hung, identified the older man as his father and told him in front of the police that he had witnessed a murder.

  Tim’s defense lawyer, David McCaskill, had little of substance to ask Hung, Cook, Bogle, Bodo or any of the other officers who were at 90 Dawes on November 25. It’s generally considered bad form at a jury trial for a lawyer to contradict or get at all rough with people whose jobs it is to save lives, especially when they have already delivered heart-wrenching testimony. Still, McCaskill did ask Cook if a kick to the ribs was the most appropriate way “to take down a 15-year-old boy.” Unruffled, Cook replied that “under the circumstances,” it was.

  Next came the testimony of the officers who arrested Kevin and Pierre. Detective Constable Chris Sherk described his surprise at seeing the suspects “just strolling down the street.” Even as he and his partner approached, Sherk said, Pierre looked “very relaxed—he didn’t seem worried.” Sherk then said he “took physical control” of Pierre and, once he confirmed his identity, placed him under arrest for first-degree murder. He waited for a reaction from the boy, but none came. “It struck me as very strange, like it was no big deal,” the detective testified. “I guess if somebody told me I was under arrest for murder, I might exhibit some emotion.”

  Detective Sergeant John Rossano told a very similar story when it came to his arrest of Kevin. When the murder suspect appeared to be “devoid of any reaction,” Rossano decided to make sure Kevin was aware of what was happening to him. “Do you understand what this is about?” Rossano said that he asked Kevin. “Yeah,” he testified Kevin answered. “The death of my brother.”

  The next witness to take the stand was Detective Constable Robert Armstrong, from the Toronto Police forensic identification unit. He processed Kevin and Pierre after their arrests. His testimony included photos of the boys from the night of the arrest. Although Kevin was much fatter and had a more aggressive hairstyle in the photo, it was clearly the same boy. Armstrong then showed photos of Kevin’s right hand, which revealed fresh bruising and lacerations on the knuckles and on the heel of the palm. Armstrong testified that Kevin’s wounds were from “fairly recent” activity. He showed photos of both boys’ knees and one of Pierre’s back. His back was covered with a series of deep, reddish welts perpendicular to his spine. At least one courtroom observer I spoke with later admitted that it appeared as though Pierre had been whipped, but Armstrong testified that they were just stretch marks, the result of Pierre growing so quickly that the skin on his back just couldn’t keep up.

  Armstrong also catalogued what the boys had on them when they were brought to the police station. Pierre had on a black baseball cap, a black Perry Ellis jacket, a white “Deep in Denial” T-shirt, blue Mecca jeans, plaid boxer shorts and a pair of white K-Swiss sneakers. Kevin wore a similar uniform with a black faux leather jacket, a red “Just Do It” T-shirt, striped boxer shorts, black fleece sweatpants and black and silver Adidas sneakers. Neither boy carried any cash, but Pierre had a monthly student bus pass in his black nylon wallet and a house key.

  Armstrong noted that both T-shirts were stained with a dark substance, which, he testified, “I took to be blood.”

  As was the case with the other police officers, Armstrong testified that he was surprised by the boys’ lack of reaction to their situation. He described them as “compliant and cooperative” and said, “they seemed unconcerned” about their predicament.

  Armstrong’s colleague from the forensic identification unit, Rick McKeown, took the stand the next day. The leader of the crime scene investigators at 90 Dawes, McKeown showed the court a number of photos of the scene and evidence found there. He began his testimony with a description of the deep pool of clotted blood he found at the bottom of the stairs and the spatters of blood on the adjacent walls. “It all appeared to be low to the ground,” he said.

  Next to the pool, he spotted two stacks of white plastic chairs. On top of one of them was what he described as “a large hunting knife” with a black handle.

  Throughout the basement, he noted broken glass, mostly green but some clear, some with labels identifying them as pieces of beer bottles still attached. On the glass, he noted a great deal more blood. “My opinion was the glass was broken before the blood got deposited on it,” he testified. McKeown also noted mustard splatter marks throughout the basement and a TV that had recently been smashed in.

  Upstairs in the house, in the
front hallway near the main entrance, McKeown testified that there were two baseball bats—one wood, one aluminum—resting against a wall. “There appeared to be blood spatters on both,” he said, noting that the aluminum one was much bloodier. He also pointed out that there was mustard on both of the bats. Beside them, on the carpet, was another blood spatter.

  A thorough search of the house revealed a large, notched meat cleaver partially sticking out from under the living room couch, a green butcher knife in the kitchen beside a series of more blood spatters and a bloody towel in the blood-stained main floor bathroom sink.

  He revealed that there were no identifiable fingerprints of any of the suspects on the bats, knives or meat cleaver.

  On the following day, McKeown showed the court a photograph of the faded jeans Johnathon was wearing the day he was killed. On them he pointed out a number of mustard stains that matched the mustard spatters in the basement. He then moved on and pointed just above the left knee and said, “On the center portion of the left leg, we see brownish red discoloration, which appears to be dried blood.”

  That was too much for Joanne, who had been very composed up to this point. The sight of her dead son’s tiny jeans—ones she had handled countless times before—stained with his own blood and the mustard from the boys’ rampage hit her hard. Maybe she was picturing him being dragged over the broken glass or maybe it just reminded her that her boy was gone, but it caused her to break down. She was taken from the courtroom in tears.

  She didn’t have to see the next exhibit, which was Ralston’s shredded winter jacket. It may well have saved his life when it absorbed the force of the butcher knife Kevin had thrust at his heart.