The Coldest Case

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

Foreward

T

he house is gone now. There’s nothing left of the structure that stood for decades, a silent reminder of a terrible event and an enduring mystery. For years, people would gaze at the house. It sat silent, nondescript, yet sinister.

“That’s where the murder happened,” they’d say.

Sometime after the supper hour on December 9, 1974, someone stood behind Beverly Smith in her kitchen and fired a single shot from a .22 calibre gun. Beverly fell to the floor, dead. The shooter fled into the pre-winter gloom, leaving her there.

Silence gathered in the room, eradicating the sudden sound - that shot in the night - that no one heard. No one but the killer.

The discovery of Bev’s body later that night would set in motion a series of investigations and events spanning the next 40 years, all part of a troubling mystery that lingers to this day. There remains no definitive answer to the question: Who killed Beverly Smith?

That doesn’t mean that suspects have not been identified - they have. It does not mean that the full force of the justice system has not been brought to bear on a man believed to have committed the heinous act - it has. But all these years later, no convictions have been registered; no one has been found guilty of the murder. The question remains unanswered.

The material in this book was compiled over the course of countless hours of courtroom testimony and legal arguments, and review of surreptitiously recorded conversations, investigative files, and police interrogations. It is a story that begins with an unspeakably cruel crime then careens through the ensuing decades, sometimes with great momentum, sometimes with no developments for years.

It is a mystery born of tragedy and loss. And until the mystery is solved, the story is incomplete.

Jeff Mitchell

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The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

In December 1974 Beverly and Doug Smith were making a home for themselves and baby Rebecca at 4661 Old Simcoe Road in Raglan. When Doug left the house for his evening shift at General Motors on December 9 Beverly was alive and well. A few hours later police would find her dead on the kitchen floor: a gunshot wound to the head. In this photo crime investigation vehicles can be seen opposite the house.

1 The Beginning Of A Decades-Long Murder

Mystery

DECEMBER 9, 1974

The last time he saw her, Beverly was framed by the front window of the old house, baby Rebecca in her arms.

It was Monday, December 9, 1974, and Doug Smith was pulling his car out of the driveway as the early winter evening descended. He’d just arisen from an afternoon nap and had to get his ass in gear in order to make his 6 p.m. night shift start at the General Motors plant in Oshawa.

Doug had spent the day with Bev and Becky, more or less puttering. He and Bev got up in the morning and had a breakfast of poached eggs, then headed out on a number of errands. There had been a run to the dump to get rid of some junk and a visit to the fabric store so Bev could get sewing supplies. They made a stop at the beer store before heading home.

Doug and Bev had been renting the house in Raglan since the previous year.

Married in July of 1971, they were planning on buying a house; they were thinking about putting an offer in on a property in Oshawa, a place of their own and closer to The Motors than Raglan, a speck of a hamlet north of Oshawa. Raglan 3

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

wasn’t much, just a cluster of houses west of the main road between Oshawa and Port Perry. There was Czyruk’s gas station and a store, and not much else. Doug had for a time run an antique shop out of a building on Old Simcoe Street, the hamlet’s main drag, but it sat idle now. It was a classic small-town scenario; not much happened, and everybody knew everybody.

Bev had left her office job in Oshawa when Becky, now 10 months, was born.

There were aspects of being a stay-at-home mom Bev disliked; she hated being alone at night, and was adamant about keeping the doors locked when Doug was away. Sometimes she dropped in to see her friend Linda, who lived across the road in a rented house with her husband Al Smith. Bev shared a November birthday with Linda and Al’s infant daughter. People who knew Bev described her as a lovely girl. Just 22, she was a wisp of a thing, less than 100 pounds, with long red hair and a radiant smile. She was shy but sunny. She shared a close bond with her twin sister, Barbra Brown.

On the Saturday that had just passed Doug and Bev had held a bit of a gettogether with friends at the house; now the weekly grind had begun anew. As the car warmed up in the driveway Doug cast a glance at the house. There were Bev and Becky in the window. Bev clasped Becky’s little hand in hers. They waved byebye.

The December night had fallen by the time Alan Smith pulled up to the house in Raglan. He and Linda were hungry, as was the baby, Robin, just a month old.

Al and Linda had been together for a relatively short while. When they met she was married to a dude named Ted Large, a bouncer at Harry’s Hideaway, a bar in the basement of the Genosha Hotel in downtown Oshawa. Harry’s was a busy scene, populated by young people digging the early 70s. Al had gotten to know Linda at parties at Large’s house near the Dagmar ski resort north of Whitby. People said Al had stolen Linda from Ted.

Al was an animal control officer with the Durham Region Humane Society, patrolling for stray pets and following up on complaints about critters. He and Linda had recently rented a room in Raglan from Ashley Spicer, a guy they knew from the scene in Oshawa. The house was frequented by a rowdy crowd, druggies and bikers who made Linda nervous.

It was difficult for Al and Linda, just starting out, to find suitable housing, so they were sitting tight until something better came along. Linda was uncomfortable being alone at the house, and Al didn’t like leaving her and the baby; Linda would often bundle up Robin and she and the child would ride along with Al while he was on patrol. That had been the case today. Linda had gone over to Whitby to meet up 4

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

with Al at about 7 p.m., and they headed home to Raglan for supper. Time passed by unnoticed as Linda busied herself, preparing formula for the baby.

At about 8:30 the phone rang. Linda picked up; it was Doug Smith. “Hey, Linda, it’s Doug,” he announced. “Is Bev there?”

“No she’s not, Doug,” Linda replied.

“That’s odd,” said Doug. “She’s not answering the phone.”

He wondered if Bev had gone to her mother’s house, or if she was out visiting in the village. Linda recalled that earlier in the day Bev had mentioned that she was going to do some laundry. Maybe, she suggested, Bev couldn’t hear the phone over the washing machine. She offered to run across the street and knock on the door.

“Oh, that’s OK,” Doug said. “I can call back on my next break.”

“It’s no trouble,” Linda insisted.

She instructed Doug to stay on the line. Linda threw on her coat and went out into the December gloom, making her way across Old Simcoe to Doug and Bev’s. She could see lights on. Linda wasn’t surprised to find the door locked. She knocked; there was no response from Bev.

As Linda turned to head back across the street she cast a glance through a window that looked into the kitchen. She caught her breath. There, on the kitchen floor, lay Bev on her back. Her red hair was splayed about her head. Linda saw what she took to be blood on the floor. She ran.

Linda burst into her house and grabbed the phone. As she picked up the receiver she could tell the line was still engaged; she heard what she took to be sounds from the plant in the background as Doug waited.

“You’d better come home,” Linda breathlessly informed Doug. “I think Bev’s had an accident.”

Straight away Linda informed Al of what she’d seen and implored him to go check on Bev. In a few moments he returned and hollered at her to call an ambulance. He opened the door to head back outside. “Tell them I’ll have the van in the driveway,” he called as he left. Al hopped into his Humane Society van and pulled across the street into Bev and Doug’s driveway. He activated the amber rooftop lights.

Ambulance attendants Jim Ewin and Bill Cosburn were dispatched from their base at Oshawa General Hospital and arrived in about nine minutes, guided to the house by the flashing lights of the Humane Society van. They found Al waiting for 5

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

them. The three of them rushed to the locked door. One of them -- this would become a matter of some dispute years later -- kicked the door, smashing it open. The ambulance attendants burst through the doorway and into the kitchen. “There’s a baby in there,” Al Smith called as they disappeared through the doorway.

Ewin rushed to Bev and found her without vital signs. She lay on her back, face toward the ceiling, a pool of blood near her head. He saw she had a wound to the back of her head. Her pupils were fixed and dilated. He tore open her blouse and performed CPR, but it had no effect; the young woman was clearly dead.

Cosburn surveyed the scene. Bev lay on the floor, near the kitchen table. The house was immaculate; nothing appeared to be out of place. He heard a whimpering sound and entered a living room off the kitchen. There on a couch he saw an infant. He scooped the child up, tucked her inside his jacket, and carried her outside. He left Becky in the care of Linda Smith.

Police were beginning to arrive. A crowd, attracted by the flashing lights, was forming. Wayne Mahaffy lived in a second-floor apartment overlooking Old Simcoe. He was watching TV when the sky outside his window was suddenly striated by emergency lights. Mahaffy was among the crowd on the street when a frantic Doug Smith pulled up and leapt from his car. Doug rushed toward his house but was restrained.

Also arriving to witness the mayhem was Rick Osinchuk, a friend of Ashley Spicer’s. Earlier he’d called and told Linda he was thinking of heading up to Raglan.

“Come right away,” was her reply. “Bev might need a ride to the hospital.” Wondering what could have happened, Osinchuk and his pal Doug Harper travelled up to Raglan in Harper’s van. As they pulled off the main road into the hamlet, they saw emergency vehicles surrounding Doug Smith’s place. Osinchuk and Harper got out of the van and knocked at the door of Spicer’s house.

“Linda came to the door. She was white as a ghost,” Osinchuk said. “I remember her telling us Bev was laying in the kitchen with a hole in the back of her head.”

Assuming the lead in the developing investigation were Doug Aird and Richard Stanford, members of the Durham police Detective Office, which investigated major crimes. They arrived to find a chaotic scene that included a crowd gathered around an ambulance. Aird’s attention was drawn to a pocket of people who seemed to be struggling with a man. “It’s her husband,” someone in the crowd told Aird as he approached.

Aird and Stanford coaxed Doug into the back of a nearby police cruiser, hoping to calm him down as they made an assessment of the situation. Aird sought 6

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

out ambulance attendants Ewin and Coburn. “There’s a woman on the floor in the kitchen,” one of them told him. “She’s got her head smashed in.”

Aird, Stanford and the two ambulance attendants approached the house. Entering a mudroom, Aird noticed the damaged frame around the exterior door. He took in the surroundings. A big white chest freezer sat against one wall and on the opposite side of the room was an antique banker’s desk. A child’s walker was shoved underneath the desk. A hammer lay on the floor nearby.

Aird went into the kitchen where Beverly lay. One of the ambulance attendants explained Bev’s blouse was open because they’d performed CPR. Aird scanned the tidy kitchen. On the round kitchen table beside which Bev had fallen was an ashtray with two butts, one stubbed out, the other with a long ash, which seemed to indicate it had been left to burn itself out. The butts were from two different brands: Craven ‘A’ and Belvedere. There was a pack of matches beside the ashtray. Aird contacted communications on his hand-held radio and asked for the coroner to attend.

He and another officer took measurements and photos of the crime scene. They seized the ashtray and butts as potential evidence.

Aird found Al Smith outside and asked him about the door frame. “I kicked it in,” Al explained. “It was locked and the ambulance guys couldn’t get in.”

“Did you go in the house?” Aird asked.

“No. I stayed outside.”

Aird re-entered the house for a more thorough scan of the place. He noted a few bottles of prescription drugs on the kitchen counter. On a table in the living room were spread Christmas cards and envelopes. In the drawer of a sideboard in the kitchen he found an ounce of marijuana in a plastic baggie.

He made his way upstairs, entering a spare bedroom furnished with an old metal bed and a dresser with a wash basin on top of it. Aird pulled open a drawer in the dresser and found several ounces of pot stored in individual bags. He estimated it to be about half a pound. Someone hollered up the stairs that the coroner had arrived.

Aird clumped back downstairs and watched as the coroner examined the body. At that moment, the cop was still working under the assumption the victim had been struck on the head. As the coroner rolled her over Aird noted blood and matted hair at the back of her head. Also evident was what he took to be brain matter. Aird jotted quick notes. Back of skull caved in, he wrote when the coroner turned Bev over. Victim on back on floor, feet to west and head to east. Blood on floor still fresh.

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The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

As more cops arrived, they spread out for a preliminary canvass of the neighbourhood. It seemed neighbours had noticed little amiss. No one reported hearing gunshots, or any sort of disturbance, for that matter. Nobody heard Bev’s dog barking, as they’d expect if a stranger had come to the house. A neighbour who’d been out earlier hanging Christmas lights reported nothing out of the ordinary.

As the evening progressed, Aird returned to the police station in Oshawa where two potentially key witnesses -- Doug Smith and Al Smith (the men are not related) -- had been taken for statements. Al provided the police with his narrative, describing how he and Linda had arrived home for supper, got the call from Doug, then went to check on Bev.

Aird met Doug in an interview room at 15 minutes after midnight and listened as he recounted the previous day -- he and Bev running errands, his leaving for work and making it onto the line two minutes before the 6 p.m. shift began. He told about leaving the line for a break at 8:30 and placing a call to his house. When Bev didn’t pick up, he said, he’d called Linda Smith across the street. Then he’d raced home.

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The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

The Dec. 11, 1974 cover of The Oshawa Times was the first many would have heard of murder in the tiny hamlet of Raglan. Media coverage of the murder would be reignited from time -totime during what would become a 40-year investigtion.

Aird quickly formed the opinion that Doug Smith could be eliminated as a suspect. He had a solid alibi, having been at work on the evening of the 9th, and appeared to provide a convincing statement now.

“I felt he was telling us the truth,” Aird said, years later. “I couldn’t find any reason why he’d do harm to his wife.”

Following up on a tip, Aird tried early on Dec. 10 to track down Rick Ostrom, a guy known to both Doug and Bev. Aird called Ostrom’s parents, who groggily recommended he try to find him at an uncle’s house in Oshawa. Aird got hold of the uncle. “Yeah,” he told the cop. “He’s been here since 6 o’clock.”

This statement was untrue, as Ostrom would eventually reveal. He gave the police a statement at 2:45 a.m. on Dec. 10, telling them he had in fact spoken to Bev on the phone that night. But he was adamant he hadn’t gone to Raglan.

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The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

Early the next day Aird was in attendance when an autopsy was performed on Bev’s body at the hospital in Oshawa. As of this point, the police hadn’t issued any statements to the media, part of the reason being they hadn’t conclusively determined a cause of death. Pathologist Angel Lafarga made his initial observations, noting he was looking at a Caucasian female, five feet two and 96 pounds.

The woman’s eyes were closed, her mouth slightly agape. A thin line of blood had trickled from her left nostril down her cheek. Lafarga made note of swelling around her chin, as well as slight scratches on her forehead and her left breast. The body was turned face down and Lafarga examined an area at the back of the head, near the base of the skull.

“There was nothing to explain her death. But once we turned her upside down, Bingo: there was a hole there,” he said. “It was obvious she had been shot.”

Lafarga, noting an absence of burning and no visible trace of gunpowder, concluded the shot had not been fired point blank. There was no exit wound. Lafarga had a portable X-ray machine brought in. The images revealed the bullet had travelled on an upward trajectory, coming to rest against the bone of Beverly Smith’s forehead. The bullet had enough velocity when it reached its resting place to fracture her skull.

“It was almost a completely straight path,” Lafarga recalled. “It was a little to the right and a little bit up, but remarkably straight.”

The trajectory indicated the shooter had not fired from the hip, but in a classic aim and fire stance, he opined. Lafarga came to believe the shooter had been quite close to Bev when the trigger was pulled. The greater the distance the bullet had travelled, the more likely it would have deviated from this straight line, he reasoned.

“The distance between the gun and the head wasn’t great -- maybe five feet,” he said. “The gun wasn’t against the head but it wasn’t very far out.”

Lafarga removed the flattened bullet and gave it to a detective. The projectile was placed in an evidence bag to be transferred to the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto.

The cops appeared to have a real whodunit on their hands. Their victim was an unlikely homicide victim -- a young mother with no known enemies. There was no sign of a struggle in the house and it was well known that Bev kept her doors locked, especially when Doug was working a night shift at The Motors. There was no sign of forced entry -- other than the kicked-in outer door, and Al Smith had provided an explanation for that -- which indicated Bev had probably opened the 10

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

door for her killer. Therefore, she must have known him -- or her.

The police talked with Doug’s supervisors at GM and learned he’d punched in at 5:53 p.m. the day of Bev’s death and that a few minutes later he had signed out a pair of work gloves. The cops were conscious of the possibility that someone else might have punched Doug’s time card, and checked into it. But they quickly concluded that Doug would have a hard time concealing any absence. Doug’s co-workers confirmed he’d been at the plant on the night in question -- one recalled chatting with him during a coffee break. For the cops, it all added up to a solid alibi.

Investigators also tightened the time frame during which the murder could have occurred. Bev was left alone in the house with Becky at about 5:30 p.m. when Doug went to work. She did some housework, signed a few Christmas cards and spent time talking on the phone with her mother and her twin sister, Barb, hanging up about 10 or 15 minutes after 7. Doug phoned at 8:30 and got no answer, and Bev was found dead moments later.

Aird pressed Doug Smith on the fairly sizable stash of pot that had been found in the house. The volume indicated possible trafficking, and presented the police with a viable motive for the killing. During the investigation police had learned that Doug had been selling weed, usually by the ounce, from the house.

“Tell the truth,” Aird insisted. “We’re not interested in the drugs. We want to find out who killed Bev.”

Doug told the police that on the Friday before the murder he’d purchased a pound of pot from a guy named Doug Daigle who lived north of Bowmanville.

Doug said he’d sold a couple of ounces over the weekend and had set aside an ounce for himself. He reckoned there ought to be about 13 ounces in the house as of Dec. 9. But Aird had found just six ounces in the upstairs bedroom, leaving up to seven ounces missing. Was the theft of the pot the motive for the killing?

One possible scenario began to form: It was Doug’s practice to place several ounces of pot on the kitchen table and let the buyer choose from among them. Perhaps, the theory went, Bev had done this and then been killed by someone who scooped up the pot and ran out the door. If the perpetrator had stolen the pot from upstairs, why would several ounces be left behind?

The police began to focus on Doug’s friends and associates. Cops took a statement from Daigle, who said that on the night of the murder he’d been at his apartment in Enniskillen. His alibi was backed up by Georgina Kloos, a woman who lived on the lower floor of the Enniskillen house with her husband and kids. She told the police she had gone up to Daigle’s apartment early in the evening and 11

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

stayed there until midnight; she recalled that at about 8:30 that night Daigle had received a call informing him of Bev’s murder.

The police also looked into a guy named Mark Kenny, who sometimes bought dope from Doug, then peddled it in smaller quantities in Port Perry. Cops learned that Kenny had dropped by Raglan on the day of the killing looking to score. He said he hoped to sell a half-pound to a couple of guys in Port Perry. Doug offered to front him the weed but Kenny demurred, saying he preferred to have the cash in hand. He proposed an alternate plan: He’d go back to Port and try to find the guys with the money. If they came up with it he’d return, and if Doug was at work, it was agreed that Bev would sell Kenny the pot.

Kenny told the police that after leaving Raglan he went and drove around Port Perry, searching unsuccessfully for the guys he was looking to sell the pot to, and that his car had broken down. Kenny said he’d eventually gone to his girlfriend’s place, arriving at about 8 p.m.

Also of interest to the police was Rick Ostrom; investigators identified a number of problems with his story. For instance his uncle told Aird that Rick had arrived at his place shortly after 6 p.m. on Dec. 9. But by Ostrom’s own account, he didn’t arrive at his uncle’s house until after 8 o’clock. In his statement to Aird early on Dec. 10, Ostrom said Bev had called him at his house in Oshawa as he was having supper. He told the police he never formed any intent to go to Raglan that night and in fact didn’t go to the house.

After a polygraph test on Dec. 12, which he failed, Ostrom told Detective John Jurens about a time he had been at the house alone with Bev. He said he’d tried to put some moves on her, but had been rejected. Jurens told the lead investigators it was difficult to know why Ostrom had failed the polygraph “due to his mental state.”

Ostrom failed subsequent tests, leading Jurens to tell the investigators he felt the young man could be a person of interest. When the cops confronted Ostrom with this he freaked, saying he’d do anything to clear his name, including taking truth serum, if they had any. Aird, who teamed up with Detective John Kay as the investigation progressed, wasn’t convinced Ostrom was the shooter, but he believed the young man was withholding something. Kay agreed. “I felt he was holding back with regard to his relationship with the deceased,” he said.

The police followed up a tip about a young woman who had been rumoured to be seeing Doug Smith while he was married to Bev. The girl had a gun, the source told them. On Jan. 3, 1975 they visited the residence she shared with her parents and seized the gun, an antique .22 calibre revolver that had been given to her by a 12

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

friend. The gun was quickly ruled out by the cops, who’d been informed by a ballistics expert that the weapon they were looking for was likely a Cooey rifle. And the young woman had an alibi for the night of the murder -- she’d been at home.

Police were also interested in a couple of suspicious vehicles reported to have been in the vicinity of Raglan around the time of the murder, among them a yellow and black car that had been parked in front of Doug and Bev’s house. On Dec. 16, a week after the killing, a cop on patrol in Oshawa at 1 a.m. stopped to check out a yellow two-door ‘66 Chev with a black vinyl top. Sleeping inside was 18-year-old Jeff Czyruk, whose dad owned the gas station in Raglan. The officer rousted the young man and searched the car. Inside he found a number of empty plastic baggies, which he suspected may have been used for marijuana.

“I found a substantial amount of plastic baggies in the back seat,” the officer wrote in a report to the detectives. “Knowing that the dead girl’s husband in Raglan delt (sic) in drugs and living so close to that residence I felt there might be a remote chance that he might have information which could be of assistance in that investigation.”

Czyruk later gave a statement to police and admitted he had bought weed from Doug Smith in the past, having visited the house in Raglan as recently as Friday, Dec. 6, when he’d paid $20 for an ounce. He said he’d been in Oshawa on Sunday night, the 8th, and was in Raglan for a short time on the 9th, before heading back to Oshawa and spending the night at a hostel.

During the investigation police executed several search warrants, including at Doug Daigle’s house in Enniskillen, often citing drugs as the purpose but looking to seize any guns they could.

“We were always looking for a gun,” a retired Kay said years later. “In that era it wouldn’t have been excluded, even if we were searching for drugs.”

The cops also tapped the phones of several persons of interest. They made several intercepts from Daigle’s phone, including a number during which a man discussed the murder (Daigle said later any number of people who frequented his apartment could have been using his phone). The man on the wiretaps made comments that led cops to believe he was fairly well-acquainted with Bev and Doug. In one call officers listened in as a man they identified as Daigle talked to his mother about the killing. He said his nerves were getting frayed -- a stranger had called and accused him of the murder, promising he’d get what was coming to him.

“I’m in shock,” the man said. “Something happened tonight. I’m going crazy with all this murder and everything. Someone thinks I did it. I’m cracking up.”

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The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

“Where were you that night?” the woman asked.

“Right here in the living room,” the man said. “(Doug Harper) called me and told me about it. She was murdered -- shot with a .22.”

“Who did it?”

“The husband,” he said. “I knew him.”

Cops also obtained phone records that showed a significant number of calls between Daigle’s place in Enniskillen and Doug and Bev’s phone. A number of them appeared to have been made during times when Doug was at work in Oshawa. Daigle explained a friend of his who had gone to school with Bev had likely made the calls.

As the investigation continued leads kept pouring in. And there was at least one confession, of a sort. In early 1976 Kay was contacted by an official at the provincial jail in Guelph who told him an inmate there was talking about the murder. The man had been talking to medical staff since his arrival, spinning tales that sounded like they came straight out of a textbook on paranoid delusions: he claimed his mother had been killed and replaced by someone else; other times, it was his girlfriend who’d been switched. But amidst all the babbling he’d been doing at the Guelph jail, the man talked about something else: a young woman murdered in her kitchen.

“Naturally I thought of the Raglan murder,” Aird said. Kay and Aird went to Guelph to interview the man. He said he had gone to Doug and Bev Smith’s house with two other men, arriving in an orange Duster. One of the men shot Bev, he said.

He remembered her lying face up on the kitchen floor by a round table, describing with some accuracy the crime scene in Raglan. Aird was unmoved. It wasn’t surprising that accounts of the way Bev was found had circulated.

“It was common knowledge all over the village what had happened there,” he said. Plus, he considered the source. “He was well known to me,” he said. “He was mentally imbalanced.”

Nevertheless the cops followed through, getting the man first to draw them a map of Raglan and the murder location. He got both the description of the house and its location in the hamlet wrong. And his version of events kept changing. He even confessed to having pulled the trigger himself, only to recant.

“One minute he’d say he was involved in it and the next minute he’d say he had nothing to do with it and he was lying,” Aird said. “I don’t think he was aware of where he was most of the time.”

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The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

In 1987, Durham Regional Police revived the case of the unsolved murder of Beverly Smith.

Coverage of a re-enactment of the murder appeared in the Jan. 27, 1987 edition of the Port Perry Star. Metroland file photo

2 Doug Daigle

The investigation into the murder of Beverly Smith was revived in late 1987 when Durham police detectives Tony Turner and Doug King decided to dig into 17

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

the file. Reports from the investigation led by Aird and Kay in the 70s remained on file; it wasn’t uncommon for officers to take a look at an unresolved incident when time permitted.

“Just for interest’s sake you’d pull out a file and start reading about an old case; that’s what happened in this one,” Turner said. “The more we looked through it the more we said, someone should look at this homicide. It’s never been solved.”

Among the notes and reports were files on persons of interest compiled in the 70s. One of the names that stood out for Turner was Doug Daigle, whom Turner remembered from his days of policing in Oshawa. Straightaway Turner developed a keen interest in Daigle. He’d been the one who had sold Doug Smith the pound of pot, and early on, the cops suspected Bev’s murder was linked to the drugs in the house.

“When King and I reopened this investigation we both were of the mindset that Doug Daigle was a really good suspect in this murder,” Turner said. “It was pretty obvious where King and I were heading: Daigle was the suspect.”

But Daigle had an alibi. He told police that on the night of the murder he’d been at home all night in his apartment in Enniskillen with Georgina Kloos, and that he’d learned of the killing when Doug Harper phoned with the news. When she was interviewed in early January 1975, Kloos confirmed she’d been with Daigle from 5:30 p.m. until midnight on Dec. 9, 1974.

In January 1988, the detectives re-interviewed Georgina Kloos. What she said surprised them somewhat. First off, she couldn’t recall having given a statement to the police in 1975 (the statement, written out by an investigator, was identified as having been given by Kloos, but she never signed it). But Kloos assured the officers she wouldn’t have lied to the police. Then, however, she expressed some doubt about the contents of the statement, saying it was unlikely she’d have stayed in Daigle’s apartment for that length of time while her kids were at home alone.

Also in January of ’88 the cops interviewed Doug Harper, who professed to recall little about the night of the murder -- “It was a long time ago, eh?” he said -but he did remember Daigle fairly well.

“He was a real fuck-up -- couldn’t hold onto a job,” Harper said. “I don’t know where he is and I don’t care.”

“Did you talk to him the night of the murder?” King asked.

“I don’t know,” said Harper. “Probably not.”

“Do you ever recall talking to him about it, or phoning him?”

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The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

“No,” Harper replied.

The cop asked again: “Would you have any reason to call him and say something had happened to Bev?”

“No, I wouldn’t be bothered,” Harper said. “It was long distance.”

To Turner and King the statements by Kloos and Harper went beyond casting doubt on Daigle’s alibi -- they contradicted it utterly. “I believed he was coming up with an alibi that we were disproving,” Turner said.

He stated as much in a report to his superiors: “At this point in the investigation Daigle does not have an alibi whatsoever,” Turner concluded.

In February 1988, Turner and King also made efforts to locate transcripts of the wiretaps that had been conducted in the 70s. They were most keenly interested, of course, in revisiting the files that pertained to Daigle. It was about this time as well that Turner learned he was being transferred out of the detectives’ office for a post in what’s known now as professional standards. He tracked down John Kay, by then a senior officer with the Durham police, who told Turner about a cryptic statement cops bugging Daigle’s phone had overheard. “I may have done it. I may have shot her,” the cops heard a man say. “I might have been there -- I don’t know. I was stoned.”

Turner was flabbergasted. “When he told me about it I was shocked,” he said.

“I said to him, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. Give me that. I need it in writing’.”

But there was a problem: there was no transcript of the interception; nor did it exist on tape. The only reference to the statement was in a report by officers who claimed they’d heard it. Turner contacted Reg McIntyre and Reg Webster, the surveillance cops who said they’d overhead the statement. Both remembered the incident. The problem was that, although the police had reproduced page upon page of intercepted conversations, the one Turner was most interested in had somehow been overlooked. There was no transcript of anyone uttering the words the surveillance cops said they’d heard. Turner settled for the next best thing, obtaining willsay statements from the intelligence officers that could potentially be used in court.

(Testifying in court decades later McIntyre wasn’t able to explain why there wasn’t a more tangible record of the statement caught on the wiretap; it wasn’t mentioned in the detailed summaries compiled for other wiretaps. But he said he remembered hearing it, and playing the tape for other officers. “It was said,” McIntyre said. “I remember hearing it on the wiretap. At the time it was alarming to me.”)

In spite of that missing piece of evidence, the investigators felt they were build19

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

ing a solid case. Turner and King had identified their person of interest.

In the early months of 1988 Turner and King focused their efforts on drawing a solid picture of Doug Daigle. Turner already knew of Daigle from his days patrolling the streets of Oshawa; he was among the crowd who frequented Harry’s Hideaway, a hub of social activity for the tuned-in drug culture of the early 70s. From the time of Bev’s murder there had been people implicating Daigle, either in conversations with cops or via anonymous snitch lines such as Crime Stoppers. Daigle was known to sell weed and also had a reputation as a user of PCP, or angel dust, a popular hallucinogen at the time.

Over time the file on Daigle grew as statements were taken and tips came in:

• In February 1987 a woman called the Durham police Crime Stoppers line to say she’d heard from a source that Daigle was the killer. Sergeant Sandy Ryrie wrote in a report that the caller indicated Daigle “knew both the husband and the wife and was somehow involved with them”. The source, according to the caller, knew what happened but was afraid to come forward. “I spoke with her at length and she will attempt to find out more,” Ryrie wrote. “It would appear people are afraid of Daigle because he’s considered crazy.” Included in the file was a Toronto Star article in which police appealed for the anonymous caller to provide more information.

