A Moment in Crime episode 9: The wrongful conviction of David Milgaard — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:03[Music]
2. 0:09welcome back to a moment in crime this
3. 0:12is our ninth episode when we began this
4. 0:15series it was to dig back into the
5. 0:17leader-post archives and look back at
6. 0:20some of the biggest crime stories that
7. 0:22this province has seen and I think what
8. 0:25is easily one of the biggest is now 50
9. 0:28years old it began on January 31st 1969
10. 0:33and it's easily one of the craziest page
11. 0:37turners in saskatchewan crime annals we
12. 0:40have a poor woman found dead in a
13. 0:43snowbank young man who goes to prison
14. 0:46proclaiming his innocence we have key
15. 0:49witnesses who recount their evidence DNA
16. 0:52testing that doesn't match and finally
17. 0:56the real killer going to prison if
18. 0:58you're fans of Netflix shows like making
19. 1:01of a murderer the staircase an innocent
20. 1:04man this is the scow Xuan's virgin
21. 1:07[Music]
22. 1:18[Music]
23. 2:02this story begins on January 31st 1969
24. 2:07in Saskatoon early that frigid morning
25. 2:10Gale Miller heads out to catch a bus
26. 2:14she's found later by schoolchildren dead
27. 2:18in the snow she had been raped and she'd
28. 2:21suffered 27 slash or puncture wounds a
29. 2:25trail of stolen items from Gail's purse
30. 2:28leads police to a house about a block
31. 2:31away and it eventually leads to David
32. 2:34Milgard Mill guard then 16 years old had
33. 2:37come from Regina to Saskatoon that night
34. 2:39with friends and ended up at the house
35. 2:42of shorty Catrin initially a man from
36. 2:45that house told police Milgard had been
37. 2:47acting oddly that night and may have
38. 2:49even had blood on his clothes but Mill
39. 2:52guards companions told police he had an
40. 2:55alibi they were with him all night and
41. 2:57he hadn't done anything
42. 2:58however months later under questioning
43. 3:01by another police officer the teens
44. 3:04eventually changed their stories and
45. 3:06they implicated Milgard even saying he
46. 3:09reenacted the crime and one witness said
47. 3:11she'd actually seen him committed On
48. 3:13January 31st 1970 exactly a year after
49. 3:17Miller's murder Milgard
50. 3:20ended up going to prison for life
51. 3:26[Music]
52. 3:34on the advice of his lawyer Milgard
53. 3:38never testified and was largely
54. 3:40convicted on these very incriminating
55. 3:42statements from his companions there
56. 3:44were a series of Appeals but without any
57. 3:47success and no guard remained in prison
58. 3:50his mother Joyce Milgard became his
59. 3:53greatest advocate and began lobbying
60. 3:56almost immediately for her son that she
61. 3:59believed was innocent 1990 was a key
62. 4:03year in her efforts that was the year
63. 4:05that some of those witnesses who had
64. 4:07testified so long ago against her son
65. 4:10actually started to recount their
66. 4:13testimony a new name also surfaced at
67. 4:16that time of a violent man who had lived
68. 4:18only a block away from where this murder
69. 4:21had occurred that man was Larry Fisher
70. 4:24he and his wife Linda had lived in a
71. 4:27rental suite in a house at 3:34 Avenue
72. 4:32south that happened to be the cadherin
73. 4:35house the very same house that Milgard
74. 4:37and his companions had been at that
75. 4:39night so who was Larry Fisher in
76. 4:42mid-december 1968 in Saskatoon police
77. 4:46had issued a warning letting people know
78. 4:48that there was a rapist who was pulling
79. 4:51women into alleyways and raping them
80. 4:53some of them at night at knifepoint
81. 4:55but the law didn't catch up to Larry
82. 4:57Fisher really for those crimes until
83. 5:00September of 1970 he was in Winnipeg and
84. 5:03in the midst of raping another woman
85. 5:05when he was arrested he confessed not
86. 5:08only to the rapes in Winnipeg but to
87. 5:10those in Saskatoon at that time no
88. 5:14guards had run out of all his appeals
89. 5:16all the way up to the Supreme Court
90. 5:18Fischer received a 13 year sentence he's
91. 5:21imprisoned for about nine years gets
92. 5:24paroled and in 1980 is released into
93. 5:27North Battleford within months he
94. 5:30attacks another woman and brutally rapes
95. 5:32her he's sentenced to a further ten
96. 5:35years and that sentence is
97. 5:37added on to his other sentence he
98. 5:39doesn't see the light of day again
99. 5:41outside of prison until 1994
100. 5:48[Music]
101. 6:02in the meantime Milgard is languishing
102. 6:06in prison still proclaiming his
103. 6:08innocence his mother Joyce and joined by
104. 6:12her lawyers David asper and Hersh Walsh
105. 6:15continue to lobby the government to
106. 6:17reopen this case and those efforts
107. 6:19finally come to fruition in 1991 then
108. 6:23federal Justice Minister Kim Campbell
109. 6:26orders the Supreme Court to review the
110. 6:29case in April of 1992 the Supreme Court
111. 6:33finds Milgard had a fair trial back in
112. 6:351970 but all of this new evidence about
113. 6:39Fisher could have made a difference to
114. 6:42the verdict in that case and it washes
115. 6:45his conviction the ball is now in the
116. 6:48court of the Saskatchewan government who
117. 6:50could now retry David Milgard on the
118. 6:53charges then Justice Minister Bob
