The Death of Donna Whalen

by Michael Winter

  In the photograph the stomach is quite full. She had eaten a meal that extended her stomach and the contents have not yet passed to the small bowel. However, you can’t use stomach contents to determine the time of death. Dr Abery has had cases where the individual has been in the intensive care unit on a respirator and he knows they havent eaten, but at autopsy you find gastric contents.

  The body was thirty-one degrees at about ten a.m. You would lose that much temperature in six to eight hours, so you might be looking at between two and four oclock in the morning.

  GARY BEMISTER

  Gary Bemister looked around the living room: a remote control was underneath a chair, the television was on. There were two lights on, one in each corner. Dr Abery was examining the body and pronounced the lady dead. Gary noticed several stab wounds in the left breast area. He did not touch the body. There was a large amount of blood at the scene. It was quite difficult to see what wounds. There was a pair of panties around the lady’s neck, and they were bunched in the front. There was a sanitary pad alongside of the body. Paper bags were over her head and hands. He did a preliminary look for any outstanding physical evidence, to determine if a break and entry had occurred. There was some blood around the handle on the kitchen utility drawer and inside, on the cutlery tray. All of the doors at one time or another had been forced or broken into. The windows seemed secure. He took some photographs of the deceased and arranged transportation to the Health Sciences Centre. He also used an industrial-grade camcorder with a video light. Him and Charles Stamp started on the outside of the scene and did a walk-through to show as much detail as possible.

  There’s a heavy rain when they are walking on back of the swings. You seem to hear it. They went in through the front door and started upstairs, they scanned through some children’s toys. There appears to be a white material on the first three or four stairs going up. There was a red lego block there. That’s the top of the stairs and a pair of sneakers. Those shots of the body are graphic because the scene is a fresh complaint and you have to cover off all areas. Those shots are looking for injuries that suggest a sexual assault. The stain in the carpet, especially when the body of the deceased was removed, was extremely noticeable in colour from the rest of the carpet.

  There is a photograph on the fridge, a gentleman with a beard and moustache. That’s Sheldon Troke. A tea bag right on top of the garbage. There’s a bucket with dirty water but there’s no colour of red in it. In on the bathroom floor there’s jeans, a bra and a blouse. The master bedroom, a police scanner is on top of the television.

  Gary Bemister took responsibility for seizing all of these exhibits. The kitchen table and the coffee table, a paper bag that was over the hand, a left hand nail clipping and scraping from Dr Abery, a piece of fibre that was seized on the outside of the right hand. It’s very small you can’t really see it. They use a portable light source called the luma light.

  There’s a pubic hair combing, a vaginal smear, a rectal smear, a plucked hair from the head of the deceased, a plucked eyebrow hair. A pair of lady’s underwear twisted around the neck area were allowed to dry overnight and put in a bag the next morning. They were bloodstained. A paper bag over the right hand, a paper bag on the head, four chains and pendants, three sets of earrings, two blue plastic buckles. They would have been on her hair. A pair of white socks. A bedsheet that the deceased was wrapped in from her home. A nightdress that the deceased had on at the time, you can see it’s bloodstained. There are cuts in the nightdress around the chest area. The body bag liner is just something the deceased was wrapped in. The police van normally carries clean body bags. She was placed in the sheet first and the liner, then the bag. The liner is transparent, it’s not as strong. The body bag itself has handles. A blond hair on the nightdress. A sanitary napkin found under the right leg. Some paint samples taken from the doorknob area as a control sample.

  Alongside the coffee table was a Wendy’s bag with a plate and cover and a receipt. Somebody had obviously finished their lunch. The bag looks like it’s almost sitting up on the floor. Donna Whalen had some sort of salad to eat that night.

  The two children were now in the back of Agnes Whalen’s car. Mrs Whalen is their grandmother. Ches Hedderson leaned in on the passenger side. The children were in their pyjamas. Sharon had a housecoat on. Cory said that Sheldon killed his mother. He stabbed her. Mrs Whalen stopped him from saying anything more. Ches Hedderson told her to be quiet. He asked Sharon what happened and she said, Sheldon killed Mom. He asked if she saw what happened and she said no. Mrs Whalen said the children dont know what happened. They only think that’s what happened because Donna told them about Sheldon being in jail for stabbing someone before. Sharon said Sheldon stabbed her mother. During the next minute or so Ches Hedderson had difficulty getting the children to say what happened as Mrs Whalen was interfering. He told her not to speak to the children again.

  CHARLES STAMP

  That’s right they didnt find pumps they found sneakers. You walk in a hallway and the first room on your right is the little boy’s room. Over here is a bureau and his bed and a closet. You walk down to the end of the hall and this is Sharon’s room. In the middle there is a dresser. It’s kind of out of place, but that’s the way it was.

  The kitchen looks very dark. What happens is the flash strikes the wall that’s closer and reflects that light back to the camera. The kitchen wasnt dark at the time.

  You can see a bible opened up on the carpet. There’s a religious poem. This one is a welcome to the Salvation Army, the door is open to you, if youre searching for a life. It says Donna Whalen, 14 years old, single, grade nine. This one is a search for God.