“Police want caller to call again”, read the headline.

• In March 1988 Turner and King interviewed a guy named Nick Popovics, who had lived at Daigle’s place in Enniskillen for a time in the 70s. He told the cops Daigle “freaked right out” at the time of the killing.

• In May 1988 a man called police to say he’d been present when another person made a call to the Durham Crime Stoppers line and identified Daigle as the killer.

The killing coincided with the arrival of a large amount of pot at Doug Smith’s house in Raglan, the man said.

• In March 1988 a guy named Edward Amy said he was well acquainted with Daigle and the drug scene in the 70s. He told Turner and King he also recalled people speculating about Daigle. “When Doug was on dust he would flip right out, talk to spaceships and lose complete control of himself,” they quoted Amy as saying.

• A woman who dated Daigle in the early 80s told police Daigle was a drug dealer who kept guns for protection and wasn’t averse to sampling his own wares.

“When Doug was on PCP he would flip right out and not remember things the next day,” they quoted her as saying.

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• Daigle’s father told the police that in 1974 he’d owned two .22 calibre Cooey rifles. He kept the guns at home but admitted someone could have taken one without him noticing.

• Turner and King spoke to Lee Eggleton, a former girlfriend of Daigle’s, and convinced her to be hypnotized. Under hypnosis Eggleton recalled something about a drug rip-off. She also said she remembered Daigle telling her about someone in Raglan who had ripped him off in a drug deal.

• Two women -- Lee Eggleton and Kathy Shaw -- told the police they’d heard Daigle make statements about killing someone. Eggleton said Daigle had talked about killing a young woman in the country. Shaw said he’d claimed already to have killed a woman who’d pissed him off, and threatened he wouldn’t be afraid to do the same to her. She also said that whenever talk of the murder came up at a party or gathering, Daigle would fall silent, or try to change the topic.

The police were also intrigued by the phone records showing what they thought were a significant number of phone calls between the Smith house in Raglan and Daigle’s Enniskillen apartment. A number of them, the police concluded, had been made during times when Doug Smith was at work at the GM plant.

The police had asked Daigle about this; he’d suggested one of the many dudes who stayed at his place had used his phone in his absence. He was also confronted with the allegations that he’d bragged of committing a murder, and flatly denied them.

The cops were curious if anyone had seen Daigle or his vehicle -- in 1974 he drove a distinctive gold-coloured Toyota Celica -- at the Smith house in Raglan.

In early 1988 Turner and King visited Al and Linda Smith, the former neighbours who had rushed over to Bev’s house on the night of the murder. By this time Al and Linda were living in Cobourg. They told the detectives they had seen a recent TV spot on the killing, a Crime Stoppers recreation that depicted Bev opening her door to a man who concealed a .22 rifle behind his back.

“I think the murderer saw that show,” Linda said. “I really think this case is going to be solved.”

Turner expressed hope that renewed media interest in the cold case would be helpful. There had been the recent TV show, and the Toronto Star was preparing to run a full-page article on the mystery, he said.

“If we don’t crack this thing it won’t be for a lack of trying,” he told them.

Turner directed the conversation to the topic of Doug Daigle. “He’s an excel21

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

lent suspect,” he confided, “but there are others.”

At first Al was doubtful about the Daigle theory. “Jeez, I don’t think he could ever do that,” he mused.

“Don’t be so certain that it’s him because it might not be,” Linda cautioned the cops. “My experience with some of the detectives in Oshawa is tunnel vision,” she added. “Nail someone no matter what.”

The police guided Linda and Al through their previous statements. They nodded in agreement for the most part, until there was mention of Al kicking in the door to allow the ambulance attendants entry. Now he wasn’t so sure that was the case.

“If I said that I’d like to retract that,” said Al.

Al also offered what he remembered about Daigle, who had a reputation in the 70s as being connected in the drug world. “He was dealing with some heavy people -- muscle guys,” Al said. “They’d put you on the floor and pick you up and pound you again if you didn’t do what they told you to.”

The more Al reflected on his memories of Daigle the more inclined he was to agree with his viability as a suspect. “I wouldn’t put it past him,” he said.

The detectives told the couple they had a witness who could put Doug Daigle at Bev and Doug’s house around the time of the murder. They asked if they’d seen Daigle or his distinctive car there. Al replied that yes, he’d seen the “orangey-coloured” vehicle in Raglan a couple of times, but Linda wasn’t so sure -- at least she didn’t think Daigle had been at the house when Doug Smith wasn’t at home.

“We don’t know that, Lin,” Al suggested. “We were both working ourselves.”

At this time Daigle was living in British Columbia. The Durham cops had made contact with an RCMP officer who had become acquainted with Daigle and his mother through the Seventh Day Adventist Church there. The officer had begun talking to Daigle about the Durham investigation.

Turner and King were becoming more and more convinced they were on the right track. They booked flights to B.C. It was time to talk to Doug Daigle in person.

Prior to being contacted by Turner and King, Doug Daigle had on a couple of occasions spoken with RCMP Constable Matt Logan, who told Daigle about the renewed investigation into the cold case. During these conversations the officer wore a wire to record Daigle’s comments. Logan and Daigle had formed something 22

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of a friendship, but Logan was clear: his allegiance was to the badge. If information pertinent to the investigation was forthcoming, he would share it with the Durham coppers.

“I’m hearing from the police in Durham,” he told Daigle. “They’re looking into this girl’s murder again. And they’re looking at you.”

“I only met her once,” Daigle replied.

He described Bev and was able to recall her maiden name. He copped to the fact he had once sold her husband Doug a pound of pot. But that’s as far as Daigle went. No incriminating slips, and certainly no confession.

Daigle agreed to meet with Turner and King at the RCMP detachment in Saanich on March 11. The Durham cops confronted Daigle with what they said was the evaporation of his alibi, telling him Georgina Kloos had recanted her 1974 statement that she’d been with Daigle on the night of the killing (actually she’d told the cops she couldn’t remember the statement). They further asserted they had a witness who could put him at Doug and Bev Smith’s house on the day of the killing.

Daigle stuck to his story, but the cops had begun to plant doubt in his mind. If Georgina wasn’t with him on the night of the murder, Daigle said, he must’ve been at home alone. And he was a bit rattled by the suggestion he was in Raglan the day Bev died.

“Jesus,” he said at one point, “I could have been at the door when she was dead inside.”

Those concessions notwithstanding, Daigle was steadfast in denying any involvement in the killing. He did, however, agree to return for a polygraph test.

When Daigle submitted to the test three days later, on March 14, the results were inconclusive. The cops concluded the test may have been skewed because Daigle had been smoking dope.

Turner escorted Daigle to an interrogation room. It was time to take the gloves off. Within minutes of beginning the interview Turner bluntly accused Daigle of the murder of Beverly Smith.

“She was a nice girl,” Turner observed.

“Yup,” Daigle concurred.

“She was a nice girl and she’s not alive anymore and you’re a coward and such a weasel that you’re not willing to stand up for her being dead,” Turner said. “I’m gonna tell you something, mister: you’re not gonna lie and cheat your way through 23

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

this. You’re going to jail.”

Daigle began to protest.

“You took a gun and you killed Beverly Smith with it,” Turner thundered.

“I did not,” Daigle retorted.

Turner carried on, needling Daigle about being too dishonest and cowardly to own up to his crime. He hinted Daigle could mitigate the jeopardy he faced if he had some explanation for how Bev came to be killed.

“You have been given every opportunity in the world to tell your side of the story and you haven’t taken it,” he said.

“You can say whatever you want,” Daigle replied.

Turner tried another tactic, trying to draw Daigle out by questioning his sexual orientation. Daigle countered that one of the things he wanted most was to find a nice girl, maybe even get married. Turner pounced.

“The only girlfriend you’re gonna find is in jail and you’re going very shortly,” Turner threatened. “You’re not going home today. On my authority one of the these Mounties is going to arrest you and you’re going to jail.”

Turner played another card: He told Daigle what was about to happen would have a devastating effect on his mother.

“I like your mother. She’s a nice lady and I don’t want to hurt her,” the cop said.

“It’s going to break her heart.”

Daigle decided it was time to call the detective’s bluff.

“Look Tony, it doesn’t matter what you have,” he said. “I’m innocent of this.”

“I’m not bluffing you,” Turner countered. “You’re going to the cells very shortly. You’re gonna do some of the hardest time you’ve ever done in your life.”

He told Daigle that the cops had an excellent case to put before a jury; without a response from Daigle, he said, it added up to first-degree murder. “You don’t even want to tell me about an accident, so that’s fine; we’re back to first degree,” he said.

“First-degree murder is life with no parole for 25 years.”

“Well, you put it together wrong,” Daigle replied.

“I don’t care what you say, Doug,” Turner shot back. “I don’t put things together wrong.”

“What about my rights here?” Daigle protested. “I’m innocent of this, but it 24

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

looks like I’m going to have to get a lawyer.”

At the conclusion of the interrogation, Turner had Daigle arrested and placed in the cells at the RCMP station. Waiting for him was an undercover officer posing as a prisoner. He was there for what cops and prosecutors call a “cell shot”, a scenario where a recently arrested accused is met by a sympathetic fellow prisoner. The hope is the suspect will confide in his new friend, providing evidence for the prosecution.

But Daigle betrayed little, other than confusion over Georgina Kloos’s apparent retraction of the alibi she’d provided. Maybe she’s bitter about how things worked out, he speculated. And he told his cell mate that he may have to go back to Ontario to deal with the murder beef, but no matter: he was sure to be exonerated.

Daigle was concerned about one thing Turner had told him: That another former girlfriend had relayed a story about him bragging about a killing. She’d told the cops that he’d had a gun back in the 70s, too.

“She’s telling them everything,” Daigle said. “And what she doesn’t know, she’s making up.”

The undercover tried to advance the conversation, hoping Daigle would slip up. The cop made derogatory comments about women. He tried to get Daigle to divulge more about the murder. But Daigle wasn’t biting.

“My lawyer told me not to talk in here,” he said. “These fucking cells are wired.”

While Daigle stewed in jail, Turner was on the phone to the authorities back in Durham Region. He informed Crown Attorney John Scott about the arrest.

Scott, of course, wanted to know exactly what the police had on Daigle -- would a murder charge stick? Turner ran down the list of statements and other bits of evidence he and King, along with cops who had worked the case before them, had assembled. Scott’s assessment was that there wasn’t enough. You’re gonna have to cut him loose, he told Turner.

Daigle was released the following morning without being formally charged.

Turner and King watched their suspect walk away. For the next couple of months they stayed on the file, continuing to interview people from Daigle’s past for anything that could bolster their case. They tracked down an ex-wife living in Iowa.

They talked to a man believed to have been a “mystery caller” who gave up Daigle’s name on a Crime Stoppers hotline. They interviewed a former family counsellor of Daigle’s, hoping that at some time, he had uttered a confession.

“We didn’t get it, obviously,” Turner said.

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Turner’s transfer to professional standards was impending. He prepared to wrap up his involvement in the Beverly Smith homicide. Once more the files were bundled up and set aside as fresher, more pressing cases demanded the attention of Durham’s constables and detectives.

The murder of Beverly Smith remained a whodunit.

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Who killed Beverly Smith remained an unanswered question in 2003 when Durham Regional Police Service Detective Leon Lynch was directed to review the case with the intention of relaunching the investigation. Metroland File Photo.

3 Picking Up The Trail

Although the file was revisited on occasion as the years and decades passed, it was the mid-2000s before real momentum began to gather behind an effort to solve the mystery of Beverly Smith’s killing. And even then, the investigation progressed in fits and starts.

In 2003, Durham homicide boss Rolph Kluem assigned the case to Detective Leon Lynch, directing him to conduct a review of the file and write a proposal, which would be passed along to Durham police brass, for re-launching the investigation. Lynch began work on the assignment but was diverted by newer, fresher cases. He revisited it in 2005, and momentum began to build.

In March of that year the Durham police were approached by the producers of a Court TV program called Crime Files: Cold Case Edition. Host Sue Sgambati, a TV crime reporter, was interested in featuring the Raglan murder. The cops saw the TV show as an opportunity to generate new leads. The last real airing the case had been given was back in 1988, at the time of the Turner and King investigation, 27

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

when a Crime Stoppers-type feature aired on local cable TV.

Lynch told Sgambati he would take the invitation under advisement. First he wanted to consult Doug Smith, with whom he’d been in touch since assuming responsibility for the file. Doug told Lynch he was OK with it, but expressed concern for the impact some of the details of the case might have on his family. In particular, Doug was worried about too much emphasis being placed on the marijuana that seemed to some investigators to be so central to the incident. Lynch told Doug that while the drug angle was an element of the investigation, it wasn’t the only one.

“We’re not going to make it our focus,” he explained. “I’m not saying questions won’t be asked about drugs. I’m saying the focus will be on the murder and who did it.”

Lynch acknowledged that the drug scene -- who was buying, who was selling -- had been a predominant focus of investigators, particularly in 1974. They assumed that shining the light on the drug culture in 1970’s Raglan would eventually lead them to the killer. Obviously, that hadn’t panned out.

“I think it’s safe to say the 1974 investigation centred a lot around drugs,” Lynch said. “(People) didn’t trust the police back then. I remember everybody being paranoid about talking about drugs.”

Lynch decided that the Court TV appearance would benefit the investigation.

The show aired later in 2005 and featured Lynch and Barb Brown, Bev’s twin sister, as well as a criminal profiler from the Ontario Provincial Police. Lynch told Sgambati the revived investigation would start over at the beginning, with investigators following the evidence from there. He vowed to “start fresh and treat it like it happened yesterday. We’re saying everybody is a person of interest until they’re excluded.” But he added that Doug Smith was among those who had been crossed off the suspect list.

“In our opinion he’s excluded from the investigation and has nothing to do with her death.”

Lynch talked about an unidentified fingerprint found on an ashtray, and hinted at new DNA leads that may be promising.

“We also have a hair fibre located at the scene we’re looking at getting analyzed,” he revealed.

Lynch didn’t hide his hope that the Court TV show would prompt someone, somewhere, to finally pick up the phone and tell the cops what they knew about Bev’s death.

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“We’re hoping with the passage of time that somebody will come forward with information about this case,” he said.

The analysis by the criminal profiler offered some interesting insights. The expert concluded Bev was a “low-risk victim”, suggesting the incident that led to her death was probably a robbery -- akin to a modern-day home invasion -- and that the shooting may not have been deliberate. The expert recommended police focus on investigating people who knew there was pot in the house, particularly suspects with histories of robbery and violence.

In formulating his proposal for re-opening the case, Lynch cited an exhaustive list of potential investigative leads compiled few years earlier by Det. Shane Wasmund, who had conducted his own review of the file. Wasmund suggested a host of leads to follow up on, including investigating individuals in Doug Smith’s circle, the crowd that hung around Raglan in the 70s, and the ownership of a couple of suspicious cars neighbours had reported seeing in the area the night of the killing. Lynch sent the proposal off to Kluem in late March of 2005. “This is good Leon” Kluem wrote in an e-mail reply. He sent Lynch’s report on to his superiors, in hope of resuscitating the investigation.

Lynch was anxious to dedicate his full attention to the Beverly Smith homicide, but time was proving to be a difficult commodity. In addition to the research he needed to do just to get up to speed on the file, he was also on call when new homicides occurred. It was a mammoth task simply to get organized; there were aging reports to read and categorize, interviews to transfer from old reel-to-reel tapes to a more modern format, and contacts to re-establish.

Lynch was often in touch with Doug, who confided that although he was anxious for the cops to catch the killer, he was feeling stressed-out about the renewed investigation. Doug worried about the effect it would have on his family, particularly his daughter Rebecca. Doug was not enthusiastic about coming in to make another statement, but agreed to, and also supplied a sample of his DNA.

The detective was also hearing from Bev’s sister Barb, who called with occasional bits of information and to inquire about the status of the investigation. She was growing impatient with the pace -- or lack thereof. But Lynch was dividing his time between the past and the present. As he re-launched the investigation into the Raglan murder, he was also probing the death of Shawn Douse, whose burned body had been discovered in a field in Pickering (the killing was eventually linked to several Keswick men with ties to the Bandidos biker club). In December 2006, shortly after Lynch appeared on TV to discuss the Douse murder, Barb Brown took part in a lengthy Toronto Star story in which she vowed to “shame” the Durham cops into 29

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moving on Bev’s case.

In May 2007, Lynch finally got the green light. A team of eight investigators was assigned, including homicide detectives Diane Jennings and Doug Parker.

Lynch prepared a PowerPoint presentation on the case to bring everyone up to speed and began assigning tasks, of which there were many. He had determined that to do the job right, the cops would have to contact and re-interview as many of the players from 1974 as possible. By this time these people were scattered all over the country -- indeed, all over North America -- and the challenge was formidable.

Cops were also tasked with reviewing reports and exhibits assembled by their predecessors. Among the reports over which Lynch pored were assessments of various persons of interest identified by detectives in 1974.

The file also described physical evidence gathered from the scene. Police had seized two ashtrays and four cigarette butts. An ashtray on the counter contained two Belvedere butts -- Doug Smith’s brand -- and in the ashtray on the kitchen table by which Bev’s body was found there was a Belvedere, which had been stubbed out, and a Craven ‘A’, which had burned down. Doug told Turner and King in 1988 that Bev smoked Craven ‘A’. In addition, hairs were recovered from the leg of Bev’s jeans.

One was hers, and another determined to be from an animal. A third, shorter human hair was believed to be “typical of the hairstyle of the males associated with Bev Smith and Doug Smith at the time”, Lynch said.

A report from the Centre of Forensic Sciences indicated the .22 bullet retrieved during the autopsy had sustained significant damage, but was believed to have been fired by a Cooey model rifle. There were notes about a number of search warrants executed in hope of finding the murder weapon. Several guns were seized and submitted for testing but in the early stages, cops excluded guns that were not Cooeys.

“None of these seizures have led to any known evidence to assist in finding the person who committed this act,” the file noted.

Lynch found that police had conducted extensive wiretap surveillance during their investigation in 1975, but had retained none of that evidence.

“All the tapes have been destroyed or lost,” he said.

Lynch immersed himself in the file, painstakingly having the material updated for a modern investigation.

“Every report that was done from the years past we had retyped and done electronically,” he said.

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It was Lynch’s goal to start at the beginning, as if it were the day after Bev’s murder, and move methodically toward a solution to the decades-old mystery.

As the investigation progressed, Durham police officers logged many hours and thousands of miles, tracking down and re-interviewing people who had given statements in past investigations. While the 1988 investigation had focused on Doug Daigle, Lynch was of the opinion that looking elsewhere would be most productive; he simply didn’t think Daigle was involved. Of course the new investigation included Daigle, but he had no interest in participating; he gave a few brief statements, but refused to take another polygraph test. Other former persons of interest were likewise reluctant to submit to more testing and interrogation.

Lynch was critical of the process that led Turner and King to identify Daigle as a suspect in the 80s. He thought they had been too hasty to interpret Georgina Kloos’s failure to remember her 1975 statement to police -- that she’d been with Daigle at his apartment on the night of the murder -- as a recantation. Lynch felt Daigle’s alibi stood up; he believed it exonerated him. “In my opinion they discarded the alibi right from the start,” Lynch said of the previous investigators. “He’s got an alibi I believe to be true.”

Lynch himself approached Daigle -- one time catching up to him in a Tim Hortons parking lot -- hoping to convince him to give another statement and take a polygraph test. He told Daigle the cops were merely trying to be thorough in their re-investigation of the case.

“I was trying to bring him onside and show him we’re not the bad guys,” Lynch said. But the attempt at diplomacy failed. Daigle declined the invitation.

Police also travelled to B.C. to interview Mark Kenny, who said he didn’t recall much of what he’d told the cops back in the 70s. Kenny refuted the information he’d provided years earlier, when he told the cops about a pending drug deal and his tentative arrangement to visit Raglan on the night Bev died.

“I was either full of shit then,” Kenny told the police, “or I’m full of shit now.”

In the summer of 2007, the police interviewed Al and Linda Smith, now long separated. Linda lived in Huron Park, a community near London, Ontario. Al, having bounced around in Alberta for a number of years (he’d remarried and had a son there) was back in Ontario but more or less on the skids. He was unemployed and living in the basement of his daughter’s home in Cobourg. Al provided the police with a statement when they visited him in Cobourg, but there was a malfunction with the recording device. He agreed to make another statement, this time at a Durham police station, and on July 11, 2007, Lynch and Detective Doug Parker 31

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

drove him to Oshawa. The interview commenced shortly before 8 a.m. When it was over Lynch asked a favour: Since he was there anyway, would Al mind taking a polygraph test?

“Sure,” said Al.

At the outset of the test, conducted by Detective Paul Nadeau, Al was asked a series of questions about himself, including whether he’d ever undergone psychiatric treatment. He answered in the affirmative, “in my youth, when I was young and stupid.” As the polygraph machine measured his physiological reactions, Al was asked a series of questions, including:

On December 9, 1974, was it you who shot Beverly Smith?

Did you shoot Beverly Smith on Dec. 9, 1974?

Do you know for sure who shot Beverly Smith on Dec. 9, 1974?

Each time Al responded “No”.

Nadeau thanked Al, got up and left the interview room, and examined the results. Then he found Lynch.

“He failed,” he told the detective.

Nadeau returned to the room and told Al about the results of the test.

“After the examination there’s no doubt in my mind you did shoot Bev,” he said.

Al Smith stared at the cop for a second.

“What?” he finally said.

Nadeau repeated the assertion: You killed Bev Smith, he told him.

Al sat up straight. He began to shake his head.

“Ho-ho-hooo,” he said. “Come on, Paul ...”

“There’s something you’re not telling me about that night,” said Nadeau.

“What is it?” asked Al, his voice rising.

“I don’t know,” said Nadeau. “That’s what I’ve got to find out. There’s something about what happened that night you’re not being clear about. There’s some deception.”

“Deception?” Al replied. “There’s none on my part, Paul.”

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“I just can’t figure it out,” Nadeau continued. Then he made a suggestion: “Sometimes people are attracted to other people ... maybe you and Bev were courting each other?”

“Nice try,” said Al. “Don’t try to make me the scapegoat after 30 years.”

The two men bickered back and forth, the cop insistent Al was hiding something, Al incredulous at the accusation.

“I think you were involved,” Nadeau said firmly.

“In what way?” Al shot back.

He insisted again Nadeau was on the wrong track; he questioned if the test had been messed up in some way.

“What I would like to do is take this test over again some day,” Al said. “Something isn’t right with either that machine or your train of thought. You have the wrong person.”

Nadeau asserted that while people often lie, his polygraph machine did not.

He hinted that maybe, 30 years ago, Al was a different person who committed an act for which he now felt remorse.

“I was a man who had a wife and a brand new baby,” Al replied. “I had no sexual interest in that girl. I had no interest in that girl other than her being my wife’s friend. Why would I harm someone?”

“You confronted her and something happened,” Nadeau said. “I’m determined to find out what happened here.”

“I came home and found a poor girl lying on the floor!” Al thundered. “I had no affairs, no relations. I was happy where I was, with my wife and new baby. I had no interest in Bev. Finding a poor girl in an injured state. That’s all that’s on my mind.”

Nadeau pressed on. “I think this was spur of the moment,” he said. “Something very bad happened and you ended up in a situation where you had no control over the circumstances.”

“I’m blank,” said Al, sagging in his chair.

The exchange went on and on, Al Smith vociferously protesting his innocence and Nadeau refusing to accept that possibility. He implored Al to take the opportunity to explain himself. Maybe Bev rejected Al’s advances, he suggested. Maybe she broke it off.

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The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

“And you pulled out a gun and shot her,” Nadeau suggested.

“Good try,” Al said dryly.

“This is a situation you’re involved in and it’s not going away,” Nadeau told him. “It’s going to be maintained until we clear this matter up.”

“You’re destroying the insides of a good man, and that’s me,” Al said. “I know I had absolutely nothing to do with it.”

Nadeau pressed on, but finally Al had had enough.

“This is terminated,” he declared. “Anything from here on out I’ll get a lawyer.

You can keep me here for 400 years and the same thing will come out of my mouth.

I had nothing to do with it.”

Al Smith was still fuming when he stepped outside the police station for a smoke. Lynch informed him that the failed test meant he could not now be excluded as a person of interest in the murder. The detective vowed to continue following other possible leads, but warned Al that the police would be taking a very close look at him and the version of events he had been telling for decades.

At about 5:30 that afternoon, Lynch, Parker and Al Smith piled into a police sedan and left the Oshawa station, planning to take Al home. Al sat in the back seat, still unsettled about the confrontation he’d had with Nadeau. He claimed to be totally flummoxed by the results of the polygraph.

“What the fuck?” he complained. “I came here today in a very nice mood, knowing full well I have nothing to hide. When you mentioned this polygraph, did I hesitate? I don’t know what happened, whether it was a technical glitch, or what.

Now I’m super involved, and that’s not where I want to be. Because I didn’t do it, and neither did my wife. I just found that person. I’m absolutely, uh, um –”

“Flabbergasted?” Parker suggested.

“Yeah!” cried Al. “And now I’m gonna be hounded.”

“No you’re not,” Parker assured him.

But Al was already fretting about how he’d be able to come up with money for a lawyer, a musing that caught Lynch’s attention.

“Why do you feel at this point in time you need to speak to a lawyer?” he asked.

Al repeated Nadeau’s accusation. Parker interjected again.

“Do you feel there’s some reason you feel responsibility for this?” he ques34

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tioned. “Like, finding the body?”

“That’s what I’m thinking, Doug,” Al replied. “I was scared shitless that night.”

He went through all the steps he’d taken after finding Bev’s body -- calling the police, placing his van in the driveway for the ambulance, going to the station to give a statement to police. Would a killer do all that? he asked the cops. Lynch urged Al not to get too upset. All the failed test meant, he told him, was that he was included in the list of potential persons of interest.

“Leon, don’t give up on this, buddy,” Al implored.

“I’m not giving up on any part of it,” Lynch replied.

The cops pulled into a sub shop so Parker could get a bite to eat. As they waited Lynch asked Al if he’d mind taking a detour by Raglan on the way home. Maybe, he suggested, the visit would “refresh” Al’s memory about the series of events.

“Not now,” said Al. “Not after this guy bombarded me with, ‘you had the gun, you had the gun, you’re in it somehow, maybe you went with some other guy’. I’m like, what the fuck are you talking about? I’m like, come on.”

In the end, however, Al consented to the drive by Raglan. He assured the cops he was doing his best to help.

“I like the pair of yas,” he told them. “You seem to be all right to me.”

On the drive Al kept chatting with the cops, veering away from talk of a cold case murder to more mundane topics like Stan, the dachshund he shared his basement apartment with. He mused on memories about his childhood on his grandfather’s farm in Lindsay. He analyzed the Oshawa Generals hockey team. He puzzled again over his failed polygraph test. He opined about the complexities of making a perfect cup of coffee.

“There’s an actual art to making coffee,” he informed the detectives. “You can’t just put seven scoops in and hope it turns out all right.”

Once in Raglan, Al looked around. He pointed to the window through which he said he’d seen Bev’s body the night she died.

The officers drove Al to his son’s house in Colborne. Al asked to be dropped off at the convenience store, where he hoped to coax $7 out of the ATM for a pack of smokes. Parker glanced into the back seat at Al.

“You know what, don’t worry about anything,” he told him. “If we need to get hold of you, we know how to get hold of you.”

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“That makes me feel better,” said Al.

As he got out of the car, Al Smith urged the detectives to keep him informed about the investigation.

“Please let me know, OK?” he asked. “I don’t want to be chewing my nails.”

“Don’t be,” said Parker. “I told ya, don’t worry about it.”

But in reality Al Smith had plenty to worry about. Lynch put great stock in polygraph tests -- he relied on them to either exclude or include someone as a person of interest. Al’s failure was of significance to him. That evening a decision was made to conduct surveillance on Al Smith. In the days that followed there was even discussion of enlisting undercover cops to get near to him in hope of extracting more information about the murder, but that plan was ultimately scrapped.

But the wheels had begun turning, and momentum was building.

Al Smith’s failed polygraph test ushered him from the periphery of an ongoing murder mystery to its very centre. The Durham police stepped up their efforts to learn more about him and, as well, to observe him day to day. Applications for surveillance were made and granted, including wiretaps on the phone at the Cobourg home of Al Smith’s daughter, Erin, with whom he lived. Undercover cops were dispatched to the area of the house, on Munson Court, in hopes they’d intercept him.

But this proved fruitless; he rarely left the house and when he did, it was for mundane trips to the local Walmart or to go fishing by himself.

The police were aware that Al had gone to Alberta after finally breaking up with Linda in the early 90s. Theirs had been a tumultuous relationship, full of conflict, breakups, reunions, and relapses. Al and Linda tied the knot on Sept. 23, 1978.

It was a decidedly low-key affair, on a budget.

“We had our reception at McDonald’s,” Linda recalled. “It was a hoot.”

By this time, Linda, who was working as a social worker at a women’s shelter, had renounced the hedonistic ways of the early 70s, becoming a devout Christian.

Despite Linda’s conversion, Al avoided Jesus. He wasn’t part of Linda’s new life of faith.

“He had his friends,” Linda said, “and I had mine.”

Linda was leery of Al’s rough-and-tumble pals, and she was growing increasingly wary of Oshawa and its gritty streets.

“Oshawa had become too big and I really didn’t want to raise our kids there,” Linda said. “Al wasn’t on the same page as us anymore. I loved him, but it was like 36

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we had two separate lives.”