119. 6:55Mitchell says they won't retry the case
120. 6:58they enter a stay of proceedings but
121. 7:00Mitchell also refuses to hold an inquiry
122. 7:03were even address any compensation for
123. 7:07mill guard after serving 23 years in
124. 7:10prison mill guard is finally released in
125. 7:12April of 1992 the same month the Supreme
126. 7:16Court brings in that decision a month
127. 7:18later I met with him in Regina he was
128. 7:20here visiting his brother and some of
129. 7:23his supporters and I remember talking to
130. 7:26David and and him talking about how he
131. 7:28felt like he was an illegal Limbo
132. 7:29because even though his conviction has
133. 7:33had been quashed people didn't yet see
134. 7:35him as an innocent man I remember him
135. 7:38saying to me that what he really wanted
136. 7:40to do was make it clear to everyone that
137. 7:42he didn't kill anyone and he was hoping
138. 7:45for an inquiry
139. 7:46to achieve that in the years that
140. 7:48followed the media spotlight really
141. 7:51turned towards Larry Fisher who looked
142. 7:53like the primary suspect in gayle
143. 7:55miller's case larry fisher served his
144. 7:57full sentence and didn't get out of
145. 7:59prison until 1994 for all those sex
146. 8:02he had committed Larry Fischer was very
147. 8:05bitter about this media glare that he
148. 8:08was under and he told star Phoenix
149. 8:10reporter Warren Golding in 1994 that
150. 8:14quote you guys are killing me
151. 8:16[Music]
152. 8:23it took another five years until July
153. 8:271997 before David Milgard truly was
154. 8:30cleared there had been several attempts
155. 8:33to do DNA testing but the technology
156. 8:36just wasn't advanced enough to get a
157. 8:38conclusive result eventually everything
158. 8:40is shipped to a lab in England and
159. 8:43finally in 1997 those results come back
160. 8:46and the semen found on Gale Millers
161. 8:50clothes did not match david mel guard at
162. 8:54that point there was a news conference
163. 8:56in Winnipeg and David Milgard said that
164. 9:00it had been a struggle those were his
165. 9:02words to live with all of this for all
166. 9:05these years I'm sure clearly an
167. 9:07understatement
168. 9:08his mother Joyce was just happy that her
169. 9:11her son could get out from under what
170. 9:13she described as a cloud after that the
171. 9:16cloud shifted to Larry Fisher and within
172. 9:19days of that announcement about the DNA
173. 9:22testing he was arrested for the murder
174. 9:24of Gail Miller
175. 9:25Larry Fisher went on trial in Yorkton in
176. 9:281999 and the star witness at that trial
177. 9:31was DNA testing those results that had
178. 9:34come back from those DNA tests showed
179. 9:37that very conclusively it had been Larry
180. 9:41Fisher who had killed Gail Miller an
181. 9:43expert said there was a one in nine
182. 9:46hundred fifty trillion chance that that
183. 9:50DNA sample had come from anyone other
184. 9:52than Larry Fisher
185. 9:54[Music]
186. 9:59Larry Fischer was convicted and
187. 10:01sentenced in January 2000 to life in
188. 10:04prison but that by no means was the end
189. 10:07of this case
190. 10:08Larry Fischer appealed to the Court of
191. 10:11Appeal also to the Supreme Court all of
192. 10:13that was rejected it was only once all
193. 10:16of that was cleared that the provincial
194. 10:19government opened a public inquiry into
195. 10:22this matter
196. 10:29[Music]
197. 10:34the inquiry of that david mel guard and
198. 10:37i had talked about back in regina in
199. 10:39nineteen ninety two finally got underway
200. 10:42in Saskatoon in September of 2005 and it
201. 10:46would be another three years before the
202. 10:48final report was was released the
203. 10:50inquiry dismissed allegations of some
204. 10:53sort of conspiracy to put and keep david
205. 10:56mel guard behind bars but it did find a
206. 10:58number of missteps had allowed that to
207. 11:00happen among the possibilities and
208. 11:03missed opportunities the inquiry felt
209. 11:06was in nineteen eighty when linda fisher
210. 11:09then Larry's ex-wife had come forward to
211. 11:13police and raised concerns that she
212. 11:16thought her ex-husband may have killed
213. 11:18gail miller one of the other criticisms
214. 11:22in the report came upon a calgary police
215. 11:25officer who had interrogated and
216. 11:27eventually got those false statements
217. 11:30from some of the witnesses that became
218. 11:32so key in convicting david mel guard
219. 11:34david mill guard never returned to
220. 11:36Saskatoon when that commission of
221. 11:38inquiry report was brought in by then he
222. 11:41was just moving on with his life about a
223. 11:43decade earlier in may 1999 the province
224. 11:47had agreed to pay david Milgard ten
225. 11:50million dollars in compensation
226. 11:52coincidentally it's about the same
227. 11:53amount that the inquiry cost the
228. 11:56province as well fisher served 15 years
229. 11:59in prison for gayle Miller's murder he
230. 12:02died in a BC prison in June of 2015
231. 12:06ironically the name of the person who
232. 12:08wasn't the killer is perhaps even more
233. 12:11well-known than the person who actually
234. 12:13committed the crime this case shook the
235. 12:16very foundations of Saskatchewan justice
236. 12:19system
237. 12:19[Applause]
238. 12:42[Music]
239. 12:53[Music]