  Some cigarette butts, an ashtray next to the coffee table. There are pamphlets, a writing pad, an alcohol and drug dependency fax sheet, power stepper exercise, a valium pamphlet, information for family of offenders and a daycare subsidy cancellation notice. This was in the storage area of the coffee table.

  A large black handbag was in the living room on the carpet in front of the chesterfield next to the coffee table. There’s cosmetics and a container full of pills and a notebook of doctors’ names and some money owed, some airplane flight information. There is a wallet and a driver’s licence, credit cards, health cards, nine dollars and seventy-eight cents and a small battery. Part of the handbag is on her head.

  A blood-soaked pillow was on the carpet in the living room between the coffee table and the chesterfield. A beige doily was partly under the coffee table on the living room carpet.

  Charles looked for footprints on the linoleum floor, the kitchen floor, the bathroom floor and the hardwood floors. Then he took the photographs. Gary Bemister used oblique light, Charles did not. There was a footprint found.

  You see a wooden rocking chair and there is a mat underneath the rear leg of the rocking chair and a brown mat underneath a table. The blood impression that he got was right between the mat underneath the rocking chair going towards the brown mat. Someone had walked in blood and then walked out in that direction. A heel print.

  GARY BEMISTER

  The next day Gary went with Charles Stamp to the crime scene to find photo albums or address books. Constable Stamp removed a photo album and two address books. They were there twenty minutes. They concentrated on the living room and the master bedroom. There’s two end tables. Gary Bemister was dressed like he is today, shirt and tie. He was wearing a pair of shoes, the same pair he has on right now. He was sitting in the office and Charles Stamp noticed the print on his shoe. Gary took his shoe off and they used a small bit of margarine and rubbed it on the heel and Gary walked on a piece of paper. When you walk, the pattern from the heel is embedded in the paper and then they use some black powder and go over the margarine on the paper and the pattern type will come up. Charles Stamp made a photocopy of it on a transparent sheet and that enables him to lay it directly on top of any photographic impression they have to see if it matches. They couldnt positively identify it as Gary Bemi
ster’s because they couldnt locate any accidental characteristics—when you own a pair of shoes you accumulate nicks. You have to actually compare these marks to positively say that an impression was made by this shoe. They put the sheet directly over a photograph that was enlarged to actual size of the blood impression on the floor. You have to put a known item in the photograph, in this case, it was a six-inch ruler, and you can enlarge a photograph until the six-inch ruler is actually six inches. So you know that everything in that photograph is actual size and Charles Stamp laid it directly over the impression. He gave Gary back the shoe immediately. It was his heel print.

  CHARLES STAMP

  He lifted some friction ridges from the hot water tap on the sink in the bathroom. You can see the H. It’s not a pattern by your end joints. If you grab a hot water tap, you dont grab it by your finger. You grab it around what’s termed the delta. It’s a fingerprint pattern like the mouth of a river, ridges going this way and all of a sudden, the ridges diverge. Most of these ridges run side to side or slightly slanted, if you want to look at your own fingers. But around this area here in everybody’s finger, there is a delta. Charles searched it against prints that he had and he also sent it to Ottawa and they searched it and it was negative. Charles strongly suspects it was not made by a finger.

  PHILIP ABERY

  Most people assume that forensic pathologists spend all of their time with dead people. They do, but their area of expertise is in injury analysis and you dont have to be dead for them to give an opinion on an injury.

  There was a sanitary napkin under the body, but Dr Abery didnt see any evidence of bleeding to suggest she was on her period. He took sections of the uterus, but the uterus lining tends to dissolve and it’s very difficult to say by examining under the microscope whether or not at what stage in the menstrual cycle she was in.

  Dr Abery can’t speak to the habits of the deceased as to whether she wore her makeup or her chains to bed. His only experience is with his wife and he knows she wears her chains to bed and occasionally wears her makeup to bed.

  He does know that Donna Whalen must have been bleeding predominantly outside rather than inside her body because inside the body he only found five hundred millilitres of blood, and that’s only a little more than you’d donate when you went to the Red Cross.

  She may have voluntarily removed her panties for purposes of a sexual relationship with someone.

  With regards to consensual sexual activity without ejaculation, there’s no way to tell whether that occurred or not.

  The fingernail is well manicured there. That was before he did a finger clipping because when he does finger clippings, he clips right down.

  There is a series of prick marks around the stab wounds. When youre stabbing an individual, it’s difficult to say how far into the body youre going to go with each stab, because youre into a situation where youre not using the same degree of force all the time. Youre not hitting the same body area. The person may be turning and all type of things. So stab wounds vary greatly. These superficial wounds could have been caused by the victim trying to move away from the knife as the knife came toward her. Perhaps she moved back so the forward thrust reached its maximum. Or she partly blocked a thrust so the knife didnt go as far as the person had intended. Or she grabbed the individual’s hand.

  If the assailant was at his full reach when he was poking, then that would inhibit the penetration of the wound. If there was torture-type prodding with a knife and the assailant’s motive was not at that point to inflict a deep wound, that could also be responsible for it. Have sexual intercourse with me or I’m going to do something to you and you prick a person with a knife.