Eventually, Linda succeeded in talking Al into moving to Cobourg. And to her amazement, he opened his mind and heart to the notion of religion. He stayed away from dope and joined the community, working around the church as a handyman. But his enlightenment was short-lived. Al was a poor fit within the community of the devout. Some of them openly snubbed him and he took the rebuff to heart. He drifted back into drugs, took up with other women.

“He walked away from the church,” Linda said. “He’d been hurt by some Christians. But he really gave it a shot.”

Linda was disappointed, but she didn’t completely blame Al. He hadn’t, after all, been met with the Christian kindness she’d expected.

“They were just really rotten to him -- not acting the way they should,” she said. “You can’t fly up there and smack God in the face, can you? So you judge the people who are his representatives.”

Al was done with the church, and he was nearing the end of the line as a family man. Linda put up with his carousing for a time, but eventually reached her limit. She packed up the kids and took off to a women’s shelter. The development was a sobering one for Al. He tracked Linda down, begged to see her, and pledged to turn a new leaf.

“I’ve changed,” he said.

Linda took it slowly. She and the kids stayed at the shelter, but Al was allowed to visit each day. They’d chat and study the Bible. Al, who was off booze and dope, started working as a handyman around the shelter. But the arrangement was doomed to fail. Al lapsed, and Linda was at the end of her patience.

Over the years Al Smith had on a number of occasions sought treatment for mental health issues, beginning in 1986 when he was checked into the hospital in Oshawa; he arrived in crisis after Linda took the kids and left. In subsequent years he was on three occasions admitted to a psychiatric ward in Peterborough, diagnosed with a number of issues including a personality disorder. But his major concern over the years was substance abuse. Al had a taste for liquor, and also indulged freely in cocaine and marijuana. His using was a constant source of conflict during his marriage to Linda.

Lynch travelled to Alberta and visited an Edmonton treatment centre where Al had gone in 1996 at age 45, seeking help with his addictions and emotional issues. He filled out a self-assessment form that depicted a man in despair. He 37

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claimed to be depressed and suicidal, living on welfare and locked in an ongoing cycle of drug and alcohol abuse. He admitted he’d been drinking daily for 25 years, and smoking pot for 30 years, as well as abusing cocaine and prescription drugs.

“My life is falling behind,” he wrote. “I need to refocus certain things to make the rest of my life more enjoyable, meaningful. I seem to be going nowhere. I am very lonely, unhappy.”

Al claimed to have no friends, and no contact with his children. He suffered from hallucinations and night terrors during which he heard unusual sounds and saw lights. He listed his criminal convictions, beefs including drunk driving and mischief. On the form was a question: “What do you like least about yourself?”

“The life I have lived,” Al Smith wrote.

Lynch obtained records from the Peterborough facility to which Al had been admitted in 1991. They indicated he had undergone extensive treatment and counselling for a number of issues, including a suspicion of schizophrenia. His primary concerns included anxiety and confusion; his recent and long-term memory were poor (Linda confided to doctors that many of Al’s problems were likely the result of his drug use).

By the time he became the subject of intense police scrutiny in 2007, Al Smith was in his mid-50s, living on welfare, friendless and without prospects. He was known to shuffle around the neighbourhood bumming smokes and small change.

The realization that he was a suspect in the decades-old murder of Bev Smith pressed him further into a funk. He rarely left the house. Police learned from listening to Erin’s phone conversations that he was suffering from intense anxiety.

Erin worried for his health. At one point Al’s son Tom called Linda and asked her, “Mom, just answer me point blank: Did Dad kill this lady? Because he’s freaking out about it.”

“To the best of my knowledge I was the one who found Bev,” Linda replied.

“And that’s all I know.”

Linda presented the police with another wrinkle. In August 2007 she took a polygraph test, during which she was asked questions similar to those posed to Al. She failed. She was confronted by Paul Nadeau, the same officer with whom Al had squared off earlier in the summer. He told her the test result indicated she was somehow involved in Bev’s killing.

“I don’t accept that,” Linda said. “That makes no sense. I had nothing to do with this and I’ve told you everything I know.”

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It was a stunning development for Lynch, who now had two persons of interest -- who happened to be married at the time of the killing and who claimed to have found the victim soon after the killing. Linda too was placed under surveillance, and as the investigation progressed, was questioned extensively by the police.

One more thing: Al Smith had a small blue tattoo under his eye. The cop knew it was a long-standing symbol among criminals who had committed murder.

The curious case kept getting odder. And yet another twist loomed.

In November 2007, members of the investigative team flew west to conduct interviews with potential witnesses in Alberta. Added almost as an afterthought was Dave Maunder, now living in Calgary. His name had come up in conversation with Linda Smith, who mentioned Maunder and his wife as part of the social circle in the 70s. Maunder had worked as a bouncer at Harry’s Hideaway and was an acquaintance of Al Smith’s.

Maunder had been a peripheral character in the earlier investigation of Bev Smith’s murder. Police conducting wiretap surveillance had listened in as Maunder chatted with Al, planning to meet up to shoot pool and making arrangements for New Year’s Eve. Like many other young men during the 70s and 80s, Maunder eventually drifted to western Canada, and made a life for himself there.

He may not have been on their radar prior to the trip to Calgary, but Maunder quickly offered up a stunning revelation: he told the Durham cops that on the night of the murder Al Smith had gone to Bev’s house, looking to score some dope. The bit of information came virtually as soon as Maunder entered an interview room at a Calgary police station on November 16, 2007.

“Al was at the house,” Maunder said. “He was definitely at the house the night of the murder.”

Maunder told the cops that he called Al at home in Raglan between 6:30 and 7 p.m. on the night of Dec. 9. He said he was fairly sure of the time, because it was just before he left to begin his 7 o’clock shift at the bar.

“I said Al, do you have any pot or could you get me some, and he said he could try,” said Maunder. “He got me my ounce of pot and brought it to me the next day.”

Maunder told the police that word of Bev’s murder also reached him the next day. About 4 o’clock in the afternoon Al called and told him he had a bag of weed, Maunder said. Then he contradicted himself: “I never did take possession of that ounce,” he said. “He was trying to get it to me and I said no, don’t worry about it, 39

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

I don’t need it. I had friend around the corner who gave me a half ounce or something.”

Maunder said Al was pissed when he learned he wasn’t going to be reimbursed the $20 the ounce was worth.

“He was belligerent,” Maunder said.

He told the cops that once he heard about Bev’s death, he began to suspect Al had been involved.

“My impression was that Al had something to do with it,” he asserted. “He had to be there before, during, or after she got murdered. I stopped seeing Al after that.

I didn’t trust him after that.”

Maunder said that there was a lot of talk about Bev’s death. People speculated that she had been killed by someone looking to steal Doug’s pot, he said. But he wondered if that was the case.

“Everybody thought it was over the dope,” Maunder said. “But it was only four or five ounces. And nobody gets killed over that.”

Maunder wondered if someone had killed Bev out of jealousy or some sort of emotional rage. He said that while the crowd he knew had their wild side, he didn’t think many of them were capable of the kind of violence visited on Bev.

“There wasn’t too many people in that circle that was capable of murdering someone,” he mused.

Anyone you think could have been capable of murder the cops asked.

Maunder paused.

“Well,” he said, “I’ve seen Al pretty upset.”

The more he talked, the more Maunder’s animus toward Al Smith became apparent. He talked about how he’d helped Al and his brother Joe get set up in Alberta when they’d drifted out west, and the thanks he’d gotten in return: Al had stolen a “brand new” pair of jeans. Joe had accepted a sizeable loan, then stiffed Maunder.

“He fucked off back to Ontario,” he fumed.

Maunder recalled how Al had stepped in and stolen Linda from her husband.

“I didn’t see why Linda would take up with a lowlife like him,” he said of Al. “I thought he was a lowlife. He seldom worked. He was always living off someone else.”

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The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

The interview provided the police with an astonishing new piece of information. No one at any time during the previous three decades had indicated Al Smith had been at Bev and Doug’s house the night of the murder. And Al himself had insisted that he’d not been in the house for at least a month prior to the night he found Bev.

Police were listening in when Al Smith and Maunder had a phone conversation in February 2008. The topic, of course, was the renewed investigation into the 1974 murder. Al complained he was being dogged by cops who seemed to think he was involved.

“They’re putting me through hell down here, man,” he said.

Maunder agreed the heat was a bit much.

“They freaked the fuckin’ shit out of me -- for a 34-year-old fuckin’ murder,” he replied. “They’re pretty fuckin’ heavy on you, eh?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with it,” Al insisted. “I just happened to find the poor girl, Linda and I.”

He went on to tell Maunder he couldn’t understand the suspicion around him, given the fact he’d co-operated with police throughout their investigation. Maunder said he too had been co-operative, and that he had an iron-clad alibi for the night of the murder. “I was working at Harry’s Hideaway, man.”

“I know that,” said Al.

Maunder dangled the assertion he’d made to the police a few months earlier: “You were gonna get me an ounce of pot.”

“Yeah,” said Al, but he quickly resumed his rant about being confronted by Nadeau after the polygraph test.

Maunder replied he’d been dealing with homicide cops in his own life -- his daughter, Tracey, was murdered in 1992 by a suspected serial killer in Calgary.

“There’s no closure on that either,” he said. “They never found the murderer or nothing, man.”

“Oh yeah?”

“He’s still roaming the streets of Calgary,” said Maunder.

He told Al that’s why he’d been as helpful as he could when the Durham cops approached him. He didn’t want Bev’s family going through what his had. “That’s hard on a family,” he said. “It destroyed my family. It separated us all.”

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They talked about how the murder and the subsequent investigation had spelled the end of an era for them. It had a chilling effect, with suspicion in the air and paranoia fuelled by constant pressure from the police.

“The whole circle broke up after that murder,” Maunder mused.

“I know in my heart of hearts I had nothing to do with it,” Al said. “It hurts me deeply. I’ve got nobody to vent it to other than my kids, and they’re just so fucking sick of it.”

“Something ain’t right here,” Maunder asserted. “I’d like to know who done it.”

“You and me both,” said Al.

Whether he knew it or not, the case against Al Smith was gaining momentum.

Maunder’s allegation about the pot purchase had given it a serious push, and now the boulder was thundering downhill, gaining velocity. Al Smith’s days as a free man were all but numbered.

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In February 2008 Durham Regional Police held a press conference releasing details of the ongoing investigation into Beverly Smith’s death. At the press conference Beverly’s daughter, Rebecca, tearfully addressed the media. Metroland file photo

4 Linda Smith

While the police conducted their investigation of Alan Smith, they continued their surveillance of his ex-wife, Linda. Linda’s failed polygraph test during the summer of 2007 had piqued the interest of investigators; Al, of course, had also failed the test.

The results led police to question if Linda was covering up for Al -- or if she 43

The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery

herself had been involved in the murder. On numerous occasions detectives Leon Lynch and Dianne Jennings spoke with Linda, both at police stations in Durham and at her home in Huron Park.

The failed polygraph test was puzzling to Linda. And she had been shaken by Detective Paul Nadeau’s assertion that she wasn’t telling all she knew, or was tangled up in the killing herself. Back at home in Huron Park Linda struggled with all of this. She wondered again and again if the cops were right: Am I forgetting something? she asked herself. Why can’t I remember?

“I believed what I said (to the police) was the truth,” Linda said later. “But now I believed beyond a shadow of a doubt there was more. But I couldn’t remember.”

Linda began to believe that some sort of “block” was suppressing her memory of exactly what had happened. There had to be a reason why it wasn’t coming out. She talked extensively with her friend Janet Hales and other women in the community, musing on many possibilities. Maybe, Linda began to think, she was suffering from some sort of multi-personality disorder. Maybe the Linda who was present on the night of Dec. 9, 1974, wasn’t the same Linda who was now struggling to help the police arrive at the truth.

These thoughts were playing on her mind when Jennings and Lynch visited her in Huron Park on Jan. 28, 2008 to talk about the polygraph test. Linda’s failure, they reiterated, meant she knew more about Bev’s murder than she had revealed in her numerous statements over the previous three-and-a-half decades.

Linda was flustered by the accusation.

“I’ve never murdered anyone!” she exclaimed. “I don’t trust him. I don’t know him.”

“Nadeau?” Lynch asked.

“Yes,” said Linda. “I don’t trust him. How could I?”

Linda said she felt she had been truthful, so the news she’d failed the test was confusing.

“That’s so bizarre,” she murmured. “Totally bizarre.”

Lynch tried to comfort Linda.

“People could fail a test not for being involved in (a crime) but from having knowledge of something,” he suggested. “That’s what we’re looking at.”

“I wasn’t hiding anything,” Linda insisted. “We’ve not hurt anybody. We’ve not been into heavy stuff. Those are the people we stay away from.”

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Lynch tried to get Linda to focus on the night of the murder.

“Did Al go over to Bev’s house that night before you found the body?”

“No. He didn’t go over.”

Lynch told Linda that since the case had been re-opened the investigative team had interviewed more than 200 people. The information they’d gathered left them curious about Al’s activities that night.

“He went over after I did,” Linda insisted.

“We’ve got evidence through the investigation he was in the house that night,” Lynch told Linda.

“I didn’t know that,” Linda said.

“If you knew something and didn’t want to be involved, that could be the reason why you failed the test,” Lynch suggested. “No one’s saying you’re being untruthful. And no one’s saying you’re involved.”

Linda took a breath and once again recited the narrative she’d provided the police repeatedly over the years.

“He picked us up in the afternoon and we were with him in the truck,” she said. “When we came home for supper, Doug called. I went over, and that’s when Al went over.”

The cops took Linda through each aspect of her story, but no new information emerged. Before they left, Linda agreed to take another polygraph test. Once the homicide detectives were on their way Janet and Linda talked about the encounter, their conversation intercepted on the cops’ wiretap.

“I’m surprised you agreed,” Janet observed.

“Why wouldn’t I agree?” Linda replied. “I haven’t got anything to hide. That’s the confusing part.”

The women revisited the details Linda had relayed to Lynch and Jennings, puzzling over the dark hints Lynch had dropped about information he had placing Al in Bev’s house prior to her being found dead.

“He was not over at that house,” Linda said, yet again.

She admitted the suggestion she had some involvement in the killing was unnerving. She said she was co-operating in an effort to convince the police that wasn’t true.

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“I have to defend myself,” she told Janet.

“You’re going to react,” Janet reassured her. “You’re going to feel you have to defend yourself. You’re going to over-compensate.”

“Al was not over there that night,” Linda reiterated. “I was the first one to go over.”

In the ensuing days Linda and Janet spoke often about the investigation. Janet pressed Linda: Why are the police so certain about Al? She warned Linda that she risked being implicated in the killing if she continued to provide Al’s alibi.

“If you incriminate yourself in this it’s going to be bad, because you guys were together at the time,” she said. “They’re detectives -- they’re going to watch your life. They’re going to watch his life. They’re not going to let go; you could incriminate yourself,” she warned Linda. “I’m praying this comes to an end. But when they come to you, this is something serious.”

“I know,” Linda said wearily.

“It’s important for you,” Janet continued. “You kept insisting, ‘Al was with me -- I was with him all the time. There’s no gap’. But they’re seeing gaps.”

Janet paused.

“Something’s not right,” she mused. “They’re going to come and you’re still in a place of fear. That’s what they see. Everyone else co-operated -- they’re cleared. They see you guys as some kind of suspects.”

Linda sat shocked.

“Are you saying I could end up in jail? I’m not trying to hide anything.”

“No,” Janet replied hastily, “but because of who you are you often don’t want to know the bad. You don’t want to see the bad. But the cops are seeing the same thing, like I said to you. They look at the body language and they’re seeing terror in you and when they see that they’re going to go, ‘What’s she afraid of? She must know something. She must have been part of it’. And that’s what’s concerning me.”

“I don’t know what to do about it,” Linda pleaded.

“It’s between us and God,” Janet announced. “And we can get to the bottom of it, even if it’s ugly. You’ve got to look at some bad stuff,” Janet said, “and acknowledge maybe Al was out of your sight that night. The cops are coming.”

Linda sat absorbing this. It was the same thing the police had suggested: Maybe Al wasn’t with you the whole time. Maybe he had something to do with 46

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Bev’s death.

“They say they have stuff on Al,” Janet insisted. “They have something new.”

Linda considered these words. For the first time, she began to waver.

“I’m not so sure,” she said, her voice low.

During the early months of 2008 Linda Smith was interrogated thoroughly by police and as the process unfolded, her story began to evolve. Although at the outset she adhered to the version she’d held forth as gospel for decades, seeds of doubt began to germinate in her mind. Suddenly Linda found herself questioning everything she’d always believed -- about the murder, about her knowledge of it, and about her ex-husband, Alan.

The cracks began to show when Linda sat down on Feb. 5, 2008 with Jennings.

The detective assailed one of the primary aspects of Linda’s story: that Al was with her from the time they arrived home in Raglan that night until she had sent him over to check on Bev. Jennings suggested that Linda’s certainty might not be realistic.

“Is there that possibility, that he left your sight?” the detective asked.

“No,” said Linda. “But when I stop and think about it and go back there ... I thought, is there any possibility? And I thought, we’ll find out as this investigation continues.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind you know who killed Beverly Smith,” Jennings said. “Today’s the day we put the past behind us.”

“Oh, Diane, if I knew I would tell you,” Linda despaired.

“There’s a lot of theories,” Jennings continued. “Is it a case of you and Al sitting down and planning this, or is it simply a case of you finding out after the fact?”

“There was absolutely no sitting and planning,” Linda said, taken aback. “My goodness.”

“So what it comes down to,” Jennings said, “is that you found out after the fact.

If I thought you were the type of person who would sit down with Al and formulate a plan -- I misread you. I don’t believe that.”

“I’m not shielding Al,” Linda insisted.

She told Jennings that in the days since the polygraph test she had closely reexamined her memories and impressions of 1974. By now Linda had ascertained that the police were suspicious of Al. But she had never considered the possibility 47

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her ex was the killer.

Now she wondered aloud, “If he’s innocent, why is he freaking out?”

“We know who it was, Linda,” Jennings told her.

“You think Al did it,” said Linda.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Wow,” said Linda. “I’ve been living with a murderer all these years. My goodness.”

“You know what?” Jennings continued. “Your kids know. Your kids are very perceptive.”

“You made me stop and think,” said Linda, and at that moment, the narrative to which she had clung for decades became less certain. “He could have been out of my sight,” she said.

“He was out of your sight,” said Jennings.

“I have not been covering up for him,” Linda said again.

“Let’s not use those words,” Jennings suggested. “It sounds like you were doing it on purpose. I think you were put in a situation where you didn’t have any choices. You didn’t have alternatives.”

Linda spoke as if her head was spinning.

“I have never thought that he was guilty until this new investigation,” she said.

“That thought never crossed my mind, that there was a possibility ...“

“A strong possibility,” the officer interjected.

“... he may have been involved.”

“There’s more,” Jennings pressed.

“There’s more?” Linda echoed.

“I think we have to put the past behind us,” Jennings insisted. “Today’s the day we’re gonna climb that mountain. And you’re gonna tell us what you know.”

“I’ve told you everything I know,” Linda pleaded.

Jennings then told Linda about Dave Maunder’s revelation that on the night of the murder, Al had visited Doug Smith’s house to pick up an ounce of weed.

“I didn’t know that,” Linda said quietly.

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Jennings pressed on.

“Dave Maunder says Al got him the dope and he refused to have any part of it.”

Now Linda sounded as though her mind had been truly blown.

“Oh, my goodness, Diane. I had no idea. I had no idea. Diane, I believed him to be innocent all these years. But I’m not so sure now.”

“Linda, today’s the day to put the past behind us. I get it -- you were young, you were in love, you didn’t have choices. We’re at a fork in the road. What path are you going to take?” Jennings said. “We’re not going away. That sounds a little cliché, but we have invested a lot of energy in this. We’re interested in the person that pulled the trigger. That’s all we’re interested in.”

“I can’t tell you something I don’t know, Diane,” Linda said wearily.

“There’s only two alternatives here. Either you sat down with Al and formulated a plan or you found out about it afterward,” Jennings said again.

“I did not find out about it afterward and I did not sit down with him. I am not holding back any information,” Linda insisted. “There isn’t any deep, dark secret. There isn’t some time prior to this I had any inkling that Al could be guilty.

I’m telling you the truth.”

Jennings switched tracks: “We just want to know your role in this,” she said.

“Did you shoot Bev?”

“No. I found her. I saw her on the floor.”

“I believe you,” Jennings said.

As she revisited her story, Linda went from insisting that Al had not been out of her sight prior to the call from Doug Smith to conceding that he may have been absent for a few minutes. Over time that absence grew to the point where Linda speculated Al may have been gone for up to an hour on the night of the killing.

On March 3, 2008, Linda was interrogated for hours, beginning with a “cognitive interview” aimed at fleshing out her memories from the night of the murder.

During the course of the interview Linda agreed that Al had been unaccounted for -- maybe up to 60 minutes, she allowed -- but that was the extent of her murky recollections.

“What can I do to help you?” the cop interviewing her asked.

“You need to let me go be with my Lord,” Linda said wearily. “I’m not hiding.”

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The interview appeared to be winding up. Linda rose, preparing to leave the interrogation room. At that moment the door opened and Lynch appeared.

“This’ll just take two seconds,” he said.

Linda sat down again. She would end up talking with Lynch and other detectives throughout the night. The detective began by urging Linda to do the right thing and disclose all she knew.

“I want to give you that opportunity and I want to help you through that and I want to show your family that Grandma is the glue,” Lynch said.

“I think God is the glue,” Linda responded.

She paused, apparently in thought, then began again: “When I was making Robin’s formula in the kitchen, I thought I heard a car backfire. Like, a noise like that. I heard it, but I’m busy with the baby. It was loud.”

“You heard it in the house?” Lynch asked.

“Yes.”

“In December,” said Lynch. “With the windows closed.”

In spite of his apparent skepticism, Lynch continued to question Linda on her sudden disclosure. It was information she’d never imparted.

“When you heard this noise, where did it come from?”

“Across –- “ Linda began.

“Across where?”

“Across the street,” she said.

“Other than Simcoe Street in the back yard, what is across the street from your house?”

“Doug and Bev’s house,” Linda said.

“Right,” said the cop. “And you heard this sound.”

“Oh -- I’m getting goosebumps,” said a newly animated Linda. “It’s one of those things I didn’t think was important. I put it down as a car going by, or a truck going by.”

“Where is Al when you hear this noise?” asked Lynch.

“I don’t know,” said Linda. “I can’t say for sure he was there, which means he wasn’t there. He must’ve been outside, or in the garage.”

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“I heard you say he was gone upwards of an hour,” Lynch continued. “When he came back in, what did he look like?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Are you thinking now, ‘You know what? What was that?’” Lynch suggested.

Linda looked at him.

“That’s what I’m thinking, Leon.”

As the interview continued Linda fell more and more to questioning things she had taken for granted, such as Al’s actions that night. Why did she have a memory of him saying Bev’s injury was much more than a bump on the head? Why would he rush to park his Humane Society van in Bev’s driveway? Why did the police question him so extensively on the night of the killing? She despaired that she seemed to be held back from disclosing to the police all they seemed to think she should know.

“There’s a reason why all of us don’t tell people things,” Lynch reassured her.

“There’s a reason we bury things. You were his keeper -- you kept your family together. You knew what happened December 9, 1974. Today’s the day it comes out.”

“But Leon,” Linda protested. “I didn’t see him do it.”

“You don’t have to see him do it to know he did it,” Lynch replied.

“OK,” said Linda, “OK.”

“We brought it out today: The bang,” Lynch said. “The bang says it all. You heard it.”

Linda thought for a bit before speaking.

“The bang says it all. And he wasn’t in the house.”

“Did you see him put anything away?” Lynch asked.

“No.”

“I know we’re close,” he said.

Lynch pressed on with his questioning for hours, digging for details on the shot Linda said she’d heard. The narrative began to take more form: Al was gone for about an hour and then Linda heard the shot. About 20 minutes later he returned.

It was after that Doug Smith called from the GM plant. Lynch reminded Linda that the police had come to believe Al had received a call from Dave Maunder that 51

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evening.

“That night I know is ingrained in your memory very well, right?” Lynch prompted.

“Did David call earlier? Hmmm,” Linda mused. “I seem to recall Dave asking or phoning -- he talked to Al about getting some pot for him ... He would’ve had to get it from somewhere, from someone.”

“Who would he get it from?” Lynch asked.

“I would think he’d just go across the road to Doug’s,” Linda said.

A few days later, on March 12, Lynch again questioned Al Smith, focusing on Al’s presence at Doug and Bev’s house the night of the killing. Al allowed that amid all the mayhem he and Linda might have made a number of trips back and forth between their house and Bev’s.

“Two times you said ‘we’,” Lynch observed.

“Yeah,” said Al. “Me and Linda.”

“So you and Linda were over at the house.”

“Yeah.”

“At the same time?” Lynch asked.

“Well, yeah,” Al replied. “It was chaos. You know, there’s a baby in the house somewhere. There could’ve been five or six times me and Linda went back and forth, Leon. No doubt you’re probably looking at Linda.”

“Yeah,” Lynch said.

“Because that was the only person over there,” Al continued.

“Linda can’t remember being over there with you,” Lynch said.

“OK,” said Al. “Some people need to take another look at what they’re doing.”

The evolution of Linda’s story, combined with the other evidence that had accumulated, was adding up. The police were compiling what they thought was a compelling case to answer to the question that had remained unanswered for so long: Who killed Beverly Smith? Very shortly they would share it with the world.

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A headline on the March 19, 2008 edition of Oshawa This Week announces an arrest in the murder of Beverly Smith. Metroland file photo

5 At long last an arrest

On March 17, 2008, police converged on the Cobourg home Alan Smith shared with his daughter and granddaughter and arrested him for the second-degree murder of Beverly Smith. The development came as a thunderbolt: Just weeks earlier Durham police had held a press conference announcing the re-launch of the investigation, and calling for witnesses to come forward.

In February investigators had announced an ambitious review of Bev’s killing and made an appeal for information. Inspector Dave Kimmerly told reporters that out there somewhere was someone with the key to the mystery.

“It’s somebody that was interacting in the community at the time,” Kimmerly said. “It is our hope the person or persons responsible are still alive and still within our reach.”

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Kimmerly revealed that Lynch’s team had interviewed more than 200 people across Canada and the United States, collecting DNA and fingerprint samples. Not everyone was initially co-operative, he noted, but added that didn’t automatically make them suspects. There was little discussion of previous investigations and no mention of the brief detention of Doug Daigle in the 1980s. Kimmerly told reporters a dedicated team had been on the case since the spring of 2007, and that they would be relentless in their pursuit of the killer.

Also present at the media event were Bev’s twin sister, Barbra Brown, and Bev’s daughter Rebecca. Both appealed for anyone with information to come forward.

Barbra, in her quiet, deliberate fashion, described the lingering pain she felt: “To me it feels like yesterday,” she said. “I felt my twin’s pain when she died and I feel her turmoil now. She needs to be at peace.”

Rebecca brushed away tears as she spoke directly to the killer: “I understand you were young at the time and you may regret your actions of that night,” she said. “Now I’m asking you to give my family, and my mom, and even yourself some peace.”

The arrest, coming so quickly on the heels of that press conference, was a stunning development. Adding to the sensational nature of the story was the identity of the accused: Alan Smith, the neighbour who for years had been perceived as the man who rushed to Bev’s aid when she was found shot. Neighbours in Cobourg were rocked by the arrest.

“He’s nice enough, and that’s shocking,” said one, while another described Al and his relatives as “nice, quiet, pleasant people. Nothing special, nothing strange.

Just regular neighbours in a quiet neighbourhood.”

Others took a less charitable view of Al.

“(I) thought right from the beginning there was something peculiar. I had a strange feeling about him,” said one. “He offered to help shovel my snow, but would then come with his hands out, ‘That will be $15.’ He also offered to do yard work for me but I changed my mind about the yard work.”

Barbra Brown expressed relief that a suspect had been arrested.

“I’m very emotional,” she told Oshawa This Week. “I’ve been waiting for this for a very long time so it’s a bittersweet moment and I’m celebrating, and I’ve lost, also. Like I said years ago in the beginning, I needed to know a name so I would know who to hate. But now I know who to forgive. I don’t want to forgive just yet, 55

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but hopefully in time.”

She praised the Durham police for their efforts.

“These Durham guys are good,” she said. “We’re looking forward to the trial.”

Appearing at a news conference a few days later, Brown described her shock at learning Alan Smith had been identified as the killer.

“It was a terrible blow all over again. He made himself out to be a hero. Part of my healing was waiting to forgive and I hope in the future it still will be, but right now it’s not on the table,” she said. “I just need to hate him a little longer.”

Rebecca described the arrest as exoneration at last for Doug. In spite of repeated insistence by the police that he wasn’t a suspect, whispers had persisted for years, she said.

“I had people who would say it was my dad. They were pointing fingers,” she said. “He lost his wife.”

Lynch, interviewed soon after the arrest was announced, admitted he was elated.

“I think today is up there with any case I’ve been involved with,” he said.

“We’re happy; we’re excited for the family, that we could get them some answers.

We didn’t promise anything to the family. We just said we’d do our best.”

Lynch credited his investigative team with putting in the hard work required to solve the cold case.

“We went back to square one. We started right from scratch and re-interviewed everybody. We uncovered people we had never spoken to before and that was helpful.”

Of course the police didn’t reveal to the press the primary planks of their case, namely Dave Maunder’s assertion Al had gone to Bev’s house the night she died to buy dope, and Linda’s evolving story.

Police spokesman David Selby told reporters that no single revelation led to the arrest.

“Everything helped, but no one thing was the tipping point,” he said. “Probably several hundred police officers over the years have looked at this case, and none of their work was lost.”

When he was asked if police had identified a prime suspect by the time they’d held their press conference back in February, Selby declined to comment.

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Police made no mention of another remarkable development: Linda Smith was also arrested March 17, and charged with obstructing police. After the arrest her story changed yet again, and the hole Alan Dale Smith found himself in got significantly deeper. Linda was brought to the police station in downtown Oshawa and placed in an interrogation room. Just before 10 p.m. Lynch came in and took a seat in the chair across from her.

“Do you know why you’re under arrest?” he asked.

“Um,” Linda began, “obstructing police?”

Lynch issued Linda the standard police cautions about making statements that may incriminate her; he told again the police believed she was not being fully forthcoming about telling them everything she knew about Bev’s murder.

“You’re saying you’re co-operating; that’s not true,” Lynch said. “You’re here because of statements you made back in 1974, for statements you made in 1988 and statements you’ve made in this investigation in 2007, and the statements you continue to make. ... I know the evidence in this case and I know that’s not true.

“You know where Al is tonight?” Lynch continued. “He’s in the station, under arrest. For murder. He’s under arrest. He’s been here since 3 o’clock this afternoon.”

Lynch then confronted Linda with her story of having heard a gunshot from Bev’s house the night of the killing.

“You did not hear any bang inside that house -- it’s impossible,” he said.

“People were outside of their houses and didn’t hear any bang. I don’t believe you when you say you’re across the street with Robin and you hear the bang. That’s not true. You know things from Al being in the house,” Lynch accused. “You’re playing us. You’re just as involved. Where were you?”

“I was across the road in the house,” said Linda.

“Where were you when he pulled the trigger?” Lynch demanded.

“I was in the house with my baby,” Linda reiterated.

Lynch insisted again Linda could not have heard the shot she’d described -unless she was in Bev’s house when it was fired.

“You’re just as involved,” he said. “People are going to hear the worst and the worst is that Bev was executed, shot from behind in her own home by a ruthless killer. And you have a part in it. You might as well have pulled the trigger yourself.

That’s how it’s going to appear.”

The interrogation carried on into the night. At 1:21 a.m. Lynch was spelled 57

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by Detective Rick McNabb. He quickly went on the offensive, telling Linda he had something in common with her -- he was a Christian too -- and that watching and listening to her previous statements to police was offensive to him. He accused her of being dishonest and covering up for Al. McNabb mentioned the failed polygraph and accused Linda of going on “tangents” to withhold information.

Finally she interrupted him.

“The duty counsel said I shouldn’t -” Linda began.

“That’s all fine and well,” said McNabb briskly. “I don’t work for duty counsel and neither do you.”

McNabb dismissed Linda’s purported memory block as nonsense. He accused her of covering up for Al Smith, a man who warranted no protection.

“He was on welfare when he was 21,” McNabb said. “He was an embarrassment to his friends.”

McNabb accused Linda of lying earlier that night when she’d told Lynch she couldn’t remember buying drugs at Doug and Bev’s house.

“The question was about that night,” Linda corrected him.

“Did you ever buy drugs from Bev and Doug, yes or no?” McNabb demanded.

“I’m trying to remember,” Linda said.

“Linda,” said McNabb, sounding exasperated, “you were there numerous times.”

“Everyone got pot for everyone,” Linda offered.

McNabb switched gears. “I believe you did hear a bang, because you were close enough to hear it.”

“I wasn’t even near the house,” Linda said again. “I was across the road with the baby.”

Linda admitted again she’d heard no gunshot. She confessed that what she’d told Lynch wasn’t true. McNabb had her go back to the beginning of the narrative, when she, Al and the baby arrived at home in Raglan.

“Al had come in,” she said, “but he went out, I sense, to get a bag of pot for Dave Maunder. And he was gone for -- I don’t know how long -- 40 minutes or so, 45 minutes –”

“What happened across the road at Bev’s house?” McNabb interjected.

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“I don’t know, sir,” Linda mewled. “I wasn’t there.”

McNabb leaned forward, his voice rising.

“You do know,” he said. “Because if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t have failed your polygraph.”

The exchange continued, Linda claiming she didn’t know what happened in Bev’s house, and McNabb insisting that she must know. As the clock rolled past 2:20 a.m. he took a softer tone.

“You’re here, God’s here, and the truth is here,” he told Linda. “Did you see Al with a gun at any time?”

Linda sat silent. A full minute passed.

“I need an answer,” McNabb said. “All I need is the truth.”

More silence. Then Linda began to speak, quietly, almost choking on the words.

“I want to say yes,” she said softly.

“You want to say it because it’s the truth?” McNabb asked.

Again, Linda sat silent, her hands clasped in her lap.

“All I need is yes or no, Linda. You were there. I wasn’t.”

A long stretch of silence ensued. The two people in the interrogation room sat as if frozen.

Then Linda murmured, “Are you going to believe me if I tell you?”

“I’m going to have to accept whatever decision you make,” McNabb replied.

“You know what the truth is. I just want to know if you saw Al with a gun at any time on the day of the homicide.”

Again, the tiny room was filled with silence. Linda sat with her shoulders slumped, hands clasped, saying nothing. McNabb sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. He leafed through some pages in a file folder.

The silence persisted until the cop broke it: “Falling asleep on me, Linda?”

“No,” she sighed.

“What’s the answer here?”

Once more silence prevailed.

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“It’s yes or no,” McNabb prompted.

A sob escaped from Linda.

“I know,” she said. “You’re not the enemy.”

There followed another lengthy pause.

Then in a low voice, almost a whisper, Linda said, “Yes.”

“Where did you see it?”

“In the evening,” said Linda. “Through the window by the telephone.”

She went on to describe watching as Al walked up to his Humane Society van, opened the door, and put a rifle under the seat. He closed the door of the van, she said. McNabb had Linda describe the gun. He had her go through this new story a couple of times. Linda admitted that it was dark, but said she was sure what she’d seen in Al’s hands that night was a gun.

“Tell me why I should believe what you’ve told me,” McNabb said as 3 a.m. neared.

Linda began to cry.

“Because it’s the truth,” she sobbed.

Linda’s interrogation continued through the night. She admitted to the police that she had known all along about the gun. She told them she wanted now to bring peace to Bev’s family.

“It has to stop,” she said, weeping. “It has to stop.”

By now McNabb had abandoned his tough approach. He spoke to Linda softly: “Why are you talking to us now?” he asked.

“Because you met me head-on, as a believer,” Linda replied. “I’ve gone through a process of prayer and surrendering to the Lord. You made me confront my faith.

You did no tricks.”

Outside a new day was dawning. With the new information Linda had provided the police had substantially bolstered their case against Al Smith, who sat in a holding cell nearby, awaiting an appearance in bail court.

The second-degree murder charge meant Al was held without bail. But Canada’s Criminal Code includes a provision that allows those faced with such serious charges to apply to a Superior Court judge for release. On April 16, a month after Al’s arrest, Justice Michelle Fuerst began hearing submissions.

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Crown attorney John Scott outlined the case against Al, focusing on the version of events Linda had provided police: Dave Maunder had called looking for pot, Scott told the judge, and then Al had gone to Doug and Bev’s house. He returned “looking scared” and Linda had seen him stashing a gun in his van. Linda would testify Al had said he’d hurt Bev, but that it was an accident, he said. Scott also told the judge he had evidence Al had told his daughter Erin that on the night of the murder he had gone to the Smiths’ house to get pot for Maunder.

Defence lawyer Tom Balka presented as sureties Al’s daughters Robin and Erin, and his son Kenneth. The three of them, Balka submitted, would be able to keep an eye on Al and ensure he complied with the stringent release conditions he expected the court might impose. He suggested a relatively high bail of $50,000.

But Fuerst expressed concern about the ability of Al’s kids to pledge the high bond, and to supervise an accused killer outside of jail. Balka asked for an adjournment to explore other avenues.

There was a heavy media presence in the Whitby courthouse; for most reporters it was their first glimpse of Al Smith, because back in March police had delayed announcing the arrest until after he’d made a first appearance in bail court; after that Al was held at the Lindsay jail. Reporters converged on Barbra Brown and Rebecca.

“It’s difficult,” the soft-spoken Brown said. “It’s hard to say how I feel -- it’s confusing. Mainly we’re doing this for Beverly. The whole community wanted to know a name,” she said. “They needed to know a name.”

The hearing continued on April 21. Balka told the judge he had amended his release plan, and was now proposing two sureties: Erin and Mary Doumoulin, Al’s sister. Doumoulin testified that she’d had no contact with Al over the previous 25 years.

“Why are you here today?” Balka asked.

Doumoulin glanced toward Al in the prisoner’s dock.

“Because he’s my brother, and I love him,” she said. “And he loves me.”

Balka suggested that the bail for Al could be raised even higher, proposing Robin and her husband guarantee $30,000, and that Doumoulin pledge $50,000.

The combined bond of $80,000, he argued, would guarantee the sureties were diligent in ensuring Al abide by any conditions imposed by the court.

“There is a great deal of money on the line for all concerned,” Balka said.

He told the judge Al’s last criminal conviction was dated -- a decade old -- and 61

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that Al himself was getting on in years, living on a disability pension.

Not surprisingly, the plan was rejected by Scott. The prosecutor argued there was evidence that Al, a life-long substance abuser, had been taking drugs. And he cautioned that Al’s criminal past, in particular a conviction for failing to appear in court, indicated the disdain with which he regarded judicial orders. And Scott reminded the judge of the heinous offence for which Al had been charged.

“This is an individual who has carried that for 34 years and managed to keep it concealed,” he told Fuerst. “There may be a plan here that might comply, but in my submission, this isn’t it.”

Fuerst reserved her decision, remanding Al to the Lindsay jail.

On April 28 the basement courtroom in the Whitby courthouse was packed for Fuerst’s ruling. The judge began with a review of the Crown’s case, in particular the narrative provided by Linda -- who, the judge noted, had since been charged with obstructing police. And she revisited the release plan put forth by the defence, noting the willingness of Al’s family to help and calling that contribution “relevant”.

There was no evidence Al had formed relationships that would likely lure him back to Alberta, Fuerst noted. And she added that while Al had been repeatedly interviewed about the murder by police, it didn’t appear he’d ever taken steps to flee the jurisdiction.

Fuerst also had reservations about the strength of the Crown’s case.

“The evidence is not overwhelming,” the judge said.

She declared that Al would be released. He would live with his daughter under numerous conditions that included abiding by a curfew, reporting regularly to police, and abstaining from booze and drugs.

The courtroom spectators sat in silence. Rebecca began to weep. Wendy Lodge, one of Bev’s sisters, leaned over to dab at a tear that ran down Barbra Brown’s cheek.

Fuerst ordered Al to appear in an Oshawa remand court at the end of the month. She asked if he understood and intended to abide by the conditions.

“Yes I am, Your Honour,” he replied.

Court was adjourned. For the first time Al Smith showed a reaction to the proceedings. Looking out toward his supporters he beamed, then raised his handcuffed hands, giving them a double thumbs-up. “Yes,” he mouthed.

Barbra Brown exchanged hugs with her sisters, then left the courtroom with62

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out speaking to reporters. Al was escorted from the prisoner’s dock by court officers. A while later he emerged from the courthouse, wearing sunglasses and with the hood of his parka tied tight around his face. He was whisked away to a vehicle driven by his brother, Joe.

As Al Smith prepared for the legal tribulations he faced, the police continued speaking to Linda. She’d contacted Lynch after the lengthy interrogation on the day of her arrest to report that she’d had more revelations. Linda sat down with Lynch on May 10. And things got weird. Lynch began by gently informing Linda that all he’d ever sought from her was the truth.

“You don’t have to fear any judgment from me,” he assured her.

“I’m not the person I was back then. My circumstances have changed,” Linda began. “We came back for supper. We came into the house. He was to go over to Bev and Doug’s to get some marijuana for Dave Maunder. So he went over ... he was taking longer than he ought to and I knew he was interested in Bev,” Linda said.

She told Lynch she prepared a bottle and left Robin with it, then crossed the street to see what was going on.

“He was in the house with Bev. The doors weren’t locked so I went in through the back porch,” Linda continued. “He was backing away from the table. She was writing out cards, I guess. I was just freaking inside. I thought, here he is trying to be with someone else again.”

“What happened next?”

Linda composed herself.

“I’m trying very hard to stay focused here, OK Leon? I have to not make up stories. Speak from my heart, not my mind ... There was a rifle in the doorway -not in the doorway, but around the corner, beside the doorway -- and I grabbed that and I wanted to shoot him because I was so furious and enraged that he was trying to be unfaithful to me again. And -- I believe I shot Bev.”

Lynch stared at Linda.

“You believe it,” he asked, “or did you do it?”

“This is what gets confusing,” said Linda. “Bear with me, Leon.”

“I’ll bear with you,” he said. “I’m after the truth.”

“I shot Bev,” said Linda.

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“How do you know that?” asked Lynch. “What do you mean? How do you know you’re the person who shot Bev? What did you do, Linda? What happened?”

“I dropped the gun and went out of the house and back to Ashley’s and the phone was ringing and it was Doug. I don’t know what Al did. I didn’t know about the money or where the pot was or anything ... The next time I came back to the house those doors were locked. I think I shot Bev,” Linda said. “After I told Janet what happened I said when we got back home I went with Al and I had Robin with me and that we knocked on the door. Bev would’ve let us in because she locked the doors when Doug wasn’t there. I believed that to be true, and that I was beside him when Al shot Bev. But I didn’t have peace with that, Leon.”

Lynch wasn’t buying this story. He pressed on, however, urging Linda to divulge what she seemed to want to tell.

“You need to tell the truth to set yourself free,” he told her. “Start from the beginning and tell me the truth.”

“I didn’t bring Robin over with me because I didn’t expect to be long -- I went over to see what was keeping him,” Linda began. “I came in through the back door ... I don’t know if he had asked Beverly about the pot or not. I don’t think she had anything to do with the sale of the pot. Bev was sitting at the kitchen table and he saw me. And he reached around the door frame and got the gun. It’s very, very scary, Leon,” she pleaded.

“What’s Bev doing?”

“Sitting at the table with her back to us.”

“What does Al say?”

“He just shot her,” Linda said finally. “I guess they had a conversation earlier. I don’t know. I don’t know, Leon.”

Linda went on to tell Lynch that she’d fled and went back to her house, where the phone was ringing. It was Doug Smith calling, she said. Linda said it was as she spoke to Doug that she glanced out the window and saw Al putting the gun in the Humane Society van.

“Do you know where the gun is?” Lynch asked.

“No, I don’t,” Linda replied. “It’s probably at the Humane Society, but I don’t know for sure. This might be speculation, but I believe if you took a metal detector out beside or behind the Humane Society on Thickson Road you might find a rifle.”

The police did just that. They went there that night with Linda in tow. A cur64

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sory search yielded nothing. There followed several searches during which the police had crews dig up asphalt and earth -- at one point they had a company come in and conduct a sophisticated scan of the soil below the parking lot. No gun was ever found.

After her arrest Linda was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation.

She went on to provide at least one more version of the story later, this time saying she’d arrived to find Bev’s door locked and Al in the house with her. Bev let her in, then told Al she wasn’t sure where the marijuana was kept. This angered Al, who pulled out the gun and shot Bev in the back of the head, she said. Linda’s shifting narrative caused her problems -- two criminal charges, to which she eventually pleaded guilty. It was to prove even more problematic, eventually, for the police.

ANOTHER TWIST IN THE MYSTERY

On a hot Thursday morning in late July 2008, phones began ringing in newsrooms across the GTA. The tipster advised editors they should have someone at the provincial courthouse in Oshawa for yet another development in the case of Alan Smith.

The tantalizing tip did not disappoint. Al was ushered into a crowded courtroom, packed with media and members of his family. He took a seat in a glassedin prisoner’s dock and stared out at the crowd as prosecutor Telena Mulligan addressed a Justice of the Peace. The Crown, she said, was withdrawing the charge of second-degree murder.

“There is no reasonable prospect of conviction,” she said, adding, however, “the police investigation is continuing.”

It took just a matter of minutes. A stunned silence prevailed as Alan Smith was ushered out of the courtroom, nodding to his family as he left. Although the charge against him had been dropped, it took several hours to process Al’s release (he had wound up back in custody after one of his sureties pulled his bail). Finally, at about 3:30 in the afternoon he walked out of the courthouse, flanked by his brother Joe, sister Mary, and lawyer Tom Balka. Al had been instructed by Balka what to say to reporters, and warned not to deviate from the script.

Looking a tad bewildered as a scrum formed around him, Al began to speak, his voice quavering slightly.

“I did not murder Beverly Smith,” he said. “This has been a terrible ordeal for myself and my family.” He refused to answer any questions.

That role was assumed by Balka, who told reporters the Durham police ap65

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peared to have based their case on information provided by Linda Smith. And that information, he indicated, had proven unreliable.

“They got the wrong man on these charges,” Balka said. “He’s not guilty. The charge was laid after they consulted with and received statements from his ex-wife.”

Balka was critical of the almost celebratory press conference held by the police after the arrest in March. The tone of the event and information released to the media all but convicted Al before a word had been spoken in court, he said.

“It poisons the public’s mind against the person,” Balka said. “It implies the case is solved.”

Al’s brother Joe pulled up in his pickup truck. Al Smith, still clutching his release papers, climbed into the cab beside him. Joe gave a single toot of the horn and drove out of the parking lot.

Durham homicide boss J.J. Allen wouldn’t comment much after the development, except to hint the story hadn’t yet reached its conclusion.

“At this stage the investigation is ongoing,” he said. “It’s an important case.”

The case may have crumbled, but police still believed they had identified the man who killed Bev Smith. And the surest way to secure a conviction was to elicit a confession from that man.

It was time to take Al Smith fishing.

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When Alan Smith was released in 2008 his troubles with police were far from over. He was to become the target of a new police operation named Project Fearless. Mr. Smith is shown here on the day of his release in 2008 accompanied by his sister Mary Doumoulin and lawyer Tom Balka. Metroland file photo

6 Mr. Big

By early 2009, Alan Smith had little but his liberty, and found himself in a deep funk. He was back living at Erin’s house in Cobourg, flat broke, and without friends –- the few acquaintances he’d had were scared off after his arrest for murder.

Although he was only in his late 50s, events had aged Al; he spent his time at home, watching TV in his basement apartment with his dachshund Stan, or tending to Erin’s daughter Ava. Neighbours knew him to be the geezer who shuffled along the street, making trips to and from Walmart or the local Metro grocery store. One of his few leisure activities was fishing.

The police had not given up on Al Smith as their primary suspect in the killing of Beverly Smith. Investigators decided to employ undercover tactics to infiltrate Al’s life, gain his trust, and, ideally, extract a confession. The operation was dubbed 67

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Project Fearless. And fishing was to be the bait.

In January 2009, the ruse began when an officer posing as a survey taker knocked on the door of Erin’s house and spoke to Al. The pitch was simple: answer a few questions and be entered in a draw for a variety of prizes, including passes to the Sportsmans Show and an ice fishing excursion on Lake Simcoe. Al happily took part and filled out his entry form.

“The only thing I want is the fishing trip,” he remarked as he handed it back.

When Al got word he was a lucky winner, he was pretty excited. Not much good had come his way over the past couple of years. He was lonely, and embittered over his arrest and incarceration. He often ranted that if he had the dough, he’d sue the cops for millions. His children had come to fear for him; since the time he took his fateful polygraph test in the summer of 2007 and landed on the police radar, he’d been depressed and fearful.

So it was a buoyant Al Smith who climbed into a van on the morning of Feb. 3 and was ferried north for a day on the ice. Along for the ride was another contest winner, who introduced himself as Danny. Danny and Al hit it off right away.

Danny was younger than Al but enjoyed the older man’s gift of gab. Danny said he was new in Cobourg and was staying at the Lotus Hotel; Al was familiar with the place, having lived there for a while himself. Danny hinted he liked to kick back with some beers; Al had quit drinking some years ago, but still enjoyed his weed.

There was a stop in Lindsay, where Al and Danny met up with a couple more contest winners, who piled into the van for the drive to Lake Simcoe. Out of the blue Al remarked, “Riding in this van is like riding in a God damn paddy wagon.”

He probably didn’t need to elaborate but Al explained he’d just gotten out of jail a while ago. Danny said he was moving to Cobourg and hoping to make inroads for his business (an ongoing publication ban prohibits reporting details on Danny’s real name or the nature of the business he purported to operate). Al said he might have a few ideas for places for Danny to move into when he got tired of the Lotus.

He didn’t know it, but Al was surrounded by police officers -- even the guy driving the van, who offered Al a couple packs of smokes for the day, was a cop.

Danny was an officer with a force outside Durham Region who had built a solid reputation as an undercover officer. He was one of several Ontario cops who form a kind of co-operative, a pool of talent drawn upon by local forces in need of such expertise; he was enlisted to act as the lead undercover on Project Fearless.

The men spent a pleasant day on the ice of Simcoe -- Danny and the other cops had a couple of beers, Al smoked a few reefers. When the van rolled back into 68

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Cobourg that night the new pals parted ways, but not before Al gave Danny his number and urged him to call. Danny and Al spoke on the phone a couple of times over the ensuing days and on Feb. 20 Danny went over to Erin’s house for a visit. He checked out Al’s basement room and found it simple, but comfortable. Al was set up with a couch, a bed, a TV and coffee table. He was working on a few renovations in the basement, and Danny offered some pointers. Al plopped down on the couch and began to roll a joint.

“I shoulda brought some beers,” Danny remarked.

“Why don’t you go get some?” Al suggested, and soon Danny was back with some pints and the fellows settled in to chat.

It wasn’t long until Al revisited the allusion to jail he’d made the day of the fishing trip. He copped to having been busted for second-degree murder in a decades-old cold case, and talked a bit about his time at the Lindsay jail. And of course he related how he’d been released when the Crown withdrew the charge.

“Yep, I just got out of jail six months ago,” Al said. “I was up at the East Correctional there, waiting to go up on this bogus second-degree murder charge.”

“Fuck off!” Danny protested.

“Yeah, honest,” Al replied, “my name was all in the paper here, and the Sun. I was known as the guy they caught after 34 fucking years only to find out they had made one of the biggest fuckin’ mistakes ever. “

“Holy fucking moley!” said Danny.

“And no, you’re not sitting beside a second-degree murderer,” Al assured him.

“That whole system got raked right over the fucking coals after I went walking. For being such fuckin’ idiots.”

“Man, I don’t know what to say,” said Danny. “Holy fuck.”

“I went through fucking hell,” Al said. “In a handbag.”

Al and Danny began seeing one another fairly often. It was apparent that Al had taken a liking to his new pal -- at one point he even offered Danny a room at Erin’s house. Danny had to think fast.

“Uh, thanks, man, but no,” he said. “I’m not really a people person, you know?

I need my quiet time.”

No problem, Al replied. He understood.

Danny rented an apartment in Cobourg at the beginning of March (the move 69

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from the motel was made as it appeared the undercover operation was gaining momentum, and it was cheaper to set him up in an apartment). They took a few more fishing trips -- a day trip to Simcoe, then a weekend stay up in Temagami. While they fished the boys talked about low-level criminality, ways to make a quick buck like selling marijuana and black market smokes. Al had smoked a couple of joints with some of the local Temagami boys, who lamented the lack of good weed in the area. Al reckoned that if somebody brought a pound to an area so dry, he could make a killing.

He also talked about his criminal case and its twists and turns, including the way Dave Maunder, his old pal from the 70s, had implicated him. He had also learned, through disclosure provided to his defence lawyers, that the cops had listened in when he and Maunder had chatted on the phone about the new investigation into Bev Smith’s murder.

“He tried to sewer me into saying something,” Al growled, cursing Maunder.

But he assured Danny there was nothing to be sewered into; he was innocent, and the cops had targeted the wrong man.

But what was really bewildering, Al said, was the way Linda’s story had changed over the years -- and the fact that the cops bought it. He told Danny that for decades Linda had stuck to the same narrative and then, in 2007, after her rocky marriage to Al was over, began to recall new details.

“So all of a sudden on the eighth time when the detectives come back and ask her the same questions they have seven times before and on the original date, she all of a sudden remembers stuff,” he said one day in March.

“Really?”

“Needless to say,” Al continued, “down come the cops.”

“For what?” Danny asked. “”Why the fuck didn’t they look at her first? She’s the first one there, not you.”

“When you can tell me that, I’ll be an extremely happy man,” Al replied.

Eventually, Al made another revelation: He told Danny what a comfort it was to have a friend with whom he could discuss his ordeal. Al said his friends were gone and his family burned out after his high-profile arrest and release in 2008. It became Al’s habit, when he parted ways with Danny, to mutter, “Love ya”.

The growing rapport was encouraging to Danny. The undercover cop upped the ante when he made his own disclosure to Al, describing a crime he said he’d 70

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lived with for years and had never been held accountable for. He told Al that 25 years earlier he had tampered with what was essentially a crime scene: He said he was coming home from a bush party one night when he came across an accident; at the wheel of the crashed truck was a woman he had his eye on at the time -- she’d been drunk when she left the party. The guy riding with her died in the crash, he said. Danny confessed that he moved the man’s corpse into the driver’s seat to keep the woman out of trouble.

“So I fuckin’ grab her, drag her up the side of the ditch, stand there. I went back to the truck and I pulled the fuckin’ guy in the passenger seat into the driver’s seat. Cops and everybody came and all this shit, you know, the ambulances and fire trucks and crap. And I never fuckin’ told anybody I did that.”

“Oh,” said Al. “That’s your little secret, is it?”

“Guess who the girl was?”

“Who?” Al asked.

“The mother of my fuckin’ kid,” said Danny, explaining that he’d gone on to marry the woman years later.

Now she was his ex-wife. As time went on Danny often complained about having trouble getting access to his daughter (on occasion a female cop, posing as the ex, would call Danny’s cellphone; he’d bicker with her while Al listened).

The trumped-up confession was a device to increase the trust Al and he shared, Danny said later.

“I was trying to build a foundation that I considered him a trusted friend,” he said. “I trusted him with a kernel of information that could get me into trouble.”

There was another device employed to build trust: Mutual involvement in crime. In the early spring of 2009 Danny began to involve Al in drug and weapons deals, including one caper in which he informed Al he’d come into a number of antique guns. He sold them to his pal Don (another undercover cop) with Al along to witness the transaction. More “plays” with undercover cops playing parts followed.

Al came along for the ride, and sometimes came away with a few bucks for his assistance.

While the bond between the two new buddies appeared to be growing, there was no hint that Al was any closer to acknowledging a role in the murder. The police were operating on judicial authorization that limited the time during which they could employ investigative methods including wiretaps and recordings of Al’s conversations. The authorizations could be extended, but the police needed to jus71

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tify the extension. Lynch, the lead investigator, met with the Fearless team in early April and told them that if Al remained steadfast in his declarations of innocence, the plug might be pulled. It was decided that the operation would continue, with Al and Danny involved in more criminal “plays” designed to build trust. And Project Fearless would be ramped up in another way. Al Smith was about to be introduced to Mr. Big. MEETING MR. BIG

In late April 2009, Al was perched on the passenger seat of Danny’s truck when they set out to do a drug deal. Danny explained he’d arranged to get a couple of pounds of pot from Jack, an old buddy with whom he’d done business in the past. They met Jack -- older than Danny and shorter, with a cool gaze and a business-like demeanor -- in Bradford.

“He with you?” Jack immediately demanded, indicating Al.

“Yeah, he’s a good guy,” Danny reassured him.

Danny and Jack were portraying themselves to Al as old associates who hadn’t met up in a while. Danny told Jack he and his wife had split up. They made small talk about trucks and business. Danny mentioned that he and Al were on the lookout for a cheap aluminum fishing boat.

“Keep your ears open ‘cause I know you always get things comin’ your way,” he suggested.

Jack cracked a wry grin.

“Why don’t you just go steal one like you used to?”

“I’m pretty much retired from everything,” said Danny.

“What am I doin’ here then?” said Jack, laughing.

“Keep your ears open,” Danny urged him.

“Do you mind if it’s warm, or --“

“No,” Danny assured him.

Jack got down to business.

“What are you lookin’ for?” he demanded.

“I need two,” said Danny, meaning two pounds of pot.

“I can do that.”

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“Here’s the uh, big thing,” said Danny. “How’s my credit?”

Jack eyed him.

“Well, fuck,” he said, “I haven’t seen you in ages, man.”

“I know,” Danny said quickly. “But it’s still me. I’m good. You know I look you in the eye and never fuckin’ lie to ya.”

He assured Jack he could quickly sell the dope and pay up.

“I got a guy,” he said. “I’m just takin’ it from you, and givin’ it to him.”

“All right,” said Jack.

“I won’t fuck you, Jack, you know I would never fuckin’ do that, brother.”

Jack handed over two pounds of pot. He was selling to Danny for $1,700 a pound, but commented Danny should be able to market it for $2,200 per. He suggested Danny unload the pot and then come back in an hour with the cash.

“It smells good,” Danny commented.

“Primo bud,” said Jack.

“What you got in the other bag?” Danny asked.

“Smokes,” said Jack, then asked if they were interested in any.

Al was, but as usual he had no cash; Danny quickly ponied up $20 and Al grabbed a couple of cartons. Danny drew Jack aside and whispered so Al couldn’t hear them talk.

“I don’t want to see you today,” he whispered tersely. “I want to see you next week.”

“OK,” Jack responded. “Like, I wasn’t sure what you wanted played out.”

Then Jack grabbed his cellphone and pretended he was taking a call.

“Hey,” he said, loud enough that Al could hear. “What’d you want?” He pretended to listen for a moment. “That means I gotta go all the way back up north then? For fuck sake!”

Jack looked at Danny. Nothing I can do, the look said.