  Dr Abery’s own view is there’s a message here with the underwear being wrapped around the neck and these intimidating wounds. There’s a message that there’s something between the assailant and the victim.

  Death is not an event. It is a process. It’s very unusual for a person to be alive one minute and dead the next. It takes a little bit of time, even with massive gunshot wounds to the head and things like that, people do not die immediately.

  Once a person dies, the stomach starts to digest itself. This is a process called autolysis and this happens to some extent in all organs. It’s not a physiological function of the stomach. It’s just that the stomach enzymes, as the cells die they release enzymes and these enzymes break down the organs. But the stomach stops functioning at death, it will not pulse food down into the small bowel or into the colon once death has occurred.

  As a body decomposes, bacteria in the colon start to break down the body. Because the digestive organs such as the stomach and the pancreas no longer have a blood supply and can no longer protect themselves, cells die and release these enzymes, it breaks itself down.

  You’ve got the heart that’s cut. You’ve got the main vein in the body cut. You’ve got the main vessel coming from the lungs that is cut. All of these carry a substantial volume of blood. In addition, you’ve got the lungs bleeding. If those wounds are in quick repetition, death is fairly rapid.

  Her bleeding is outside the body rather than inside. If she had been sitting on the chesterfield and got up, blood would start to run down. There’s a demarcation point at the chest upwards, so she didnt get up. If she did get up and hold a pillow close to her, that might prevent blood from draining downwards. But she probably died so quickly that she didnt have the strength or the time. These wounds occurred bang, bang, bang, one after the other.

  If you sat the deceased upright, the wounds are lateral. If you lay the deceased on her side, then theyre vertical. She wasnt strangled. What would the reason be for moving the body? Either to confuse the crime scene or to check that the individual is alive. There are cases where assailants have tried doing CPR on people that they’ve just killed.

  LOUISE MOTTY

  Louise Motty interviewed Sharon a couple of times. She took her to her mother’s wake at the funeral home and she spoke with her quite often at Presentation House as well as at her grandmother’s house. Presentation House is a shelter for children that have either been apprehended by Social Services or children such as Sharon who need a safe house.

  Sharon had all these dreams. She was afraid that whoever killed her mother was going to Presentation House to get her. She was terrified at that thought. When they went to the wake, she wanted to know if Sheldon was going to be there. She was terrified of him. She had written some things in her diary, things she had witnessed between her mother and Sheldon Troke. Sheldon hit her mother or there was loud arguments or he’d beat up furniture. Louise, she said, I wrote in my diary that if Sheldon killed my mom, I would like to die too. And so they had to talk about this. But her biggest fear was that Sheldon would come after her and Louise had to reassure her that herself and Constable Bemister would take care of her and they’d let nobody at her and at Presentation House, the doors were locked and nobody could get in there and that reassured her somewhat. But every day it was always: Is Sheldon in jail now? Can he get out? Are the bars strong enough? Does he know? When she went down to her grandmother’s, it turned to does he know that I’m down here? Will he come down here and get me? She talked about a van that she had seen on the road and she wondered who was in that van, it was constant.

  That was another comment too: I wonder if he knew that I was in the house that night. Would he come after me because I was in the house? It was an extreme fear and a lot of it was being home and finding her mom’s body that morning. Louise has never seen fear in a child like she saw in Sharon, of any child witness that she’s had to bring through the court before the accused person.

  EDIE GUZZWELL

  Constable Motty phoned her and said that the children were ready to come home. So Edie Guzzwell and Agnes Whalen went up to the station and Edie went in ahead and they had some kind of a little play area set up, and Cory came out and he wrapped his arms around her knees and said Aunt Edie, Mommy is dead and Sheldon killed her. He was trying to tell her so
mething about his mom’s legs had blood on them or they had bruises. Sharon was inside talking to Constable Motty. They let Sharon come out and Sharon told her that Sheldon had killed her mother. She’d heard Sheldon’s voice and her mother say stop it Sheldon.

  RUTH VIVIAN

  Saturday night Ruth played darts at the Piccadilly Club and they had a dinner and dance and Ruth knew Pat was going to have a few beers so she picked up a half-dozen for him so he wouldnt get sick the next day. That Sunday afternoon he was sat at the kitchen table and Ruth had a lay on the chesterfield. Tom said, Mom, youre wanted on the phone. Ruth said, hang on a minute, and she went and answered the telephone. This person started asking her questions about what time was it Donna came home Friday night, who was she with, was she by herself, things like this, and Ruth took it for granted it was a police officer. Then he mentioned his name, that it was Sheldon Troke, and she couldnt figure out how he got her number because theyre not in the phone book under her name or Pat’s.

  Sheldon told her to make sure—like the way he said it made her afraid—make sure you say it was nine-thirty I left Donna’s and he made that clear and it didnt sound like to be nice and say it. It frightened Ruth. She didnt say nothing to her husband because she knows what her husband is like when he gets mad so she stayed at the kitchen for a second and came out to the living room and out front, went around the side of the house—there was a police officer out in the back and she told him. She said, Sheldon Troke just called here.