“I’m gonna have to look after something else,” he said. “I can wait until Monday.”

“You sure?”

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“Yeah,” said Jack. “You lookin’ for any other work?”

Danny indicated he may be in the market for more pot, and suggested that once he got his network in place he’d be able to pay Jack up front.

“It’s that time of year,” Jack said, laughing. “You know what I’m talking about.”

Al indicated the bag of pot Jack had just handed over to Danny.

“Buddy’s well under way,” he joked.

“You think you might have work that way?” Danny asked.

“I got a couple of projects on the go,” said Jack, explaining he had one “live-in”, a grow in a house that required someone to stay on site and tend it, as well as outdoor operations, including one near Bancroft he’d worked for some time. Danny expressed surprise Jack had managed to avoid getting busted with the Bancroft grow.

“Well,” Jack said, “if you keep it small --” and then Al leapt in: “What are you looking for, basically a clipper?” He explained he had amassed some expertise at stripping the buds off stalks and trimming away small leaves that clung to them.

“I’m always lookin’ for fuckin’ workers, ya know?” said Jack. “What was your name again?”

“Alan.”

“Alan,” Jack repeated.

With the deal consummated, Jack prepared to go. But before he got in his truck he spoke to Danny and Al.

“There’s a bunch of cops up at the corner,” he said. “You guys go first and I’ll sit here for a while.”

“What are they doing?” Danny asked.

“Waving their fucking arms around,” Jack observed.

The signal lights were out at a nearby intersection and the police were directing traffic.

“Let’s just give them a minute, then,” said Danny. “I don’t feel like driving by them right now.”

Finally they judged it safe to leave. Jack climbed into his truck.

“Keep your stick on the ice, boys,” he said in parting. “I’ll call you Monday,” he 74

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said to Danny, then he nodded to Al.

“Nice to meet you dude.”

“Yeah,” said Al, “you take care, man.”

The meeting on April 24 was to be a cameo appearance for Jack -- yet another play to enhance Danny’s persona as a guy with criminal connections. Of course Jack was yet another undercover cop, working for a force outside Durham. By this time he had amassed a solid track record as an undercover officer, able to manage the challenge and stress of infiltrating criminal organizations and maintaining a cover. The decision was made to keep Jack involved.

Danny brought Al along for a meeting with Jack a few days later. As they pulled into the parking lot outside a movie theatre in Vaughan, there was Jack, in his truck. And attached to the truck was a trailer with a fishing boat.

“Holy fuck,” Danny chuckled, “he did find one, too.”

“My, my, my, what do we got here?” Al cooed. “Sweet! Ho-ho-ho! What’s he got there?”

Danny was laughing as he got out of his truck.

“Whatcha got there?” he called to Jack.

(Actually, what Jack had there was Detective Lynch’s boat, employed as a prop for the day’s play).

Jack told the boys he’d part with it for two grand or so.

“I got two elbows if you want ‘em,” Jack offered, referring to two more pounds of weed.

“It’ll have to be off the cuff,” said Danny, meaning he’d have to get Jack to front him the weed.

“You already owe me $3,400,” said Jack.

The undercover cops moved toward Jack’s truck. Danny pantomimed paying Jack for the dope he’d got from him a few days earlier. Danny called over to Al, “You want a couple cartons of smokes?”

“Yeah,” said Al, who stood admiring the boat, “but you’ll have to cover the twenty bucks for me, OK?”

The play continued with Jack and Danny transferring another bag of dope, as well as a few guns and gun parts, to Danny’s truck. As Al listened they settled on 75

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$150 for the gun parts. The deal done, Danny and Al hopped into the truck. As he prepared to turn the key Danny gazed at the boat.

“Look at that thing,” he murmured to Al.

“I don’t want to look at it,” Al mock moaned.

“Look at that fuckin’ thing,” Danny said again, and Al adopted his admiring tone.

“Isn’t that fuckin’ nice?” he said.

It was at that moment that Jack began to foster an image as the crime boss, a guy with power and money -- and the wherewithal to support and promote the guys who worked for him. The role is typical of certain undercover scenarios, commonly referred to as Mr. Big operations. The suspect comes to believe he is on the fringe of a successful criminal organization and that approval of the boss -- Mr. Big -- is the key to access to the gang. Often the cost of admission is acknowledgement of a criminal act, currency that can be held by Mr. Big to ensure the loyalty of his new employee. The power of Mr. Big, and the desire of the suspect to be included in the organization, are used as leverage to extract confessions from suspects.

Jack was soon a regular in the plays the cops cooked up for Alan Smith. On June 11, he enlisted the boys to boost a cube van, telling them he was helping a buddy with an insurance scam. Three days later he was in Cobourg, purportedly to pay them for that job. It was another play, of course, and this time the purpose was to have Jack directly address, for the first time, Al’s murder beef from the past.

Under the guise of getting to know the new guy, Jack was to challenge Al to be up front about it, to take the measure of the man as it were. It was also to be a test of how far Jack had come in establishing his persona, and convincing Al to trust him.

On June 14 Danny picked Al up at Erin’s house, telling him Jack was going to drop by to pay them. Soon after the three men had assembled at the apartment, Danny excused himself, saying he had to run out to the store and get some mix for drinks (the ruse was predetermined, creating an opportunity for Jack to have a oneon-one session with Al).

Alone with Al in the apartment, Jack tolerated a bit of idle chit-chat, then got to his point: “I don’t know much about you,” he told Al. “What’s your story?”

Al knew what the boss was talking about.

“I’ve been in the can,” he said. “A second-degree murder charge.”

“Get the fuck out,” Jack blurted.

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Al said he’d spent months at the Lindsay jail after being busted.

“I went through utter and sheer fuckin’ hell,” he said. “I got punched out.”

He pleaded, “Can you just keep it to yourself? I got off: Not enough evidence and not only that, I didn’t do it, man.”

Al said he’d been out just about a year. His freedom, he said, had not come cheap: it had cost thousands to get a decent lawyer to defend him.

“I’d like to sue their asses off,” he said, referring to the police, “but I can’t find a lawyer to go pro bono.”

Jack said maybe he could help Al out.

“You don’t mind doing the odd thing for me? It’s all in the people you surround yourself with. You know that, man.”

Al said that while he was innocent of the Raglan murder, he knew his way around. He claimed he’d gotten to know some heavy people, like Jim Boudreau, the Cobourg biker who’d just been convicted for killing two guys who fucked with his dope crop. He said he knew how to handle himself if things got hot.

“I don’t know who the fuck you are,” he pledged. “Never did.”

Jack considered this for a moment.

“We can do some business, then,” he concluded.

The men were still talking when Danny came back. He turned on his computer and typed a few words into a search engine, and soon had called up clips from the Crime TV program that highlighted the Raglan cold case. The men watched as an image of Barbra Brown, Bev’s sister, filled the screen. She spoke quietly about the murder.

“We didn’t even know how she died until the next day,” the woman on the screen said. “I think when he shot her in the back of the head, he shot me in the heart. I lost my identical twin sister; to me, that’s my identity.”

Al stood, watching over Danny’s shoulder, as the documentary played.

“There’s the house,” he commented, when some B-roll of the scene in Raglan appeared. “They lived right across the street from us, her and her husband.”

Jack wanted to know more about the details of the crime.

Al advised him to search online: “There was a lot in the papers, man.”

“So, are they still bugging you about that?” Jack asked.

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“No,” Al replied, and Danny chimed in, “Oh, there’s no worries there.”

Al told the boys about the investigation in 2007 and 2008, and about the day in March 2008 when the cops came to the house in Cobourg to take him into custody.

“They came to the door and a guy says, ‘You’re under arrest for second degree murder’,” Al said, then he deadpanned, “I didn’t have time to pack.”

Jack asked again, if the case against Al was bogus, why not sue the cops?

“It’s a money issue,” Danny offered.

“But there’s got to be some fuckin’ mouthpiece out there,” Jack mused. “I might know somebody.”

Al insisted again he had no means to fund a legal fight with the police.

“You’re looking at a long, enduring, grinding battle,” he said. “You’re looking at a lot of fuckin’ money.”

In the days that followed Jack’s role in the undercover plays increased. On June 18 the fellows met him at the Million Dollar Saloon strip club in Mississauga; he told them it was a “tester deal” with some new dudes he didn’t completely trust.

Al and Danny provided backup, sitting in the club and watching Jack’s back while the deal went down. On the way to Mississauga Danny reinforced Jack’s tough guy persona.

“He’s the type of guy who shoots straight from the hip,” he counselled. “He’s not the kind of guy you cross or dis.”

The deal, with undercover cops playing the roles of buyers, went off smoothly.

The boys hung around the club to celebrate; Jack bought Al a lap dance. The old guy had a good time, hanging out and chatting with a stripper named Paige, who complained about hassles she was having with her boyfriend, a troublesome Turk.

Driving away Al recounted the conversation, and came up with an odd comment: We oughta bury that Turk and cover him with lye, was the gist of it. Nothing more than idle chatter, really, but an idea began to germinate in the minds of the police.

It would come to fruition in due time.

The plays -- and Al’s role in them -- were ramped up a week later, when he and Danny met Jack to prepare for another drug deal, this time with some dangerous dudes. Jack said he didn’t trust the fuckers. He leaned in the window of Danny’s truck and handed him a shotgun.

“There’s two in the chute,” he told him. “Just pull the trigger.”

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When the buyers showed up, Danny remained in the truck, the shotgun in his lap, while Al walked toward them. Al glanced back over his shoulder.

“Have that thing ready,” he instructed Danny. “If anything goes wrong, start fuckin’ shootin’. ”

He was in the car for a few minutes, then his door opened. He got out and came back to the truck, nodding.

“It’s all good,” he told Danny.

He grabbed the bag of dope Jack had left with them and returned to the buyers’ car. He was back in moments, toting a bag full of cash. Danny and Al glanced in the bag and saw thousands of dollars.

They met up later with Jack, who took delivery of the cash and relieved Danny of the shotgun. He paid the boys $400 each, coarsely ribbing Danny as he did so.

“You just sat on your ass in the truck,” he joshed. “Al did all the fuckin’ work.”

These capers were paydays for Al, but more important to the investigation, they reinforced Jack’s persona as a no-nonsense crime boss from whom could come benefits or, if he was crossed, retribution. Jack was cementing his claim to the title of Mr. Big.

And Mr. Big had much more in store for Danny and Al.

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The mannequin used by police during the undercover investigation of Alan Smith. Smith believed he was helping his friends dispose of the body of a murdered drug dealer. Durham Regional Police photo

CARCASS BOY

By early July the police were approaching their end game in the long-running ruse designed to ensnare Al Smith. The goal of Project Fearless had been to extract a confession, but six months in, that had not occurred; Al was insistent that he’d been wrongly accused and arrested for Bev’s murder. But that wasn’t unexpected -- who cops to a murder? The plan now was to turn up the pressure and confront Al with a series of events and circumstances under which it was thought he’d finally crack, and confess to the killing. The crescendo was to begin with a drug rip-off.

Al was along for the ride when Danny met up with Jack July 2. The boys stood around for a bit shooting the shit, cracking jokes and ribbing each other. Then the boss got down to business.

“Listen up,” said Jack. “Last year I meet this guy here about this time, he’s from down east. Sell him fuckin’ five pounds or so. I’m gonna meet him Monday and he’s a bit of a fuckin’ gomer, I don’t like him much. What he does, he usually stays here 80

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in one of these area hotels for the night. He’ll set up shop, and fuckin’ go get laid and drunk and shit, then he doesn’t leave ‘til the next morning.”

Jack told the boys the dealer from down east tended to stash the dope he bought in the trunk of his car and leave it there while he did his partying in his hotel room.

“See where I’m goin’ with that?” he continued. “You guys are just sitting in the background, let me do my fuckin’ deal. If we get him leavin’ or into a fuckin’ hotel room, just walk up to the fuckin’ car, open the door and take the shit back. He won’t put it to me. Do you like it?”

“Yeah,” Al replied.

“That’s easy,” Danny agreed. “That’s no trouble.”

Jack assured the boys he wouldn’t send them in without the appropriate weaponry.

“I’ll even give you a little fuckin’ insurance,” he said. “Hardware, if you want, you know? Just in case.”

“Don’t need it,” said Danny.

“It’s up to you,” said Jack. “I think that would be a good play. And then we’ll just meet up afterwards. Let’s say we spend a couple days fuckin’ relaxing -- you know that cottage I told you I get sometimes?”

“Yeah,” Danny said.

“You want to go up there for a couple days?”

“Sign me up,” Danny replied.

“Sign me up,” Al echoed.

Danny said he’d bring a crowbar or something, give the car window a tap, and be in. The guy from down east wouldn’t be likely to connect Jack with the rip-off.

“It’ll just look like a theft from the car,” he said.

Jack agreed. The guy always tossed the dope in the car, he said.

“I’ve been watching him do that for like five months now. It’s almost like clockwork. This fuckin’ idiot doesn’t take it into the room or nothing, eh?”

Danny and Al were ready when Jack’s call came a few days later. On July 6 they drove to their assigned meeting spot and waited. Jack strolled up.

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“Hello ladies,” he began, but quickly got down to business: “All right, here’s the fuckin’ deal, boys. This guy’s in the area. I’m doing a 40-pound deal with him, all right? Like I told you last week he’ll go to a fuckin’ hotel somewhere. He’ll go in and leave the fuckin’ stuff in the car, right? So go fuckin’ grab it --”

“OK,” Danny nodded.

“-- and give it back to me.”

No problem, Danny assured him. Al had come with a baseball bat; Danny had a crowbar. Jack produced a sawed-off shotgun.

“You never know,” he said.

“Oh, I’ll take that bud,” Al said eagerly.

Jack handed the gun to Danny. He said he was going to meet the guy soon. He described the vehicle he drove, and showed them the hockey bag containing the weed. He told the fellows they were all looking at a solid payday for relatively little effort.

“Eighty thousand fuckin’ dollars and I get my pot back,” he grinned. “Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me? That’s a banner day as far as I’m concerned.”

A short while later Danny got a call from Jack. The deal was done and the guy from down east was checking into a hotel nearby. He’d stashed the weed in a silver car. The boys made nervous conversation as they approached, looking for the dealer’s car.

“My armpits are soaked,” Al observed.

Danny laughed.

“BP’s about 260 over fuckin --”

“Yeah,” Al chuckled.

“ -- 40,” Danny concluded, then, briskly: “There’s a fuckin’ silver car there. OK, that’s obviously him, in the ball cap.”

A nervous gurgle emitted from Al’s throat.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

Danny trailed the silver car as it made its way to a nearby Comfort Inn. They watched the guy get out and go into a ground-floor room. Danny grew nervous over about the number of people who would see them if they tried to smash the car windows and grab the dope. The guy came out to the car again.

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“Oh,” Danny moaned, “there goes the hockey bag. He’s takin’ it into his room.”

“Is he?” Al asked, alarmed. “We’re fucked.”

Danny opened the door of the truck. He grabbed the gun and looked at Al.

“When you see me go in that room, give me about 30 seconds. All right?”

“And then what?”

“Come and get the fuckin’ bag,” Danny said. “I’m gonna lock him in the bathroom and you come get the fuckin’ bag, ‘kay? Give me about 30 seconds.”

Al watched as Danny approached the dealer.

“Get in the room,” Danny ordered. “Get on the ground, buddy, get on the ground.”

Al waited for a bystander to pass, then went through the open patio doors. He grabbed the bagful of weed and dashed back to the truck. Danny got there just behind him. They climbed in and slammed their doors.

“I don’t care which way you go,” said Al. “Hurry the fuck up.”

Elated and jittery, the boys drove out of the hotel parking lot. Danny told Al he’d mistaken the bystander for him and nearly called out.

“I thought, fuck, where’s Al?”

“I seen you go in and I went in behind you, man.”

“Fuck,” Danny said, exhaling.

“I was right there, bro,” Al assured him.

Then, glancing out the rear window, he announced, “We got a guy following us.”

“No way.”

“Find the fastest way and get the fuck out of here,” Al instructed.

“I am, I am, I am, I am,” Danny said tersely.

Al watched as the vehicle behind them slowed and turned a corner. He breathed a sigh of relief and looked back to Danny. The getaway was complete.

“You locked him in there?” he asked.

“Yeah, right in the fuckin’ bathroom. I think he saw the end of the pipe -- he just saw the barrels and his eyes went to the size of fuckin’ baseballs and he prac83

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tically ran into the fuckin’ can. I said don’t look at my face, fuckin’ count to a hundred before you come out. And that was it, fuckin’ boom, and then you were in.

That’ll get the heart rate going.”

“Mine’s somewhere out in my fuckin’ chest,” said Al. “Any minute now I’ll breathe.”

Danny laughed.

“Cleaned out a few arteries today. We did ‘er though.”

Later in the day Danny and Al met up with Jack. Al was eager to tell him about the robbery, relating how Danny had confronted the dealer with the “hand cannon” and forced him back into his hotel room.

“The kid sees the fuckin’ barrel and Danny says get in the fuckin’ bathroom and lock that fuckin’ door and put your head down and count to a hundred and don’t lift your fuckin’ head up,” he crowed. “As soon as he did that I went in and grabbed the fuckin’ bag and we were outta there and in that fuckin’ truck and gone within what -- 40 seconds?”

“Not much fuckin’ more,” Danny offered.

“Oh, that’s fuckin’ funny,” Jack laughed. “He is going to be pissed off.”

“Well,” Al roared, “he should be shittin’ his fuckin’ drawers now.”

The boys handed over the dope. Jack slammed the door of his truck. They made arrangements to meet at the junction of Hwy. 401 and Hwy. 115 at 6 the next morning, then head up to Jack’s cottage on Pigeon Lake. Jack handed Danny a couple hundred bucks for food and promised he’d pay the boys in full for their day’s work when they next met up. Danny and Al made their way to the 401 and headed east to Cobourg. Al told Danny he’d get his gear together and be ready by 4:30 a.m.

He was looking forward to getting out on the lake.

“Any time I can get my fishing rod in the water, that’s a good day, bud,” he said.

Al’s basement apartment was still in darkness when Danny pulled up in front of the house on Munson at seven minutes past 1 a.m. the next day. Act 2 in the play’s finale was about to begin. The plan was to rouse Al from his slumber and present him with a wholly unexpected scenario.

Danny walked toward the house, crouched, and called softly through the basement window: “Hey, Al.”

Al was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he piled into the truck beside Danny and learned that Jack had called and ordered them to meet him in Vaughan.

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That’s all Danny knew. As they pulled into an industrial mall near Keele and Langstaff, Jack appeared from the darkness.

“Good morning,” Danny said through the window of the truck. “Follow me,” Jack replied tersely.

“Good morning,” Danny muttered again as Jack stalked away into the gloom.

“What an ignorant fuck.”

As they climbed out of the truck and walked to meet Jack, Danny took on a teasing tone. “You can’t say good morning anymore for fuck sakes?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Jack snapped. “We got a fuckin’ problem here, OK?”

“Uh-oh,” said Al.

Jack stared hard at them.

“I met with that fuckin’ guy,” he said. “He tried something. He’s no longer around, OK?”

Danny and Al stared at Jack, letting the statement sink in. Jack asked Danny for the clothes he’d instructed him to bring. His pants and boots were spattered with what looked like blood. He opened the tailgate of his truck, exposing a large object bound in blue tarp. Jack hastily kicked off his boots and changed clothes.

“OK,” he said. “Listen, and listen fuckin’ good. Take that --” and he thrust his boots and soiled clothes toward Danny “ -- and fuckin’ burn it, all right?”

“Yeah,” Danny said.

“Burn it, burn it, burn it. All right? You’re gonna have to give me a hand.”

The three men wrestled the tarp-wrapped body out of Jack’s truck and transferred it to Danny’s. The task done, the three men stood panting. Jack instructed the boys to drive into the darkness and dispose of the body.

“I don’t fuckin’ want to know what you do,” he said.

He told Danny to wait 20 minutes after the body was dropped and call to confirm the deed was done.

“And start headin’ up to the fuckin’ cottage. You got it?”

Then he was gone. Danny and Al climbed into the truck.

“For fuck sakes,” Danny muttered. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”

“Where we going?” Al asked.

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“I gotta think,” said Danny. “Just a minute, fuckin’, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Fuck. Just a minute.” He was silent for a long moment. “We gotta get outta the fuckin’ city,” he said, finally. “That’s for sure.”

“Don’t be fuckin’ long doin’ it, buddy,” said Al. “This shit’s no good.”

“Holy fuck,” Danny muttered again. “Think, think, think.”

“Any old fucking road,” Al encouraged him. “I don’t care.”

Danny finally put the truck in gear and pulled out of the complex.

“What’s the speed limit?” he fretted.

There was a long silence.

“Let’s just get somewhere,” Al suggested.

Danny rambled as he drove.

“I know a bunch of fuckin’ dead–end ravine roads, couple miles over here,” he said. “We used to get stuff dumped all the fuckin’ time. It’s not far. Would I have known I’d of brought fuckin’ shovels and shit. Where the fuck am I gonna find shovels and shit out here now at this --”

“Nowhere,” said Al.

“-- two in the fuckin’ morning,” Danny was continuing. “Start walking around Home Depot at 3 a.m. buying fuckin’ shovels and picks, you might as well phone the fuckin’ police. Tell them to come pick you up, for fuck sake.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” said Al. “So let’s get going.”

Danny steered the truck along the darkened streets, heading for the countryside.

“Now, just watch your speed,” Al said, encouraging him to keep cool. “You’re all right there now.”

Then his head swiveled and he whispered, “Oh -- was that cops there?”

“Where?” asked Danny urgently, his eyes darting toward the rear view mirror.

“On the left,” said Al hoarsely.

“Holy fuck,” said Danny. “Holy fuck.”

“Get me outta here, man,” said Al, trying to keep his voice steady. “Take any old road now.”

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Danny continued to scan the roadway behind him for cops. None were in sight.

“There’s nobody coming,” he sighed. “Nobody coming.” He drove on, keeping his speed steady, then slowed for a red light. They waited. And waited.

“Come on, lights,” Al said.

Danny sighed. “Fuckin’ two-hour light.”

Finally they got the green. A car streaked by them, going over the speed limit.

“Good,” said Danny, “they’ll pull him over, not me.”

Then, when Al’s lighter flicked in the dark, “That’s just a cigarette, eh?” The last thing he needed was Al hot-boxing the cab with pot smoke.

“Yeah,” Al assured him. “Are we getting anywhere now?”

“I got a spot in mind,” Danny told him. “It’s about three minutes from here, four tops. See? We’re getting out of the city now.”

“Yeah,” said Al. “Just take your time, man. Atta boy.”

Danny stopped for another red light. “Change,” he coaxed the light. “Change.

For fuck sake. Come on.” The light turned green at last.

“Finally,” he said, then stepped on the gas, lightly, trying to ease through the intersection.

“There’s a bunch of hills and ravines up here,” he told Al. “We’ll dump the tarp, we’ll take the fuckin’ clothes 10 minutes further on.”

Danny made his way into the dark countryside, finally pulling to the shoulder.

A steep embankment sloped away from the road, falling away into impossible darkness.

“This is it right here,” he announced. “It’s fuckin’ primo.”

The men climbed out of the truck and lugged the tarp out. They staggered to the roadside, lifted and heaved. The body fell, then snagged. Danny gave a push and there was the sound of a heavy object sliding, tumbling through gravel and brush.

Then nothing. They climbed back into the truck, their chests heaving.

“Slid down about 50 feet,” Danny panted. “They’ll never find it. You got all your shit?” he asked Al. “You didn’t drop nothing?”

“Nope,” said Al. “Just rock on out of here.”

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Danny turned the truck and headed back the way he’d come.

“I feel like I’m about ready to puke,” Al moaned.

“Tell me if you’re gonna,” Danny advised. “Holy fuck,” he continued. “That’s the longest 20 minutes of my life.”

Al coughed, then implored wearily, “Don’t ask me to try to talk for a few minutes, will ya?”

“I won’t say a fuckin’ word.”

“I, I, I just -- can’t talk,” said Al. “I’m a fuckin’ mess.”

The men rode in silence until Al spoke up again. “That’s why he called you early.”

“Yeah,” said Danny. “He didn’t say fuck all. He said meet me at Keele Street.”

Once again talk dwindled. They drove on through the damp night, cutting east across York Region. They stopped at a roadside swamp near Aurora and ditched Jack’s bloody clothes, dousing them with gas and setting them alight, and further on, buried the soiled boots. Finally everything was disposed of.

“What a fuckin’ day,” sighed Danny, as they once more resumed driving eastward.

“Watch your speed, buddy,” Al advised. “You never know.”

Al complained he could barely swallow, said his guts were in one giant knot.

“That shit’s outta my league, bro,” he said. “I gotta tell you that.”

He lamented not being able to bury the corpse, maybe bring along a few bags of lime to pour over it. Danny said that at least they had found a good spot to make the drop. Then he told Al how the whole situation was making him flash back to years ago, when he had manipulated the accident scene.

“Well,” said Al, “you know where it pulled me back to, right?”

“Oh yeah?”

“Seeing that girl,” said Al, meaning Bev all those years ago.

But he didn’t appear to dwell on it; he started speculating on what they’d be paid for the dirty work just done. Jack better not think a couple hundred would suffice -- 500, minimum, was more like it. Two grand, that was even more like it.

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roads to the Kawarthas and avoid the highway. Al grabbed a Coke. He advised Danny to take his time, read the map, and plot a route. Time to slow down and take it easy.

“It’s all over,” he assured him.

Danny called Jack to let him know the deed was done. Jack advised Danny to head to the cottage with Al and await his arrival later in the day. As they drove along they recounted the bizarre drama in which they’d just taken part: struggling to keep it together on the streets of Vaughan; the longest red light in the history of mankind; standing in the darkness as the body tumbled down the embankment.

“Did you see that fuckin’ guy slide down the fuckin’ hill?” Danny mused. “It was like a toboggan when it hit that long grass.”

As they drove through the darkness Danny thanked Al for keeping a cool head and providing sound counsel through the crisis. He seized the moment to steer Al back to Raglan in 1974.

“We’re in it now,” he mused. “We’re fucked.”

“Don’t think about that shit, man,” Al advised. “That’ll eat you up.”

“How do you flip the switch that easy, Al?”

“Well, here’s what I’m gonna try to suggest you do,” Al began. “You’re a good old boy, and –” he stopped abruptly, sat up straight. “You got a flat tire?”

“I don’t think so.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Al. “It would set the icing right on the fuckin’ cake if we had a flat tire. I’ll just shut the fuck up, OK?”

“No,” said Danny, “I’d rather talk to you man, it’s better for me ...”

“Let me put it to you this way,” Al resumed. “That’s definitely not our line of work. We did our thing this morning, but try to remember deep inside you that you have to remember you saw nothing, you know nothing, you were fishin’, OK?”

“Yeah,” said Danny, as he watched the road unfold before the truck. A steady rain had begun to fall. “And that works? That’ll work?”

“That’s right,” said Al. “Just try to breathe, OK? The whole thing is to just keep breathing, in, out, in, out, until you get your bearings back. You know, like where you can be happy again, in the calm factor, at the right moment, until such time as you can find yourself, hopefully, not even thinkin’ about it. I know it’s gonna take some time, but --“ 89

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Danny drew the conversation out. This was the kind of thing the police were looking for: Al’s acknowledgment that he’d been through something like this before, that he’d had to cope with the fact he’d committed a grave crime.

“It’ll happen though,” Danny said. “I’ll eventually be able to get there?”

“That’s right,” Al told him. “But deep inside it, it still wells you up because your head’s reeling, thinking about a multitude of things all at once, it’s like a matrix web comin’ at you. You’re all of a sudden caught in a fuckin’ situation you never, should have never happened in the first place. It’s gonna take me some time too, but I can’t really have too much of it in my head. I have to look beyond, you know what I mean?”

For the rest of the trip Al worked at keeping Danny calm, and within the speed limit.

“Steady as she goes,” he coaxed, as he smoked one cigarette after another.

“Keep ‘er between the lines.”

Finally, Danny guided the truck down a driveway to Jack’s cottage. The men tumbled wearily from the vehicle and took in their surroundings. Al glanced beyond the cottage to where the lake lay, its surface grey in the growing wet dawn. He started talking about fish. Danny told Al to roll his window up in case it rained all fucking day. They went inside, hoping for sleep they suspected wouldn’t come.

A MEETING BY THE ROADSIDE

As July 7 progressed Danny and Al settled into the cottage, trying to keep themselves busy. They were running on adrenaline; doing chores helped fill the time. They got supplies, grilled sausages, and, later on, cleaned out Danny’s truck, trying to eradicate any evidence of the previous night’s activities. In spite of their attempts at bravery, the magnitude of what had happened was setting in. Al’s nerves continued to sing; he ceaselessly puffed cigarettes and joints. Danny played along, keeping in mind that the purpose of the exercise was to jar loose from Al some indication of his involvement in the 1974 murder.

Danny said he was sure Jack was taking the necessary measures to cover up the drug killing; it was likely he already had somebody cutting up the guy’s car, he speculated. Still, he fretted the murder would be discovered and the cops would begin to connect the dots.

“The only thing I worry about is that the guy, he paid with his Visa or somethin’ and then that was a record of him goin’ to that hotel right? That’s my only thought, like if he’s in there, he wouldn’t use the room phone to phone out, and if 90

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he’s a fuckin’ drug dealer he probably doesn’t have a phone that fuckin’ comes back to him, right?”

Al told Danny it was natural to be shitting bricks.

“It’ll be on your system for a while,” he counselled.

“I know,” said Danny. “How long did it take you?”

“To be honest, probably a good year,” Al told him.

“Jesus Christ, Al, I wish to fuck he was in fuckin’ three feet of fuckin’ peat right now, just never to be seen again, you know?”

“With lime over him,” Al agreed. “Let ‘er rot.”

“Right. Who knows what sort of stench is gonna come up outta there, I don’t know,” said Danny. He paused: “I don’t know.”

“You wouldn’t be human if it didn’t wind you up a notch or two,” said Al. “Just keep breathing. Try hard not to have your chest welling up. Because if it gets to well up too much you will have an anxiety attack.”

Danny nodded. “Yeah.”

“And they are not fun,” said Al. “You did not do the deed,” he added. “All you did was get rid of the garbage.”

Above all, Al advised, Danny needed not to stew on what had happened. Keep busy, he suggested. Keep your mind working on something else. Don’t drive yourself nuts with guilt and worry. Once more, Danny steered the talk to Al’s state of mind in the days after Bev Smith was murdered.

“What did you end up doing?” he asked.

“Kept busy,” said Al.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, because I found as long as I was doing something and my mind was completely away from that, I was focused on this little job at hand --“

“Right,” Danny said.

“I’d actually create shit so I could do it,” said Al. “Just so that I didn’t --“

“Get fuckin --“

“Tunnelled into it,” said Al. “Get up, go for a walk. Go to the beach.”

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“Well when you went through this before fuckin’, 30 fuckin’ years ago, this is what you did, day to day, just took it nice and quiet, nice and calm, fuckin’ dealt with the cards that you were given and fuckin’ moved on.”

“That’s right,” said Al.

Danny sighed. “Well I gotta do the same, that’s all there is to it, I gotta do the same. It just brought you right back eh, 34 fuckin’ years, didn’t it?”

“It sure fuckin’ did,” said Al.

“Yeah. I know when you said to me, you looked at me, said this is fuckin’ too close to home. But I was thinkin’ of my own thing, draggin’ that fuckin’ guy across and you’re goin’ through the same thing as me.”

Al considered Danny’s words.

“Yeah,” was all he said. Then he turned the talk to fishing: “On that happy note, let’s go get our worms,” he said.

The sun came out as the afternoon wore on. Danny and Al returned to the cottage and settled in for a steak dinner. Al appeared to be flagging; he wasn’t keeping up his end of the conversation as he usually did.

“What’s wrong?” asked Danny. “I burn the potatoes, or you just tired, or pissed off, or what?”

“I’m just tired, buddy,” Al replied. There was a long pause. Finally Al spoke up: “What would you like to do the most right now?”

“I don’t know,” said Danny. “What about you?”

“Fuck off home,” said Al.

The remark was alarming. Danny urged Al to hang in until their business with Jack was done.

“I mean we need to sleep and tomorrow we’ll have a couple hours out on the water and unwind a bit, for fuck sake probably what we need. I don’t wanna go back to that stupid fuckin’ apartment and sit and stare at that wall --”

“No,” said Al.

“Well,” Danny continued, “Can you hang in there one more day, or what?

You’re not gonna fuckin’ take off on me, leave me all alone are ya? You’re not gonna fuck off on me are ya? Like in the night or somethin’?”

“No,” Al assured him.

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“OK.”

Then Al revealed what was troubling him: Jack. “I hope he’s not gonna be getting carried away stupid,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” said Al, “come up here, fuckin’ blow us away.”

“No,” Danny insisted. “Too many people know we’ve been workin’ together so, nah, it’s no worries man. I’m not even thinkin’ about him, like that never even entered my mind. I’ve known him fuckin’ millions of years, that’s not in the equation.

I just have to be able to fuckin’ live with it like you tell me. I’ve listened to everything you said all fuckin’ day. I’ll continue to listen to what you say.” Danny paused.

“You’re living fucking proof that time moves on.”

As the evening set in, Danny left Al at the cottage to meet with members of the Fearless team. He wanted to touch base with Jack, to form a strategy on how to proceed the following day. And he was seeking feedback from officers who had listened in to his conversations with Al. During the meeting -- it occurred by the side of the road a short distance from the cottage -- one of the cops inadvertently left a body pack on, recording the exchange. Nobody gave it a lot of thought at the time, but the conversation would resonate years later.

Danny was optimistic. Cracks had begun to show in Al’s façade. He felt he was close to the confession he’d worked months to get. The team members shared his optimism -- the end appeared to be near. But Danny had one concern: Al was getting skittish. He told them he’d found Al’s gear – shoes, jacket, bags -- lined up as if he was preparing to leave.

“I got the feeling he was planning the exit strategy,” he said.

Jack had been listening in on the wiretaps.

“Well,” he observed, “he was talking about getting whacked.”

He advised Danny to get back, get Al settled in for the night, and get him some much-needed sleep.

“You got to get him to bed,” he said. “He’s so fuckin’ worked up. I think it’s all because of sleep deprivation. Like, he’s fucked up. He thinks I’m gonna come in there and fuckin’ shoot him.”

“There’s that,” Danny agreed. “Plus, I mean, who’s kidding who? Like, this is 34 years ago again, right? Granted, he didn’t dump a body last time, but he covered up the fuckin’ thing and protected his wife. So I think you gotta let us get up in the 93

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morning, have a coffee, feel a little better, go down to the dock or whatever, then you show up, hey guys, I know it’s been tough on ya, fuck, yada yada, you know.

Things are all cleared up. Don’t fucking worry about it. We’re gonna work this out.

You know. Things escalated for me. This is what happened. I fucking had to badabing, bada-boom, it fucking happened.”

“Exactly,” said Jack.

The cops discussed the scenario for the next day. Danny would be ordered to get guns from Jack’s car and take them out into the middle of the lake to dump them. That would leave Jack and Al alone in the cottage. Danny warned him not to show any guns -- he worried that might push Al over the edge.

“He’s at the point of being fucked up, OK? He’s already said four or five times, this is too much, man, this is like, fucking over the top. You gotta come in and smooth the waters and calm everybody down and get everybody fucking cool.”

Jack again raised the issue of Al’s mental state. Would Al co-operate? Something else the cops had to keep in mind: Would any admissions he made be tainted by his fear of Jack?

“Well, luckily for us, we’re not fuckin’ Kreskin’s children,” Danny replied. “We can’t read fuckin’ people’s minds, your honour. If I could then I would be able to tell you what he’s thinking, but I have no idea what he’s thinking.”

“But do you want him to be thinking that?” Jack persisted, wondering if Al’s fear might scuttle the scenario. “You know what I mean? Do you think it’s worth the risk?”

“I don’t know, man,” Danny said. “Like, he’s got you high. You’re --“ he laughed aloud. “You’re a killer.”

He told the cops how Al had been rambling around in the lower level of the cottage. He wondered at a steady banging he’d heard emanating from below.

“Maybe he hung himself and like it’s his feet tap-tapping the wall when the furnace comes on,” he joked. “He’s sweating like a rapist.”

“Really?” Jack asked.

“Holy fuck, yeah,” said Danny. “He’s got a towel wrapped around his head like a swami.”

The cops were in agreement. The next day Jack would confront Al in an attempt to extract a confession to the murder.

“Tomorrow we’re going for the gusto, right?” Jack said. “You know what I 94

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mean? Going for the whole fucking, the whole frank and beans here are gonna be puked out. He’s either gonna do it tomorrow or he isn’t.”

Danny assured the team he and Al weren’t going anywhere. The truck was locked up, he said. If Al started making noise about leaving, he’d claim to be too drunk to drive.

“I have no intention of leaving here tomorrow with this fucking guy,” he said.

“And you have no intention either, right, Jack?”

“No,” said Jack. “No.”

The cops parted ways. The trap was set. All that remained was for Al Smith to take the bait.

REMEMBER THE MURDER?

On the morning of July 8, Danny woke Al at about 9:45. Al had finally succumbed to exhaustion the previous evening and slept as if in a coma for hours. The weather was decent, so they unchained a boat and headed out onto the lake. They found a decent honey hole, hauling in perch, some blue gills and a couple sizable bass. They were trudging up the hill toward the cottage when Jack appeared.

“Catch anything?” he called out to them.

The men stood making small talk. Danny told Jack he was getting ready to fix breakfast; he mixed a drink for Jack, and fetched Al a pop. Al enthused about the lake and the good time he’d had that morning, hauling in fish.

“Well,” Jack observed, “it would’ve been more fun if some fuckin’ shit didn’t happen. But hey: that’s life, man.”

“All kidding aside, you didn’t bring any tarps for us, eh?” said Danny.

Jack gave him a puzzled look.

“What?”

“There’s no tarps for us, eh?” Danny repeated. “We’re good?”

Jack emitted a bark of laughter.

“Oh, fuck,” he said. “Jesus. Relax, man.”

“Yeah,” said Danny. “OK.”

“Oh, fuck,” Jack said again, continuing to laugh. “You guys actually thinking that?”

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“Well, what the fuck?” Danny said.

“Put your fuckin’ heads at ease,” said Jack.

“Yeah,” said Al. “All right.”

“Fuck,” Jack said, and laughed again. “That’s funny.”

“Oh, yeah, it’s a laugh a minute,” said Danny. “I haven’t had that much fun since the time the pig ate my little sister.”

That cracked all three of them up. Jack let the boys enjoy their chuckle, then reminded them they had some talking to do. He began to hint at what he had in mind.

“We’ve got some fuckin’ business to go over here boys,” he said. “But I’ll tell you right fuckin’ now: we’ll all part company in the next day or two, and we’ll never mention this last two days ever again, to anybody, ever, anywhere -- in our fuckin’ life. There’s a few things I need to feel comfortable, and we’ll cross that bridge in a bit.”

He saw Al looking at him eagerly. “What?”

“I can look you in the eye right now and tell you right now. You got no fuckin’ problem with me,” said Al. “Ever.”

“No,” said Jack. “Of course.” He began heading to the cottage. “We’ll work this out,” he assured the boys. “I’m gonna fuckin’ tell you guys what the fuck happened, why you’re in this fuckin’ spot, and then we’ll put it to bed.”

After breakfast the three men sat down. Jack launched into his description of the previous night’s events.

“OK. You guys wanna hear this fuckin’ story? I owe it to ya. Let ya know why we’re sittin’ here. This fuckin’ guy keeps buggin’ me, right? And he’s, just, I don’t think he figured it out. I really don’t. I didn’t think he had. I agree to meet him, right? I meet the fuckin’ guy. He gets into my truck. He’s got this fuckin’ weird look in his face right?” Jack sighed, and continued. “I could see his fuckin’ hand is down here like this. You know? And he’s sittin’ there fuckin’ talkin’ to me. And he looks in the back, and I was actually gonna give him a couple of grand to say look it, I didn’t do this but here’s two grand back buddy. You know? I was feelin’ a little bad for him. You know what I mean? And then I was thinkin’ too, well, maybe he comes back in with me, I’ll do it one more time.” He laughed. “So I’m sittin’ there ... and I’m packin’. And he’s got his hand like this. And he’s sittin’ beside me in the truck.

Right? And, it happened so fuckin’ fast. I could see, like steel. It was a fuckin’ knife 96

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he had and he was goin’ for it. And I, I was sittin’ like this and I fuckin’, I just -- it was just like, bang, bang. And it fuckin’ happened.”

The drug buyer slumped to the floor of the truck, Jack said. He told the boys he knew then and there the guy was dead. He wracked his mind, trying to plot his next move, and thought about his brother-in-law’s shop; he said he drove there, used his key to get in, then laid a tarp on the floor and dragged the body from the truck. Once the body was wrapped up in the tarp he tried to load it into the back of the truck, he told them. But the guy was too heavy.

“Well, I only shot about fuckin’ six inches of my large intestine outta my ass trying to lift him up,” he said.

Jack said he dragged the body onto a skid, started up a forklift, and loaded it into the truck.

“So I’m sitting there in shock,” he said. “And I thought of you guys. And that’s what fuckin’ happened,” he concluded. “Boom, boom, and it was fuckin’ done.

That’s it in a nutshell.”

The boys sat absorbing this. Al spoke up. “I would have just smoked him,” he said. “I don’t know what he’s got down his thighs or what.”

Jack said he’d spent the next day covering up his tracks, dumping the dead guy’s car, and getting rid of his blood-spattered truck.

“There’s bullet hole right in the fucking door,” he said. “The whole passenger side -- ugh -- it’s just --“

“Oh,” said Al.

“It’s just fuckin’ covered,” Jack said.

“Well,” said Al, “tough fuckin’ luck for him. I mean, anybody that’s gonna draw on ya -- you got all the cause in the world to take him out. And I wouldn’t have fuckin’ hesitated one butt-fuckin’ second.”

“Here’s the problem we got,” Jack continued. “There’s another fuckin’ piece of business that we gotta look after here, to make me feel better. I’ve been thinkin’ about this for the last two fuckin’ days. You guys own me right? Ya know what I fuckin’ did. I never been in that position before and I don’t like somebody havin’ something on me.”

Al tried to interject. Jack cut him off.

“Let me finish. This is what we do to put this to bed and it never fuckin’ happened. This is what we’re gonna do: We all got secrets. I don’t want in 10 fuckin’ 97

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years, you guys get popped for something -- we’re all humans -- and you’re looking at going to jail for 10 years --“

Al tried to speak again. “Hang on,” Jack ordered. “I want that security knowin’ that you’re not gonna fuckin’ rat me out and send me away on a first-degree fuckin’ murder beef. That’s what I want. And here’s how I’m gonna get it. And I’m gonna get it from you guys before we leave here. I want some face time with both of ya alone. And what I wanna do is I wanna get somethin’ outta you that you did, before, that I can have. That way, I’m comfortable, you’re comfortable. It’s a level fuckin’ playin’ field. This is the only way to do this, man, the only fuckin’ way.” He turned to Danny: “You talk to me after. I want you to get rid of them fuckin’ pieces of steel for me,” he said, following the script agreed upon the previous evening.

Jack told Danny to get the guns from his truck and dump them in the lake.

He turned to face Al.

“You’re staying here with me ‘cuz we’re talking, you and I.”

Danny rose and went through the door. When he was gone, Jack said, “After this, Al, we can relax like you won’t fuckin’ believe.”

“OK, buddy,” said Al.

“Let’s just get this outta the way,” Jack urged, “and then enjoy another fuckin’ afternoon. Because I haven’t enjoyed an afternoon for a while.”

The men sat, facing one another.

“Give me something,” Jack demanded.

Al began haltingly. “Do you remember the, uh --”

“What’s on your fuckin’ head?” Jack persisted. “Like, what’s on your fucking mind?”

“Do you remember the murder?”

“The thing I saw on the Internet?

“Yeah,” Al confirmed.

“Yeah.”

“OK.”

“What happened?”

“I was in on it,” Al declared.

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“What do you mean?”

“My buddy Dave and I set up this guy Doug,” Al explained. “We were watching for the longest time. So he got in 40 pounds of weed.”

“Who’s Dave?”

“He was my buddy back then,” said Al. “Dave Maunder.”

Al explained that he and Maunder had plotted to steal Doug Smith’s dope, waiting until he took delivery of a large amount and then setting their plan in action.

“So I went in. I ran upstairs, got the 40 pounds. He had a .22 with him just for backup.”

“Yeah,” said Jack, urging the narrative along.

“Now she ran toward the cupboard,” Al continued. “And Dave doesn’t know what she was running for the cupboard for, whether it was a handgun, whatever. So he plugged her in the back of the head.”

“Once?”

“Just once, yeah,” said Al. “And she went down, and that was it. She went out quick.”

“Who was it plugged her?

“Dave Maunder.”

“Dave Maunder plugged her,” said Jack.

“Yeah.”

As the conversation continued the Fearless cover team listened, rapt. Among them was Detective Leon Lynch, who relayed details of the confession to Danny.

“First thing he says, he goes, I was involved in that murder. Right off the bat,” Lynch told him. “He’s bang on about all the names, where it happened, where the pot was in the fuckin’ house, everything. So we got some true info.”

“OK,” said Danny.

“Shit,” said Lynch, “the pot was upstairs. Nobody knew that.”

Lynch told Danny that Al had identified Dave Maunder as the trigger man. He told Danny that years earlier Maunder had put investigators on Al’s scent.

“He fucked him over a bit when we interviewed him,” he explained. “Nobody 99

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said anything all these years and then he fucking goes, yeah, Al went over there for some that night. So he fuckin’ helped sewer him.”

Danny, though, was skeptical.

“It sounds like it’s all bullshit,” he said. “It doesn’t fit.”

Lynch advised Danny to join Al and Jack at the cottage so he could help flesh out aspects of the story Al was telling.

“What are we gonna do to make this good?” he mused.

He recommended pressing Al on fine points of his story.

“When did you get there? How did you get there? What did you tell the cops?

Like, all this shit, right? And that’s why I think it’s good if you’re back in on it. That way you can all just sit there and openly, you know what I mean, chat about it and get it out.” Lynch advised quizzing Al on Linda. “She’s got more involvement,” he told Danny. “So you can bring in the bit about the old lady.”

Inside the cottage Jack kept pressing for details, trying to flesh out this new information. He asked Al what had happened to the gun.

“She’s a long time buried,” Al replied. “I would imagine by now 20 feet down in the quagmire.”

“So who buried it?” Jack demanded.

“I did.” Al said. “I’m the only guy that knows where it is,” he said.

Jack took Al back to the shooting. “Was it close?” he asked.

“From about here to that chair right there,” Al responded.

“One shot.”

“Yeah. Straight in the back.”

“And you grabbed the weed and just fucked off.”

“Yeah,” said Al.

Al told Jack that he and Maunder fled the house and split up. He said he drove to Port Perry, where he smoked a few joints with a pal. After that, he said, he busted up Maunder’s single shot Cooey .22 and tossed it into a swamp.

“Can you show me that swamp?” Jack asked.

“Yes I can,” Al assured him. “It’s over by Warkworth.”

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Jack persisted with his interrogation, trying to pin down the details. He had Al draw a map of the neighbourhood in Raglan, and another of the interior of Doug and Bev’s house. And he steered talk back to Linda. Al said Linda knew nothing of the rip-off or the killing back in 1974, but that when the cops leaned on her years later, she started talking. And when she did, she pinned everything on Al.

“Why the fuck would she do that?” Jack asked.

“Well, vendetta, and hell has no fury like a woman scorned,” Al offered. “Fits the old lady I had right to a T. She can never shut up,” he said. “That’s why I got rid of her.”

Jack had Al take him through it again. “Where did she fall?” he asked. “In the living room, in the kitchen, where?”

“In the kitchen,” said Al. “Right on the kitchen floor. Right in front of the cupboards.”

“Face first?” Jack asked. “She fall on her fuckin’ back, or?”

“Face first,” Al said. “Just like that, buddy.”

As he retold the story, Al added more details. He told Jack he’d watched the house, waiting for the shipment of marijuana to arrive.

“We watched the whole play down,” he said. “We watched the guy come in a Comet and drop it off and everything else.”

“Some guy come in a Comet and dropped the shit off,” Jack repeated.

“Yeah,” said Al. “A ’64 Comet.”

He went on to say that after they split up the weed, he and Maunder talked on occasion, but for the most part both lay low and, after the heat of the initial murder investigation lifted, resumed their lives.

“He carries on with his fuckin’ life,” Al said, “and I carry on with mine.”

Eventually (and on cue) Danny returned, and Jack told Al he could bugger off to the dock and fish for a while, if he wanted to.

“I’d rather him stay here, if that’s OK,” Danny told Jack.

Jack got up to go to the bathroom. Danny whispered to Al, “It’s OK.”

Al leaned in to whisper to Danny: “Let’s not be too long getting out of here after all this is done, OK?” 101

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“I don’t want him to get all mad,” Danny cautioned. “I don’t want to end up on the side of the road, if you know what I mean.” Then he asked Al, “Your heart pounding?”

“Oh, fuck,” said Al in a hoarse whisper, “I’m right back in the same spot I was yesterday. That’s why I don’t want to be long. Too many fuckin’ questions, man.”

“Were you straightforward with him?” Danny asked.

“Oh, yeah,” said Al. He persisted with his desire to leave. “I just don’t feel comfortable, buddy.”

“I don’t think anything is gonna happen to us,” Danny reassured him. “I really don’t. That’s not in my mind at all. If you were straight up, I’ll be straight up. You were straight up?”

“Oh, yeah,” Al told him again.

Jack returned and the questions resumed.

“I told Jack the truth about that girl that got murdered,” Al announced. “That it was my buddy that did it and I was in on it.”

“What?” said Danny, playing dumb. “You and who? You and your wife?”

“No,” said Al. “My buddy shot her.”

Danny tried subtly to press Al on Linda’s involvement.

“What he told me was that she fingered him,” he told Jack. “But I just figured she did it and he’s been covering for her because it’s the mother of his children, for fuck sakes.” He turned to Al. “But that’s not the case?”

“No,” said Al.

“It has nothing to do with your old lady?”

“Nothing,” said Al.

“You’re sure of that?” Jack asked.

“Yeah,” said Al.

“I’m tellin’ you this,” Jack cautioned. “You better be sure of your fuckin’ story with me.”

“I can’t be any more sure, man,” said Al.

Al went for a smoke. He stood just outside the door as Danny revealed to Jack his criminal secret -- the tale he’d told Al about manipulating an accident scene to 102

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help his future wife avoid a drunk driving charge. Jack went through the same routine -- lots of questions, a demand that Danny draw a map of the area where the crash occurred -- and, at last, appeared to be satisfied with the story.

“All right,” he said at last. “All right, all right.”

Al piped up: “Sounds to me like there’s no one sitting here who’s a saint.”

“We’re going for a drive,” Jack announced.

He told the boys he wanted to see the place where Al claimed to have dumped the murder weapon. And he wanted to go now. Danny pressed for more time. Let’s stick around, he suggested, have a few beers, some steaks, and head out fresh in the morning. Jack said he’d think about it.

“I’m going for a walk, fuckers,” he announced.

“When you come to the door clap, will ya?” Danny said.

Jack just laughed.

“Then we’ll know there’s nothing in your hand,” Danny said, joining the laughter.

Jack walked to the door. “I love you guys,” he said.

When the door closed Al whispered urgently at Danny. “Get me the fuck outta here,” he begged.

“I’d love to, bro,” Danny said. “But you know what, I’ve had a few beers and like he says, I gotta take you for a drive. I don’t want this going on until fuckin’ August.”

“I told my daughter I’d be home in two days,” said Al.

“You’ve only been gone one day.”

“Yeah, but --”

“I’m not worried about him,” Danny reassured Al.

“Well, I am,” Al insisted. “I’m nervous. I don’t feel good.”

Once out of the cottage Jack met up with members of the Fearless cover team, including Leon Lynch. The cops agreed that while great headway had been made, there remained the question of Linda’s involvement.

“She knows about it,” Lynch insisted. “She alibied him that night, which is no big fucking deal. If everything pans out with what he’s saying, we can fuckin’ try to 103

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prove that too.”

“You know what?” said Jack. “I’ll tell you right now, the way he told the story?

I believe him.”

“Well, he didn’t wait two fuckin’ seconds to come out with it,” Lynch observed.

“He never fuckin’ wavered from it, either,” said Jack. “You gotta see the look on his face, man, I mean, he’s telling the fuckin’ truth there.”

Jack made a suggestion: why not go back and announce everyone’s leaving tonight?

“He wants to go home now,” Lynch said of Al. “He’s kind of spent.”

Jack agreed it was best not to push things by keeping Al another night. He suggested more goodwill would be fostered if he passed Al $500 for his efforts over the past couple of days.

“It can do nothing but fuckin’ good thing for us,” he suggested. “Whereas if we don’t we’re not gonna get fuck all out of him.”

“We want to keep playing him now, right?” Lynch said.

He instructed Jack to go with Danny and Al in Danny’s truck because it was wired and the cops could listen as they chatted during the drive. Lynch urged Jack to get Al to show him exactly where he’d disposed of the gun.

“We’ll mark that spot and we’ll start looking at that shit,” he said. “If we come up with that fuckin’ gun in that spot we don’t need the guy out west (Maunder) to fuckin’ proceed here.”

“OK,” Jack said.

“The Crown will be ecstatic with a fucking weapon from this,” Lynch observed. “We may even be able to test it ballistics-wise.”

Jack made his way back to the cottage, where he found Danny alone.

“How’d you get away from him?” he asked.

“He’s down at the dock, having a stroke,” Danny said.

The cops laughed.

DEJA VU

Later that afternoon Danny guided his truck along Highway 7A, down a long hill at the bottom of which lies Port Perry. To the left, spreading out to the south, 104

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lay a sprawling wetland.

“That’s the swamp,” Al said. “Right there.”

Danny pulled the truck onto the gravelled shoulder and the three piled out.

Al guided them to a spot near a cluster of huge culverts overlooking a shallow, swampy expanse of water. He faced south, arms outstretched towards the wetland.

“Right here,” he said. “It’s right here.”

Jack was skeptical.

“You walked all the way out into the fucking muck?” he asked.

“It wasn’t this way back then,” Al offered. “It was all different.”

“I call bullshit on that,” Jack scoffed.

Al described how he’d busted up the gun, wrapped it and the leftover ammunition in a red jacket, weighed the whole bunch down with a rock, and tossed it into the muck.

“That’s all black dirt,” he said. “All swamp.” They made their way back to the truck. “Hope nobody that drove by knew me,” Al mumbled.

“Who the fuck would know you 34 years later?” Danny teased.

“That’s still how fuckin’ nervous and upset I get after 34 fuckin’ years,” Al replied. “I’m only human, too.”

“We’ll get the fuck out of here,” Danny said.

The men piled back into the vehicle with the intent of travelling to the site of the murder. They drove west to Simcoe Street, then turned south. The cops kept peppering Al with questions, intent on getting as solid an accounting of the killing as they could. Parts of Al’s story seemed implausible; in addition, with each re-telling his version of events kept shifting.

“Why’d you drive all the way to Port Perry?” Danny asked. “Why didn’t you just pitch the gun over a fence?” He pressed the issue further: “How come you had to ditch the fucking gun? Why not Dave? He’s the shooter.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Jack chimed in.

“No, I let him off with the weed,” Al replied.

“I thought you took the weed,” Jack reminded him.

“We worked that out later,” Al said.

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The drive to Raglan took just a few minutes. Soon the men were by the side of Old Simcoe Road, gazing at the house, still clad in reddish-brown Insulbrick, where Bev Smith had been murdered all those years ago. Al was immediately on edge.

“Let’s not stick around here too long, boys,” he urged. “Now I’ve given you the fucking house.”

But Jack kept peppering him with questions. So Al recounted more details about that night, pointing out the door he said he and Maunder went through. Bev had let them in, he said.

Danny interjected: “You told me you kicked the door, remember? How come?”

“I wanted the baby,” said Al. “Remember the baby.”

He told them how he’d felt badly about Bev’s little daughter, Rebecca, being in the house alone.

“The fuckin’ family had just had a baby,” he said. “My conscience had got, well -- I just wanted to save the baby.”

Jack looked suddenly at him.

“You should’ve fuckin’ told me that before, man,” he said. “That shows me a whole fuckin’ other side of you.”

“I didn’t know you wanted to know about that,” Al replied.

“Don’t say sorry, man,” Jack told him. “The only thing I ever asked is for you to tell me everything.”

“OK, well, I didn’t know you wanted to know that.” The place was starting to give Al the creeps. “Let’s get going, OK? I don’t want to stay here,” he pleaded. “I’m already starting to sweat.”

“Let’s get him out of here,” Jack agreed.

“Yeah,” Al sighed. “Get me home.”

On the way to Cobourg, Danny picked up on the earlier discussion of Linda’s implication of Al in the killing.

“Why’d momma fuckin’ say you did it if you didn’t?”

“Probably because I was ignorant and treated her like shit,” said Al.

Jack asked if Linda’s animosity was the result of her catching Al banging someone else.

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“Nope,” said Al.

He tried to steer the conversation toward the weather. The sky was darkening as a late-day thunderstorm encroached. They discussed the possibility of funnel clouds. But Danny persisted with questions about Linda. What made her point the finger at Al after all these years?

“I don’t know what’s in a broad’s head,” Al replied tersely. “Do you?”

“What did you tell her? She must have asked you that night -- like, where the fuck was she that night?” Danny asked.

But Al was growing weary of the questions. “Can we can it?” he demanded.

The cops continued with questions, steering Al back to inconsistent and unlikely elements of his story.

“You know what?” said Al, sounding cranky, “this happened 34 years ago and to this day there’s stuff I literally can’t remember.”

Then Al offered up something he said he’d been wondering about: Maybe the shooting wasn’t spontaneous, he said. Maybe Dave had planned the killing all along. Al insisted he thought from the time the plot was hatched that it was going to be a drug rip-off and nothing else.

“I thought that was all she was gonna be,” he said.

He described again watching Doug Smith’s house as someone pulled up in a Comet and delivered the weed. It was strikingly similar to what had happened a day earlier when he waited with Danny to steal Jack’s dope back.

“Beauty,” said Danny, “so just like we did yesterday -- watch the fuckin’ deal go down.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” Al agreed. “All I wanted was the dope. Dave came in straight fuckin’ behind me. That’s what was on his mind from day one.”

Then Al contradicted himself again: “To be quite honest I knew right off the hop she was gonna get killed,” he said.

“Did you talk about it with the guy?” Jack asked. “You were gonna go in and shoot the chick, or what?”

“No,” said Al. “I never did that. No. No. That wasn’t my business.”

Then he altered his story again, saying that he had seen Bev make a break for the cupboard just before the fatal shot was fired. Earlier he’d said he was upstairs, grabbing the dope, when he heard the shot ring out.

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Finally Al tired of repeating the narrative. He told the guys that if they wanted any more information, to check the stories about the killing on the Internet.

“That’s not what I’m looking for,” Jack responded.

But Al had had enough. His mind drifted to other things, like the fact he was out of pot. The men made their way to Cobourg. They pulled up at the house on Munson and Al got out.

“Well,” Jack said in parting, “I’m glad you had a good time.”

“Aw, that place is fabulous, that cottage,” Al responded. “Not to mention that boat.” He began to walk toward the house. Danny reminded Al about a Harley Davidson T-shirt he’d borrowed. “Don’t forget that shirt, you fucker,” he said.

CRACKS IN THE ALLIANCE

With Alan Smith’s utterances at the cottage, the goal of Project Fearless -- a confession -- had been accomplished. But it was far from perfect. Although Al had, to an extent, acknowledged playing a part in the murder of Beverly Smith, his story was riddled with elements that did not jibe with the facts as the police knew them.

Some seemed to be straight-up fabrications. For instance: • Al claimed to have stolen 40 pounds of marijuana from the house. But as far back as 1974 it had been determined that just a few ounces had gone missing the night Bev was killed. The 40-pound scenario sounded much more like the staged drug rip-off.

• Al was adamant that after being shot by Maunder, Bev fell and lay face down; that’s the opposite of the truth. Bev was found lying on her back on the kitchen floor.

• Al claimed that immediately after the killing he and Maunder split up, and that Al had gone to Port Perry to hang out with a buddy. But police arriving on scene in 1974 found him in the driveway in his Humane Society van, and he was taken in for questioning at the station in Oshawa that night.

• And Al’s description of watching a guy arrive in a ’64 Comet to deliver the pot introduced a new wrinkle. Police had years ago determined how the deal for the pound of weed had occurred, and had compiled a comprehensive list of persons of interest, and their vehicles. No mention of someone in a ’64 Comet was to be found in the file.

What’s more, not long after the confession, Al recanted, telling Danny he’d made up the story to placate Jack. The conversation took place Sept. 16 as Danny 108

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and Al cruised along in the truck.

“I had to pretty well swallow the bullet, talk to him like I was saving my own fuckin’ life,” said Al. “I’m not stupid, I seen it. I’m in there shakin’ like a leaf.”

Danny steered Al back to his story about Maunder. “Now that whole thing that you came up with, with that buddy out west ...”

“It’s all bullshit,” Al said firmly.

“It’s all bullshit?”

“All of it,” said Al, “all of it, there’s no fuckin’ gun there, there’s no fuckin’ nothing.”

Danny laughed. “You cool fuckin’ cucumber,” he said. “You shot her and you got way with it.”

“Fuckin’ right,” said Al. “You gotta remember I’ve talked to the best of the best, man. I can take you up a fuckin’ creek that don’t even fuckin’ exist and give you a name to it and I’d be sittin’ here goin’ you dumb fuck.”

“That’s fuckin’ awesome,” said Danny.

“And that comes with age and experience. Not about to sell myself down the fuckin’ river for this. I got a family to worry about, grandkids. You think I’m gonna sit in the fuckin’ jail for 40 fuckin’ years? I talked to myself, I agreed with myself: let’s put a story together. And when I said yeah, it’s on Lake Scugog, I knew 40 fuckin’ years ago that bog was there, OK, so all I said was yeah it’s in that bog over there.

Is he gonna walk across the fuckin’ water and look?”

Danny laughed again. “I guess not, no.”

Al said he’d figured there was no way Jack was going to confront Maunder about the tale he’d heard. Maunder was a scary bastard, he contended.

“Why I didn’t say anything all these years is because I would have got killed, plain and simple as that. I would have been gone years ago.”

“What, if you’d have blamed him back then?”

“Well he’s an ex-biker,” Al reiterated. “I’m not about to rat on a fuckin’ ex-biker, man, ever.”

The narrative was becoming confusing. What was Al trying to say?

“You said five minutes ago you fuckin’ shot her,” Danny said. “Now you’re saying --“ 109

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“I never shot her,” Al replied.

“Oh,” said Danny. “Did he shoot her?”

“Yeah,” Al confirmed.

“Oh OK,” Danny said. “I thought you said it was all bullshit what you told -that’s where you’re getting’ me all confused.”

“I’m talking about the part where the gun is,” Al said. “I just wanted out of that fuckin’ place, man.”

“So that Dave thing is all bullshit?”

“Yeah,” said Al. “Everything.”

“So who shot her?”

“My buddy Dave,” said Al, doubling back again.

“So,” Danny began, trying to get the story straight, “you were still there, he shot her and you just got the fuckin’ weed.”

“That’s it,” Al said.

“You cagey old fucker,” Danny said, laughing. “You pulled it over the cops’ eyes. You must have been spinning a yarn in there, like, holy fuck.”

“I’m the yarn master, bud,” Al replied.

Danny asked Al how he’d lived all the intervening years with the knowledge of what had occurred in the house in Raglan that night.

“I just lived day to day,” said Al. “I went to work every fuckin’ day, and I just -buried it.”

“Weren’t you ever afraid your old lady was gonna chirp on you?”

“Every fucking day,” said Al. “But I still had to live until that happened.”

All of the inconsistencies were enough to convince the police that although Al had copped to the crime, there needed to be more investigation of the claims he was making. To do so, the police had to take their elaborate ruse in ever more directions. The first element was to continue contact between Danny and Al. The police staged more gun deals, hoping that handling the weapons would prompt Al to provide more details about the killing. The second tactic was to sow discord among Al, Danny and Jack, planting seeds of distrust with a goal of drawing Al out further.

And finally, they had to get to the bottom of the allegations Al was making about Dave Maunder. And the best way to do that, the police concluded, was to bring the 110

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two men face to face.

The ruse involving Jack began in earnest in early October. The police created a scenario to convince Al that Jack had hired a private investigator to dig into the Raglan murder. The police also had the PI -- portrayed, of course, by an undercover cop -- contact Maunder in Alberta. The goal was to get him to travel east for a meeting with Al Smith.

Danny had already mentioned to Al that his ex-wife had been complaining about a private investigator wanting to talk to her. The men had speculated about what the PI was after, and who had hired him. On Oct. 1, the answer became apparent. Al was along for the ride when Jack had Danny give him a lift to Scarborough, where he’d dropped his car off for servicing at a dealership. Jack got out of the truck, telling the boys he’d be just a minute or two.

“I’ll give you some cash when I get back,” Jack said, “OK?” then he slammed the door of the truck and walked off across the parking lot, leaving behind his duffel bag.

Danny waited a moment, then another, then reached for the duffel bag.

“Just keep an eye out for a sec,” he instructed Al. Danny rustled for a moment through the bag, then peered at a piece of paper. “What the fuck is this? Holy fuck,” he blurted, “holy fuck. That’s the fuckin’ PI that’s been around the old lady.”

Al leaned forward from his spot in the back seat. “You gotta be kidding me.”

“I fuckin’ kid you not,” said Danny.

“What are they looking for?” Al asked.

Danny scanned the pages in the file. There were print-outs of Internet news stories about Bev Smith’s murder. Also in the file was a long e-mail string, communication between Jack and his PI. Danny read out names listed in the documents -- Dave Maunder, Linda Smith, Al Smith among them -- and looked up at Al.

“What the fuck is he doing?” Al wondered aloud.

Danny kept reading and relaying information from the file. The PI was assigned to find out as much about the Raglan murder as he was able to. He had been instructed to create a cover, telling those he contacted he’d been hired by family members frustrated that Bev Smith’s killer had gone unprosecuted. The file also contained what looked to be research into Danny’s claim about tampering with an accident scene years earlier in York Region.

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“You sneaky prick,” Danny muttered as he rummaged through the file. “Look,” he said, “he’s got all the background shit.” He listed off headlines relating to the Raglan murder, details of contacts the PI had made.

“Holy fuck,” said Al. “Where’d he get all that shit?”

“Looks like the Internet,” said Danny.

Al was going from nervous to frantic. “OK, put it away,” he urged.

Danny began to stuff material back into the bag.

“What’d I tell you?” said Al. “Here he comes.”

Jack opened the truck door.

“All done,” he announced. He handed Danny a wad of cash. “Thank you, sir,” said Danny. Jack grinned at the fellows. “Anyways,” he announced, “thanks boys, I’ll give you a shout later in the week. Thanks, Ally,” he said to Al. “Take care, buddy.”

“Keep your stick on the ice,” said Al.

“I will,” said Jack.

“Get me the fuck outta here,” Al demanded.

Danny started the truck and put it in gear.

“It’s not good, Al,” he fretted. “It’s not good.”

“Now you know who got the PI,” said Al. “Gathering information on the both of us.”

“He’s padding his bet,” said Danny.

“That’s right,” Al agreed. “What he’s gone and done is protected his ass. I think it’s kind of dirty, don’t you? What do you think about him now?”

Danny guffawed. “Keep your friends close,” he ventured, “and your enemies closer.”

“We’re gonna have to confront him sooner or later,” said Al. “Whether he don’t like it or not, that’s too fuckin’ bad.”

“Well, that fucker’s gonna keep paying, and I’m gonna keep collecting off him,” said Danny. “Every goddam nickel.”

“Fuckin’ right,” said Al. “So am I. I’ll tell you,” he added. “The price of that carcass removal has just gone up.”

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As they drove the men conspired to cut Jack off at the pass. They decided they would get on the phone and call the people on the PI’s list, telling them he’d been hired by the family, and that there was nothing to worry about. It was their hope that Jack would spend thousands on the PI and come up with nothing more than they had already told him.

“You get your ducks in a row, I’ll get my fuckin’ ducks in a row and fuck him, let him pay the money,” said Danny.

He suggested Al ought to get in touch with Maunder, just in case the PI tracked him down in Alberta. Al was reluctant.

“I’d be giving him a heads up,” Danny urged him. “I want to give everybody around us the wherewithal so when the fuckin’ guy comes, he’s spending money for nothing.”

The boys tried to envision a scenario where they could meet Jack for a coffee and somehow get hold of the PI file again, to find out the full extent of it. As they brainstormed, they came up with an ace in the hole: they would retrieve the boots they’d dumped for Jack the night of the Carcass Boy murder. If he continued with his shit, they’d produce them -- DNA and all -- and ask him how he felt about them talking to the cops about the evidence. Their plan was to get paid for all they’d done for Jack, then part ways for good.

It was Danny who came up with the plan: “We go find the fuckin’ boots, get ‘em, take a fuckin’ picture of ‘em, go put them in a fuckin’ box and we’ll go bury ‘em somewhere and that’ll be our fuckin’ insurance policy against fuckhead if ever he does something stupid or continues with the PI, or stops payin’. We’ll just slide a fuckin’ picture across the fuckin’ table at him and say, hey, now two can play this game, cocksucker.”

“Let’s do that,” Al enthused. “This fuckin’ guy’s getting on my nerves, man.”

Over the next few days Al and Danny revisited their new problem often. Al muttered bitterly about the betrayal they’d been visited with; Danny took every opportunity to revisit Al’s story, attempting to have him nail down a narrative. About a week after the discovery of the PI file they were driving along, hashing out issues, and Danny asked Al what he’d say to Bev, if he had the chance.

“I’d just apologize, outright,” said Al.

“But you could have stopped it?” Danny asked.

“Well -- yeah.”

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“But how?”

“Well I could have been downstairs right, I coulda just said, hey man, there’s no fuckin’ need of this, OK,” Al mused. “Like, come on, let’s get the fuck outta here, know what I mean?”

“You guys afraid she would chirp?”

“Oh, yeah.”

In late October, the police launched another gambit aimed at shaking Al’s story out: They convinced Dave Maunder to travel to Ontario by having their phony PI approach him. Maunder contacted Al a couple of days in advance, telling him he was on his way east on business, and proposed getting together. Al agreed.

On Oct. 29 Danny drove Al to meet Maunder in Cobourg. He took the two men back to his apartment, then stepped out of the way, saying he had to run to the store. Of course, the Fearless cover team was listening in when the old pals talked in Danny’s apartment. It didn’t take long to get around to the murder of Beverly Smith.

“Did everybody have a big laugh, seeing me go into the pen?” Al asked.

“I didn’t believe it,” Maunder assured Al. “I didn’t believe it. Listen Al, they were on me like -- they’re still on me. They’re still on me every month, every six weeks. That’s why I come to ask you: what the fuck is going on? If they’re picking on me, they’re picking on you.”

“They stopped picking on me,” Al replied. “I went and did my fucking stint.”

“They talked to me,” Maunder said. “They talked to me. They said, what do you know about this Alan guy? And I said, well, I don’t know, I said, all’s I know is I did ask him for an ounce of pot -- remember I asked you for an ounce of pot -- and you said you were going over to the next door neighbour’s to get it.”

“Yeah,” said Al, “but --”

“And then you did bring me the ounce of pot,” Maunder continued. “It was 20 dollars an ounce,” he added. “You don’t kill somebody over fuckin’ 20 dollars.”

“No,” Al observed. “And how convenient to fuckin’ blame me.”

“I said how the fuck do you get into the house with a .22 unless you know her or unless you’re having an affair with her or unless the gun was there,” Maunder rattled on.

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him dropped.

“They’re not bothering you now?” Maunder wondered.

“No,” said Al.

“They’re bothering me,” Maunder said. “Again.”

“Well something’s got to crack here, man, because this is not fuckin’ good,” Al said.

“If they charge me,” said Maunder, “I’ll sue.”

“Well, see, I could have done that, but I went to a civil lawyer, and you have to have money to sue these pricks,” Al advised him. “And if you lose, you end up paying not only for your lawyers, but the other side’s lawyers.”

“Two weeks ago they were at my place,” said Maunder. “Durham Regional and a private dick. They got a private dick doing investigations now. I said, why are you coming back to me? So I’m guessing, somebody’s got to be saying it’s me in order for them to come and put pressure on you. Somebody’s got to be telling them that it’s me that’s involved and I was never in her house. I want to find out who’s putting it on me,” said Maunder. “Because I think the person who’s putting it on me is the guilty person.”

Maunder speculated that the cops wouldn’t give up until they convicted somebody for the murder. “They really want to pin it on somebody,” he said.

“Well,” Al replied, “they should look for the right hobo.”

“We were all friends,” Maunder said of the scene in the 70s. “Nobody was into killing anybody.”

“No, Christ,” Al laughed, “peace, love and smoke your fuckin’ nuts off.”

“Whoever killed her had a grudge with her,” Maunder said. “Al, let’s get these guys off our asses. You work this end and see what the hell’s going on. See if somebody can find out what’s going on with the case, who they’re suspecting and what they’re doing. I didn’t do it, OK?”

“Yeah ....”

“Al,” Maunder continued, “who could have done it in our circle? Because it was somebody we knew.”

“Well, it wasn’t me, man,” said Al.

“Who could have done it?”

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“Fuck, I don’t know.”

“It’s somebody they overlooked,” Maunder suggested.

“Somebody’s having a good laugh at my expense,” Al growled. “I went through hell in a fuckin’ hand basket, man.”

Danny returned, and offered to pour Maunder a drink.

“You guys get your work done?” he asked. “You told him about Jack and the PI and all that shit?”

“No,” Al stammered.”

“Sorry, brother,” said Danny. “I thought you worked that all out.”

“No,” said Al again. “No.”

“Well, you better, because my ex old lady just got a call from a guy at the house,” said Danny.

“Oh shit,” said Al.

Maunder piped up, wanting to know what was going on, but Al put him off.

“Anyway, we’ll run you back.”

The men prepared to leave the apartment. As Maunder gathered his belongings, Danny looked at Al gravely. He told him he was worried about the PI bothering his ex.

“It’s not good, Al, she’s fucking wild,” he said.

“Oh, fuck,” Al muttered.

Al and Maunder made their way out. Just arriving was Jack.

“What are you doing?” he said to Al.

Al stared at Jack.

“Just going out for a smoke,” he said.

“Coming back?”

“No,” said Al. “I’m done for the day.”

“You want to do this here,” said Jack, “or you want to do it up there?”

“Do what?” Al asked.

“I gotta talk to you.”

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“No.”

“You know what I gotta talk to you about, too.”

“I’m done for the day,” Al insisted. “Keep on walking,” he told Maunder. “I don’t want nothing to do with these guys. Anything this guy says to you, don’t believe him. They’re the types of guys that get you in shit.”

He paused so Maunder could call a taxi.

Danny strode up. “What the fuck are you doing?” he called to Al. “Do you know who’s at my place?”

“Not interested, buddy,” Al retorted. “How’d he get there?”

“I don’t fuckin’ know,” said Danny. “He’s been calling all fuckin’ day and he’s been bugging us. Now let’s go.”

“Not interested,” Al snapped. “C’mon Dave.”

“What does that fuckin’ mean, Al?” Danny demanded.

“I’m done,” Al said again. “Done completely. See ya, buddy. Thanks for setting me up.”

“I didn’t set you up to nothin’, ” snarled Danny.

Maunder watched this exchange, his head swiveling between Al and Danny.

“I don’t know nothing about anything here, guys,” he said.

“I did not set you up,” Danny insisted again. “That’s bullshit, Al. After all I fuckin’ did for you.”

“OK, Danny.” Al walked away.

Maunder stood there, dumbfounded. He looked at Danny in bewilderment.

“I did not set Al up,” Danny insisted. “You brought the PI here and he thinks I set him up.”

“I didn’t bring the PI here,” Maunder argued. “He brought me back here. It was all set up. They all know what’s going on -- I don’t know what the fuck is going on. I only know that I had nothing to do with that murder. I’m only here to clear up one item, and that’s myself.”

Danny tried to rattle Maunder’s chain a bit more by revealing Jack as the puppet master behind everything that had occurred.

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our past so he felt comfortable when we left, OK? Like tit for tat. You steal a chocolate bar, I steal a pack of gum. We did something for him -- he did it, we cleaned up. We didn’t do nothin’, we just cleaned up the mess. At the end of the mess he basically puts it to us, well boys, you either tell us something that you could go to jail for or you fuckin’ ain’t leaving this place. So I came up with my history. And Al came up with your guys’ history.”

“Yeah, well, we didn’t have a history,” Maunder interjected.

“So this guy didn’t buy it or believe it,” Danny continued. “Or he’s hedging his bet. And he wanted to make sure that at the end of this fuckin’ gig you exist. Because you know, Al’s got you guys doing your gig.”

“So it’s all false pretenses,” said Maunder. “I’m here under false pretenses.”

“I don’t want to be a dick, but you brought the PI to the fuckin’ game, man, nothing to do with us.”

“I didn’t bring the PI here, he brought me,” Maunder clarified again.

“Anyway,” Danny concluded. “That’s the reason you’re sitting here. That’s the reason why I’m sitting here.”

Maunder had had enough. “Probably won’t see me again, either,” he said. He turned and walked away.

END GAME

After the Maunder confrontation Al lay low for several days, ignoring Danny’s calls. Finally, on Nov. 5, he consented to a get-together. But as he walked up to Danny’s truck it was clear Al was still angry over what he took to be a set-up, confronted first with Maunder and then Jack. He opened the door of the truck and glanced in. “You’re not packin’, eh?” he said to Danny.

“Brother,” said Danny, “come on. Do we gotta talk like this?”

“No.”

“We can sit right here and talk if you want,” Danny suggested. “I don’t care. Or we can go for a cruise and grab a coffee.”

Al climbed into the truck. “Let’s go get a coffee.”

Danny pulled away from the house. “It’s been hell since I’ve seen you last,” he said. “Don’t ever think I set you up. OK? How could you think that?”

“Well, I don’t get how he just happened to have his times nicely co-ordinated,” Al said of Jack.

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Danny told Al he’d learned that Maunder had been brought to Ontario by Jack’s PI, and that Maunder was under the impression the investigation had been prompted by Bev’s family. But it all went back to Jack, he said.

“He’s pushing my buttons,” said Danny. “He’s pushing your buttons.”

“No more he’s not,” said Al.

Then he let Danny in on what had been going through his mind for the past couple of days. He said he’d gone to have an off-the-record talk with a lawyer.

“I’m close to going full-blown witness protection,” he announced. “Send him packing for 20 to 25 fuckin’ years. I’ll be out in 18 months under witness protection.”

“So what,” Danny asked, “cop to the Raglan broad and then give that up and get the deal? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No, no, no, no,” Al corrected him. “Not my fuckin’ deal. Jack’s deal, bud.”

“Yeah,” said Danny, “but then he’s gonna give us up, right?”

“What’s he got?” Al scoffed. “He’s got nothing on me. All that’s just hearsay, chitter-chatter. I helped him throw a fuckin’ carcass in the ditch. I couldn’t come up with a viable enough story, so I had to tell him one to save my own fuckin’ skin. To get outta this cottage and back to my own fucking house, my own fucking kids. I thought I was going out in a body bag, man. Yep, honestly I did.”

Al handed Danny a hand-made envelope with a sheet of paper inside it.

“This is for him,” he said. “You give him that and tell him to read it and then to make up his mind whether he wants to go down that road or not.”

“OK.”

“That’s me explaining everything in there,” Al said. “That is gonna happen if I hear one more fucking squeak out of this PI guy. Anything else I’m going witness protection. I’ve been in prison before, I can go back and do 18 fucking months and be gone under a fucking program. There’s no more of this fucking tomfoolery. He has to read that and if he don’t fuckin’ like it, well, then he better send me a reply.

And it better come in cash goddam form!”

Al fumed a minute longer. “What are we gonna do about this guy?” he muttered. He wondered if they ought to show Jack the picture of the bloodied boots they’d retrieved.

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bud,” he told Al. “I got an idea how we can end all of this.”

Danny laid out his plan. It was time, he thought, to meet with Jack -- on their terms, on their turf -- and set out an ultimatum.

“We say, here’s the deal. You say your piece. I say my piece. We slide him the photo and say pay up or fuck you. Right then and there and that’s it, that’s all. And we fucking leave it and go.”

Al was silent for a moment. “Give me a couple of minutes to chew on that, will ya?”

“I’ll give you a couple of days,” Danny assured him. “We can go for breakfast tomorrow and talk about it.”

The men drove around for a bit longer, sipping their coffee and chatting. By the time Danny pulled up again in front of the house on Munson, the pals had reestablished their trust. Later on Danny picked up the package Al had left with him.

On a hand-made envelope Al had written “JACK” and underlined it. Inside was a piece of paper torn from a notebook.

JACK, the note began, and there followed a list of demands.

1. CALL OFF THE PI YOU HIRED BEHIND OUR BACKS 2. SECONDLY, IT’S ABOUT YOU BROTHER NOT ME OR DANNY. 3. ALL I WANT IS MY SLICE FOR CARCASS BOY 4. YOUR SECRET IS BURIED FAR WITHIN ME AND TO BE LEFT ALONE FOR AS LONG AS I AM ALIVE, PLAIN, SIMPLE PLEASE GIVE DANNY MY CUT. P.S. I DO NOT WANT TO GO WITNESS PROTECTION. NO MORE SET-UPS OR IT’S ALL OVER! I ASKED FOR PROTECTION.

On Nov. 9, 2009, Danny and Al set out for their summit with Jack. It was also a climactic stage for Project Fearless. The goal of the meeting was to get Al, once and for all, to reveal any involvement he’d had in the murder. They left Cobourg, heading west on the 401 for the meeting, planned for a Tim Hortons in south Bowmanville. They hadn’t been on the road long when Al reached for his stash and started to roll a joint. That was troublesome; if another confession was to come, the police didn’t want it tainted by Al’s being stoned.

“You rolling one up?” Danny asked. “Can I ask you a favour? I want your mind clear for seeing him.”

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“All right,” said Al.

“Brother, I just want you to have all your senses going, you know? Let’s just get this over with.”

“Yeah,” said Al. “I’m in with ya.”

The Tim’s was packed when Danny pulled up. He called Jack and told him to head down to the Fifth Wheel truck stop by the 401. The three met up in the restaurant, but decided they’d go out to Danny’s truck to talk. Danny encouraged Jack to sit in the driver’s seat.

“I’ll get in the back,” he said. Then, as Jack was about to get into the truck, Danny stopped him.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, and frisked Jack quickly, “but you’re not bringing nothing with you.” He finished the search. “OK,” he announced.

“Nothing. Don’t take that the wrong way,” he began again, but Jack cut him off.

“We got shit to talk about,” he snapped. “Let’s fuckin’ do it like men.”

Once they were seated inside the truck Danny began. He told Jack it was time for the three of them to sort out any outstanding issues and move on.

“Do we wish last July never happened?” he asked rhetorically. “Do we wish Al had never met you, I never introduced you, that we weren’t a bunch of greedy fuckin’ cocksuckers and we dealt dope, we robbed, we killed a guy, do we wish that?

Absolutely. Are we pissed off about the PI thing? Yeah. But we gotta get this out of the way, clear the air, make sure you’re confident with the dirt you got on us. So when we leave here today we’re done, OK?”

Danny suggested Al air his issues first.

“I just wanted outta there, buddy,” Al began, “outta your cottage. I didn’t know what to do. Look, you had me scared shitless and I didn’t know what to do, what to say, so I came up with a story and that’s the story I gave you and I stuck to it. I didn’t know you were gonna go about calling PIs. I thought this was a pact between the three of us, everybody keep their fuckin’ mouths shut.”

Al was again recanting his confession. Danny spoke up.

“Let me just say one more thing, brother,” he began. “If I hear you saying stuff that’s bullshit today and you’re lying, I’m gonna call you on it. It’s fuckin’ dirt time, on the table, get the fuck outta here.”

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lying to me and I was right. You guys got me and I have nothing on you guys and that was the whole idea at that fuckin’ cottage of mine, was to sit down and chat and lay our cards on the table. And then I find that a lot of the shit you told me was bullshit.”

“Yeah,” said Al.

“I just want to get away from you guys,” Jack continued. “I’ve gotta get what we set out to do last July.”

“I just wanted the pact to work,” said Al.

“The only way it’s gonna work is if I get the fuckin’ truth outta you,” said Jack.

“What happened with that chick?”

“I’m innocent as the day is long,” Al replied.

“What happened with that girl?” Jack demanded again.

“I have no idea,” said Al. “All that at the cottage, I made that up, man. I had to come up with something, like, fuckin’ instantly.”

Jack uttered a harsh laugh.

“Well,” he said. “Now where does that fuckin’ leave us?”

Danny interjected again.

“I thought today we were gonna come clean, drop our dirt on the table,” he said. “I risk not talking to either one of youse again, risking a friendship.”

“What?” said Al.

“Brother,” said Danny, “I just want you to tell this guy what happened there.”

He recounted what Al had told him about his role in the murder, and how he’d coped afterward.

“I have no idea what happened there,” Al insisted.

“I want to know,” Jack said. “I gotta fuckin’ know, Al.”

“Yeah, well I didn’t,” Al said again. “I’m as innocent as the fuckin’ day is long.”

“I don’t get it,” said Jack.

“Like I said, when I was at that fuckin’ cottage I just had to come up with something,” Al said. “I wanted to get out and go home. I was scared shitless.”

“What were you scared about?” Jack asked.

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“Like, dropping bodies off in ravines, for one thing,” Al replied. “And then being questioned.”

“Well ...” Jack stuttered. “What else can you give me?

“I have nothing,” said Al. “You have my word and that’s it, that I’ll remain quiet until I die.

“What was all that stuff you were telling me about how you made peace with her, you apologized to her and all that?” Danny asked.

“I made all of that up,” Al said. “Instantly.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Jack. “Now what am I gonna do?”

“It’s a pact,” Al assured him. “It’s a three-way pact, and that’s it. Let’s leave it and live, OK? Let’s bury it. Christ almighty, can I just goddam go fishing and retire like an old man and not know fuck all? That’s the way I want it.”

Danny quickly switched gears.

“I’m pretty sure Al doesn’t trust you, Jack,” he suggested. “He can correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think he trusts you to know that he did something like that.

Is that semi-right there, old-timer?”

“Yeah,” said Al. “How do I know that?”

“What he’s worried about is telling you he clipped her,” Danny continued.

“He’s a fuckin’ cagey old guy. He doesn’t want to tell you he did her because that way you’ve got something to deal.”

“Yeah, man,” Al said to Jack, “how do I know you don’t want to send me back up into jail again?”

“Oh my God,” Jack sighed. “I created a fuckin’ body, all you guys did was dump it in the bush for me. What the fuck?”

“He’s afraid to tell you he clipped her because you then do have it on him,” said Danny.

“And you went to a PI,” added Al.

“The PI’s fuckin’ done,” Jack said.

“He is?” said Al.

“Absolutely.”

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it. It was me.”

“OK.”

“I did it all myself,” Al continued. “I got the pot, and basically over the course of the next few months I sold that pot off quietly in bits and pieces. And the reason she ended up getting shot in the back of the head was -- I had the gun behind my back all the time, she never did see any fuckin’ gun, so she let me right in the house just like a fuckin’ neighbour. She went to go to the kitchen to get the baby’s bottle. I just followed her. I took one shot in the back of her head and I went up and I grabbed the 40 pounds and, uh -- that was it. And then I played stupid after that ever since.”

Jack spoke up. “So the other stuff you told me --“

“It was all bullshit.”

“You did it yourself,” Jack said.

“I did it all myself,” said Al. “That’s it in a nutshell and I can say nothing more about anybody else other than the fact it was me. I did a terrible thing when I was a young man.”

“Holy shit,” said Jack.

“So I’m out here today, actually a free guilty man,” Al said.

He implored Jack to maintain his secret.

“I would have to go back and do anywhere from 25 to life,” he said. “I would die in there.”

“So you knew the pot was there,” Jack asked.

“Yup,” said Al. “Got greedy.”

“Was she close?”

“Yup.”

“How close?”

“Ten feet,” said Al. He began to cry.

“Wow,” said Jack. “Holy moly.”

Al opened the truck door and stepped outside. He began walking slowly around the truck, taking in great gulps of air. Inside the truck the undercover cops hastily conferred.

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“What else can we get?” Jack whispered.

“Just give him a minute,” Danny advised. “He’ll come back in a sec. For the first time he finally got it off his chest,” he observed.

“I think so too,” said Jack.

The door of the truck opened.

“Sorry about that,” Al said. “Oh my God.”

Al was assured again that with his confession, the pact was sealed.

“Is that the first time you ever told that, Al?” Jack asked.

“Yeah.”

“I thought so,” said Jack.

The summit was finished. Jack prepared to leave, telling the boys they had nothing to worry about. The deal was done, and their secrets were safe. A final bit of business: Jack guaranteed Danny and Al he’d meet up with then before Christmas. They each had two grand coming.

“Two grand,” Al repeated.

“OK,” said Danny.

“Done,” said Jack. He slammed the truck door and was gone.

Danny started the truck and guided it back to the 401. He started heading east to Cobourg.

“Does it feel a little good to finally talk about that?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Al.

“I bet it does.”

“Well,” said Al. “Now you got me by the deep and long ones.”

Danny subtly kept the questions coming, trying to get more.

“You were gonna plunk her no matter what, or what happened?” he asked.

“Yeah,” said Al. “She had a big mouth.”

“Oh yeah? Was she chirpin’ about you?”

“Yeah, prior to it all,” Al said.

“What was she chirpin’?”

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“About this chick I was banging,” said Al. “A friend of her sister’s.”

“And you were afraid of the ex finding out.”

“That,” said Al, “and losing everything.”

On Dec. 10, 2009, the boys piled into Danny’s truck and headed for Whitby to meet up with Jack. It was payday at last. Their spirits were high. Danny pulled into a plaza and they scanned the lot for Jack’s vehicle.

“I’ll phone him and tell him I’m here,” said Danny.

“Here he comes,” Al told him.

“Beauty,” said Danny. “He said did we want to go out for lunch and that. I don’t really feel like it. Do you?”

“No,” said Al. “I just want to get this done and go back home.”

Jack approached the truck, smiling. “What are you two monkey nuts doin’?”

“Ah, not much,” said Al. “You?”

“You guys are just waiting for Santa Jack to come to pay for the fuckin’ payday, eh?” Jack teased.

“Don’t take it personal,” said Danny. “But yes, we were.”

“There you go,” said Jack. He handed over a newspaper stuffed with cash.

“Beauty,” said Danny.

The three made small talk for a while. Jack told the boys next time they met up he’d have a few pounds of weed for Danny.

“You’ll like it,” he said. “I gotta go.”

Al hefted the package Jack had delivered.

“Holy fuck,” he said. “That feels a little more than two grand. Let’s get the fuck outta here, hurry.”

Just then a police cruiser pulled up.

“This better be his fuckin’ big joke for the day,” Danny said. “What the fuck is this all about?”

An officer strode toward the truck.

“Uh-oh,” said Al. “I don’t like this set up.”

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The cop knocked on the window of the truck. Danny rolled down the window and the cop addressed him by name.

“Shut off the truck, please,” the officer said. “Put the keys on the dash.”

“What’s going on?” said Danny.

“You’re under arrest for criminal negligence causing death and obstruct police,” the officer told him. “You co-operate with us, we’ll co-operate with you, OK?”

Danny complied with the cop, stepping out of the truck. Al watched as he was handcuffed and the cop began to recite his rights. At that moment a woman walked up to the passenger side of the truck.

“Al,” said Durham homicide Detective Dianne Jennings.

“Hi,” said Al.

He stared blankly at Jennings. “How are you?”

The officer identified herself and asked Al to step out of the truck. She informed Al of his right to talk to a lawyer.

“You’re under arrest for murder,” Jennings told Al.

“Murder?” he echoed.

“Murder.”

Jennings carried on with the arrest, informing Al he’d be taken to a police station in a cruiser.

“Do you understand what you’re under arrest for?” she asked him.

“No.”

“You’re under arrest for first-degree murder.”

“Of?” Al asked.

“For the murder of Beverly Smith.”

“Oh, that,” said Al. “I’ve already gone through all that.”

Jennings read Al his rights, telling him he could respond to the charge, but that anything he said might be used as evidence against him.

“I’ve already gone through this,” Al said. “I just don’t understand it.”

Al and Danny were both taken to the Durham police station in downtown Oshawa, meeting up once more in the cells.

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“My kids’ll be bawlin’ their eyes out,” Al told Danny.

“I can’t even think about that,” Danny replied.

Al informed Danny that pretty soon the bucket truck -- the police prisoner transfer vehicle -- would be heading out to the Lindsay jail. They sat silently. In another cell, a prisoner urinated loudly.

“You gotta get used to that sound,” Al observed.

He told Danny that they would likely be separated in Lindsay. Danny said he’d been told he’d be taken first to York Region.

“Well,” said Al, “good luck to ya.”

“You too,” said Danny.

“Someone’s having a good laugh,” Al observed.

“I’m not fuckin’ laughin’,” said Danny.

They were silent for two full minutes. Al finally spoke up, giving Danny pointers about what to expect when he arrived at Lindsay. His voice trailed off when he saw Jack appear on the other side of the bars.

“What the fuck?”

“Just so you two know who I am, OK?” said Jack. “I’m a police officer.”

Danny and Al were silent.

“One other thing,” Jack said. “That body dump? That wasn’t real. That wasn’t a real body. Just so you don’t have that burden.”

“Oh, thank God,” said Al.

“So you don’t have that on your mind,” Jack reiterated. “All right?” He turned and walked away, his steps echoing.

“See you in hell, Jack,” Danny spat.

“What the fuck?” Al demanded. “What the fuck? I thought you said you knew this guy for years?”

“I hadn’t seen him in 10 fuckin’ years,” Danny sighed. “Then I just bumped into him. I started talking with him and then, fuck, we’re doing business.”

Somewhere a toilet flushed. Al asked Danny if he’d been able to talk to anyone at the duty counsel’s office. He suggested a few good lawyers. He tried to make a joke about Danny going without beer inside. Then he asked, “You swear you don’t 128

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know any of that, eh?”

“Of what?” Danny asked.

“That Jack thing.”

“I’m about to throw up,” said Danny.

There was a long pause. “Every chance I get I’ll look for you there,” Al promised.

“OK,” said Danny. “Yeah.”

“You’ll get processed again once you get there,” Al said, then was silent for a moment. “Into hell.”

The men were silent. Minutes passed. Finally, a cop walked down the corridor outside the cells. He told Danny the York cops were there to pick him up.

“See ya, bro,” Danny said as he was led away.

Al watched him go.

“Yeah,” he said.

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Nearly 40 years after the murder of Beverly Smith Durham police charged Alan Smith (no relation) with her murder for the second time. He is pictured here with lawyers Alison Craig and Joanne McLean. June 2014 / Metroland file photo

7 Alan Smith On Trial

On March 28, 2011, a preliminary inquiry began in Oshawa. Alan Smith was led in, handcuffs on his wrists and shackles on his ankles. He had aged since the public had last caught a glimpse of him in the summer of 2008. He looked puffy and pale; his eyes scanned the courtroom as he was ushered to a glassed-in prisoner’s dock.

The preliminary inquiry is essentially a test of the Crown’s case; the purpose of the process is to allow a judge to assess the strength of the evidence and decide if the accused ought to be committed for trial. From the outset, there was little doubt Al Smith would be going to trial; it was the hope of his defence team, Oshawa lawyers Tom Balka and Alan Richter, that the charge would be reduced from first-degree to second-degree murder.

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tario Court Justice Donald Halikowski barred witnesses from the courtroom during the testimony of others, a commonly imposed measure to prevent the tainting of evidence. The crowd rose and filed quietly out. Halikowski also imposed a publication ban on evidence presented during the prelim; this too is a customary measure, meant to prevent prospective jurors from reading and hearing evidence prior to a trial.

Lead prosecutor Cindy Johnston gave Halikowski an outline of the many witnesses she expected would be called. They included many of the people familiar with the Raglan scene in the ’70s, the undercover cops who had participated in Project Fearless, and Al Smith’s ex-wife, Linda Smith. Johnston gave a hint of the complicated nature of Linda’s evidence.

“She is problematic,” she told the judge.

The first witness was Doug Smith, who described the last day he’d spent with Bev, and the night she died.

What followed was a months-long reconstruction of the decades of events and investigation that occurred between the time Bev died in 1974 and Al’s arrest in 2010. Halikowski heard from cops including Aird and McKay, who led the investigation in the ’70s, Tony Turner, who took the reins in the late ’80s, and, of course, Danny and Jack. Also hitting the witness box were players from the past like Dave Maunder (who died in early 2014). But the real stars of the show (in addition to the undercover cops) were Linda Smith, who claimed now to have witnessed the killing, and Doug Daigle, the man who had been arrested in 1988 but released without charges being laid.

The prelim provided Balka and Richter an opportunity to show Halikowski that there were other potential suspects in the case; as the process unfolded it became obvious they had spent hours poring over the files, seeking any evidence that might raise a doubt about Al’s guilt. Many of the people interviewed by the cops in the ’70s took the stand. Among the first was Mark Kenny, by then a resident of British Columbia. Like many of the witnesses who would follow, Kenny professed that his memories of 1974 had faded; he admitted involvement in the drug scene, but denied being any kind of big-time dealer.

“I would obtain (pot) for myself and others,” he allowed.

He said he wasn’t an established dealer, “but I wouldn’t give it to them for free.

“I think the profit would go up in smoke,” Kenny noted.

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he had been talking with Doug Smith on the day of the murder about buying some pot. Kenny described how, in the wee hours of Dec. 10, 1974, the police had shown up at his house on Scugog Island with a search warrant and asked for the clothes he’d been wearing that day. But he claimed not to remember much about the statement he’d given the police. Balka applied to have the ’74 statement admitted as evidence.

Halikowski heard Kenny’s description of his relationship with Al and Linda Smith, as well as Doug and Bev Smith. He told the police he had been at Doug and Bev’s house in the past, and had visited on Dec. 9. He said he and Doug talked about a deal for some pot, and that they’d agreed Kenny would go to Port Perry to seek out buyers, then return to Raglan later if things panned out.

But Kenny had no memory of returning to Raglan. Indeed, his memory of the whole evening, he said, had faded significantly. He said he vaguely remembered cruising around Port Perry, then experiencing car trouble; he wound up at his girlfriend’s house, he said.

“We have no way of knowing whether or not you went back to (Raglan),” Balka suggested.

“That’s a tricky question,” Kenny replied. “Based on my memory, I didn’t go back to the house that night.”

“How can you say that?” Balka countered. “You can’t sit there and say, I did not go back to that house on Dec. 9, 1974, can you?”

“I can’t say I did, either,” said Kenny.

Also called to the stand was Rick Ostrom, another man questioned in the hours after the killing. The police had been interested in Ostrom because he had admitted talking to Bev on the phone in the early evening the night she died -- he steadfastly denied having gone to Raglan -- and his failing polygraph tests during the investigation in the ’70s. Balka asked Ostrom about his initial denials that he’d ever been alone with Bev in Raglan.

“Maybe I couldn’t remember at the time or I wasn’t focused,” Ostrom suggested. “Maybe I didn’t say it because I was trying to protect her. She was a beautiful person. She was a little, quiet girl. She was a great person.”

Ostrom also addressed the false alibi his uncle had provided after the cops tracked him down in Oshawa (the uncle said Ostrom had arrived at about 6 o’clock, when in reality he got to the house hours later).

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than I did,” said Ostrom. “He thought maybe I had run a red light or something.”

Also called as witnesses were more peripheral players, including Rick Osinchuk and Jeff Czyruk. Osinchuk had gone to Raglan after hearing from Linda that something had happened to Bev; Czyruk was a resident of the hamlet who was questioned by the cops in ’74. Both of them provided insight into the heat that descended on them and their contemporaries -- and the air of suspicion and paranoia the killing cultivated.

Osinchuk said the incident marked the beginning of the end of his involvement in the scene. There were too many drugs, too many freaky people, and too many bad vibes, he said. Plus, there was a killer on the loose.

“There was a lot of fear in the community among the people who were hanging out,” he said. “There were theories about who had done the killing, and why. We didn’t trust anyone at that point in time. Everybody was worrying about this occurrence. There was a lot of mistrust among everybody.”

Czyruk described dropping by the house on the Friday night, Dec. 6, and buying an ounce of pot for $20. Bev walked into the kitchen as the deal occurred, he said. He said that in the wake of the killing, he and other young people in the area were constantly hassled by cops.

“Me and all my buddies were getting pulled over on a regular basis,” Czyruk said. “But I knew nobody I knew had anything to do with this.”

Both undercover officers testified extensively, describing the various tactics they’d cooked up during Project Fearless. The defence lawyers questioned the cops on the motivation for their methods, and the effect they thought the various scenarios had on Al. Jack said he was under the impression that Al was a willing participant who displayed no outward signs of fear.

“I didn’t feel as if Mr. Smith had gone outside his comfort zone as far as what we were doing,” he said.

In May, Doug Daigle took the witness stand. Now in his late 50s, with a heavy build and hair the colour of steel wool, he exuded an air of confidence in dealing with the lawyers, particularly Balka, who was armed with the voluminous files created by the cops during their investigations from the ’70s and ’80s. Daigle was unflappable, deflecting the various accusations leveled against him. He told Balka that although he was familiar with Doug and Bev, they weren’t friends. He dismissed the many wiretaps from the ’70s, telling Balka the men caught on the recordings could have been any one of a number of pals and acquaintances who came and went from his apartment in Enniskillen.

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“My apartment didn’t have a lock on it,” he testified. “There were other associates that were in and out of my apartment at different times and used my phone.”

“Your lock was broken?” Balka asked.

“Yes,” replied Daigle.

“And that didn’t concern you?”

“No,” Daigle responded. “I lived in the country. It was very peaceful. And I didn’t have anything of high value that would be stolen.”

Balka read from the transcripts of the wiretaps, snippets of conversation police at the time believed to involve Daigle. In one conversation a man talked with Georgina Kloos -- the woman who provided Daigle with an alibi back in the ’70s -- about Doug and Bev. Daigle listened to Balka read the transcript. He shook his head.

“That must’ve been someone else,” he said. “I had only met this couple once, when they came over. I sold them a pound of weed and they left. That was the only time I saw her in my life. If I’ve only seen them once in my life I don’t know what’s going on with them.”

Balka presented Daigle with the transcript of a wiretap that police believed had captured him in conversation with his mother. The man identified by police as Daigle said he’d been “freaked out” by the killing, adding he was fond of Bev and considered Doug one of his best friends. In fact, he said, he’d sold Doug a pound of weed the Friday before Bev was shot.

“Totally obnoxious,” was Daigle’s assessment of the comments. “I never said that. There were no ongoing transactions with Doug Smith. It was just the one time.”

Balka confronted Daigle with phone records the police had compiled. In October and November of 1974 there were more than a dozen calls from Daigle’s phone in Enniskillen to the Smiths’ house in Raglan. Records indicated 18 calls had been made from Doug and Bev Smith’s to Daigle’s phone between September and November of the same year. Daigle insisted he wasn’t involved in the calls. The more likely explanation, he said, was that Doug and or Bev were talking to Bob Mitchell, who often used Daigle’s phone. Mitchell had gone to school with Bev and often hung out at the Enniskillen apartment, he said.

“He (Mitchell) was there pretty much on a daily basis and did all his calling from there,” Daigle said.

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Balka quoted a note in the police file: The majority of the calls had occurred when Doug would have been at work at GM.

“That’d be Bob,” said Daigle. “He was best friends with Smitty’s wife as well.”

“They weren’t your calls because you didn’t know the Smiths?” Balka asked.

“That’s right.”

“Did you ever call Doug Smith?”

“Not that I remember.”

Balka steered Daigle to the visit to Doug Smith’s house that he’d told Tony Turner about years earlier.

“I pulled into the driveway,” Daigle began. “I knocked on the door and when I saw the side door was open, I went in. I thought maybe they didn’t hear me.”

He said it’s likely Bob Mitchell gave him directions to the place.

“OK,” said Balka, “if the sale of the pot took place on Saturday, when did you go?”

“Maybe a week or two later,” Daigle reckoned. “I opened the door and saw there was another door -- I think it was wood and it had glass in it -- and I knocked. Nobody answered to the knock and I didn’t see anybody, so I left.”

As to why he was there, Daigle said it was a business call: “I went to see Doug,” he said. “I wanted to see if he was interested in another pound.”

“So this was after Bev was murdered?” Balka asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Daigle. “This was way before.”

“But it was after the first pound you sold.”

“Yes.”

“Did you go into the kitchen?”

“No. I didn’t even try the door.”

“Did you call ahead?”

Daigle said he hadn’t.

“Why?”

“Maybe I wasn’t coming there from home,” Daigle offered.

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“Were you there to collect a drug debt?”

“He paid cash,” said Daigle. “It was very minimal, what was outstanding.

There may have been a couple dollars but I think he had paid cash for most of it.”

“Were you at the house any other time?” Balka inquired.

“No.”

“Just the once?”

“Yes.”

Balka reminded Daigle of an interview he’d given Durham police in 2007, in which he said Doug Smith owed anywhere from $20 to $50 on the pound of dope.

He told the cops he’d gone out to Raglan to collect on the debt.

“So he owed you money for that pound?”

“I think he paid the bulk of it.”

“Did you go over on the Sunday after the deal?”

“No,” said Daigle. “I wouldn’t have gone that quick. I wasn’t that concerned about it.”

“You wouldn’t have gone over after Bev died,” Balka suggested.

“Oh, no.”

“So you’d have to be there on the Sunday or the day of the killing.”

Daigle thought for a moment. “It must have been after she was murdered.”

“So you’re changing that now?” Balka asked.

“Yes. I’m changing it.”

“So which is true?” Balka insisted. “Were you there to sell or to collect the debt?”

“Probably both,” said Daigle. “Maybe both. I don’t remember.”

Balka produced a report by Tony Turner, written after he’d gone to B.C. to interrogate Daigle in 1989. During that interview Daigle said he had gone to the Raglan house. Nobody was home so he got back in his car and went home to Enniskillen, he told Turner. When Turner pressed him on the presence of a pound of dope at Doug’s house, Daigle offered, “Maybe I went to get an ounce.”

On the stand during the preliminary hearing he found that statement odd.

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“I was getting pounds at that time,” he said.

“So why agree it’s possible?” Balka asked.

“I don’t know,” said Daigle. “I was being interrogated all day. Tony was putting words into my mouth and trying to get me to agree with everything he’d say. He was just firing things out so quick. I didn’t have enough time to think about what he was saying. Maybe I didn’t understand the question. I certainly didn’t go to get marijuana.”

“So why say that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe it was true,” Balka suggested.

“I didn’t need to go see Smitty for pot.”

“So you lied.”

“Maybe I didn’t understand the question,” Daigle repeated. “I was going there to see if he wanted more pot.”

Linda Smith’s testimony began in early April and continued for days. It began with Johnston asking her to take herself back to the night of Dec. 9, 1974; Linda recalled riding around in the late afternoon with Al and returning to Raglan at suppertime. Once in the house she busied herself with caring for the month-old Robin, tending to diapers and preparing bottles of formula.

“The next thing I recall is the phone,” she said.

Al answered and talked for five or 10 minutes. Linda said she was busy with the baby when she saw him walk by the kitchen window.

“He exited the back door of the house; he didn’t go by me. He didn’t go out the front door.”

Linda said she saw Al heading across the street, in the direction of Bev and Doug’s house. She picked up the baby and went out the front door. Winter darkness had descended -- Linda remembered Al being partially illuminated by an overhead street lamp. She couldn’t figure out what he was up to.

“If he was going to the store he would’ve gone left,” she said. “He went right. I presumed he was going to Doug and Bev’s.

“I followed him across the road,” Linda said. “He was carrying something. It was a rifle.”

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Linda hurried to catch up to him.

“I had no thoughts of why he was carrying a rifle,” Linda said. “I believe it was down by his side.”

Linda said she felt compelled to follow Al because she was concerned he was going to make a pass at Bev. He’d never done so in her presence, but Linda said she’d noticed Bev was nervous whenever Al was around.

She caught up to Al as he started up the driveway to Doug and Bev’s house.

Al and Linda approached the back door. Linda tried it, found it was locked, and knocked. Inside the dog barked. In a few moments Bev appeared and let them in, turning and heading back to the kitchen as they entered.

“She smiled,” Linda said. “That was a welcome.”

As Bev and Linda entered the kitchen, Al held back a bit. Linda recalled Bev was working at addressing Christmas cards at the kitchen table.

“What’s the next thing you remember?” Johnston asked.

Linda paused.

Finally she spoke. “Bev being shot.”

Linda stared straight ahead as she detailed what she saw next: “She was shot in the back of the head,” she said. “I was terrified. As she was falling I ran out of the house with the baby. I had never seen anything like that in my life.”

“Who shot her?” the prosecutor asked.

“There was only one person there,” Linda replied, “and that was Al.”

Linda said she ran blindly back home and into her house.

“I was just beside myself,” she said. “I had to focus on the baby. I got the bottle ready. It was just horrific.”

A few minutes later the phone rang. As Linda went to pick it up she heard Al come through the back door. It was Doug on the phone.

Linda recalled the conversation: “He said, ‘Hi Linda, is the old lady at the house?’ and I said, ‘No she’s not, Spook.’”

“Spook?” Johnston asked.

“That was his nickname,” Linda explained. “He’d just show up at your elbow.

There’d be no sound.”

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“Continue.”

“Doug said, ‘I phoned the house and there’s no answer. She’s not at her mom’s and she’s not at the store.’”

Linda asked Doug to hold the line while she crossed the street to check on Bev.

“Why would you say that?” Johnston asked.

“I was hoping she was still alive,” Linda explained. “I looked in through the kitchen window. That’s when I saw all the blood. Bev was lying on the floor. She was on her back. The blood was coming from behind her head and there was lots of it.”

Linda said she ran back to her house and spoke into the phone: “’Doug,’ I said, ‘you’d better come home. I think Bev had an accident. She’s fallen and hit her head.’

And Doug said, ‘I’ll be right there.’”

Linda described how Al went over to the Smiths’ house, came back and told her to call an ambulance. She said she didn’t confront him over the brutal killing he’d just committed.

“I was terrified,” she said. “I was terrified I’d be next.”

When Balka’s partner Al Richter launched into his cross-examination, it was the beginning of an exhaustive, multi-day interrogation that closely examined Linda’s extensive questioning by police and the evolution of her story. Over many hours the courtroom was in darkness while on a screen played videos of the various interrogations. Richter would play a clip, pause the video, and question Linda.

He suggested that Linda had crumbled under the pressure, adopting a version of the story that would implicate Al.

One exchange, which occurred in late April, captured the essence of the lengthy cross-examination. Richter played for Linda a video of her admission to Lynch in 2008 that it was she who murdered Bev.

“How is it that this version put you more at peace?” Richter asked. “How did you come up with this version?”

“After June of 2008 when the block was removed I felt guilty that Bev had opened the door,” Linda said. “The only thing I can say is that this fabrication came out of guilt. But I did not shoot Bev.”

“What was the thought process that led to this confession?”

“I don’t have that information,” said Linda. “I can’t think of what I was think139

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ing.”

Richter asked Linda if she had deliberately lied to Lynch.

“Not at the time,” she replied. “I don’t know what my head space was, other than being traumatized by witnessing a murder. I’m trying to find the truth. Having failed the polygraph made me realize something wasn’t right,” Linda continued.

“Something was buried.”

Richter chipped away at Linda’s story. He questioned her suspicions about Al’s infidelity, pressuring Linda to acknowledge that while she came later to know he’d cheated, she had no inkling in ’74.

“That stuff about Al coming onto Bev is nonsense, isn’t it?” Richter asked.

“Yes, sir,” Linda replied.

“But it fit with your story, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re tweaking a little here, you’re adjusting a little there,” said Richter.

“That’s your observation,” said Linda.

“That’s what you’re doing,” Richter continued. “You’re adjusting your statement on each occasion, either adding information or removing something that doesn’t make sense.”

“No sir,” said Linda.

“So why does your story change?”

“I’m trying to find the truth,” Linda insisted.

Richter kept hammering away, confronting Linda with the shifting nature of her story, inaccuracies and all.

“You’re trying to assist the police and their investigation of Al as the prime suspect,” he suggested.

“Yes,” Linda said.

“You’re prepared to tailor your statement whenever someone challenges you,” said Richter.

“Yes sir.”

“You just change your story to suit whoever is interviewing you.”

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“That’s the way it seems,” Linda allowed.

“You don’t actually have any clarity about what happened on Dec. 9, 1974, do you?” Richter asked.

“I thought I did,” Linda replied.

“You’re confused, aren’t you?”

Linda sighed. “Yes.”

“There’s confusion in your mind with every aspect of your evidence, right?”

“Yes,” said Linda.

“You’ve been driving yourself crazy over all this,” Richter suggested. “Haven’t you?”

“Yes,” Linda said.

The morning of April 28 marked Linda’s final day on the witness stand. Johnston’s re-examination was brief, but pointed. Her first target, naturally, was the impression Richter had spent days building. She asked Linda if she even remembered the various statements she’d given the cops.

“No ma’am,” Linda replied, her voice sounding weary.

How then, Johnston wondered, could Linda agree that the police had planted in her mind the details that now formed her narrative of the night Bev died?

“I don’t know,” said Linda.

Johnston took Linda to a discrepancy in her evidence. Richter had pointed out that in her original testimony, Linda recalled Bev was signing Christmas cards at the kitchen table when she met them at the door. That wasn’t true; the cards were in the living room. Linda admitted to being “confused” about the Christmas cards.

“Are you confused about whether or not Al Smith shot Bev Smith that night?”

Johnston asked.

“No,” said Linda.

“Did he shoot Bev Smith?” Johnston asked.

“Yes,” Linda replied.

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“Did you knock on the door and did Bev let you in?”

“Yes,” said Linda.

“No further questions,” said Johnston.

The preliminary inquiry wound up Oct. 21, when Halikowski heard final submissions from the lawyers. Johnston argued there was sufficient evidence to proceed on the first-degree charge, citing in particular Al’s confessions to the undercover cops. Other evidence filled in the blanks to create a formidable case, she submitted.

“I’m not suggesting there is just a small amount of evidence in this case,” Johnston said.

Balka conceded there was enough evidence to put Al before a jury, but argued that the basis for a first-degree charge -- a deliberate, premeditated act -- hadn’t been established by the Crown.

“There’s no evidence to suggest it is in his mind ahead of time to do this particular killing,” he said.

Halikowski interjected: “Let’s look at the obvious: a man brings a gun to the house of a neighbour. A friendly gesture?” he asked. “He’s seen walking to the house with a gun. What do I do with that? There’s no other reason to go to the house with a gun.”

Balka argued other inferences than murder could be drawn. It could have been a robbery gone wrong, he suggested. If the shooting was a mistake, how could the intent to commit murder be proven?

Halikowski delivered his judgment to a packed courtroom on Nov. 4. Al’s brother and sister were there, as were Barb Brown and Rebecca. Doug Smith and his brother were in the front row. In the back of the courtroom sat a bench full of cops, among them Danny and Jack. The decision had earlier been released to the lawyers, so Halikowski was exceptionally brief. Al would stand trial on a charge of first-degree murder. A murmur arose among Al’s supporters. The protest was quickly hushed. Al, looking weary, was led out by two guards.

As people filed out of the courtroom, Cindy Johnston read to members of Bev’s family the most salient finding in the judgment. It related, of course, to the confession. Al’s admission alone that he had planned the killing and had armed himself was enough to warrant committal on the first-degree murder charge, Halikowski found.

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The spectators drifted from the courtroom. The prelim was over. The waiting for a trial had begun.

MR. BIG ON TRIAL

For more than two years Alan Smith cooled his heels in jail, awaiting the beginning of his trial. In late 2011 he parted ways with Balka and Richter, the lawyers who represented him at his preliminary inquiry; the local lawyers assisted in the search for new representation. The trial date was set for May 2014, with pretrial motions scheduled to begin in January of that year. Such procedures are typical in criminal trials, especially those involving the level of investigation that occurred in Project Fearless. Defence lawyers often argue for the exclusion of evidence gathered in undercover or wiretap investigations, most often relying on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Alan Smith’s trial was unique; in a way, it was over before it began. The pretrial phase became something of a trial within a trial, with the defence challenging the methods used by the police to ensnare Al. In essence, Mr. Big was put on trial.

Al was represented by lawyers Alison Craig and Joanne McLean. Craig, a partner at the Toronto firm Lockyer Campbell Posner, is an associate of lawyer James Lockyer, a founder of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. McLean, also a founding member of AIDWYC, has represented several people eventually absolved of killings for which they were convicted, including Robert Baltovich, David Milgaard and William Mullins-Johnson.

The pretrial hearings began in mid-January and were scheduled to continue for several weeks. Craig and McLean’s goal was to convince the judge, Superior Court Justice Bruce Glass, that the evidence gathered against Al -- including his confessions -- ought to be excluded because the methods employed by the police violated his Charter rights.

To make their case, the defence lawyers submitted Danny, Jack, and Leon Lynch to extensive examination -- Lynch alone was on the stand for more than 40 days. For his part, Al Smith would ultimately go through this lengthy legal odyssey uttering just two words -- “not guilty” -- which he rose to declare on Jan. 13, 2014, before Craig called Danny to the witness stand. She opened aggressively, asking Danny if there was anything about his testimony from the 2011 prelim he’d like to change. The cop blinked, then stared at the lawyer wide-eyed.

“Can you be more specific?” he asked.

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the various plays the cops staged for Al, and the officer’s perception of the effect they had on the suspect. Craig closely questioned him about his knowledge of Al’s psychological history, producing evidence that he had been diagnosed with a number of disorders, anxiety among them, that she hinted may have affected his reaction to the scenarios he’d confronted.

Danny said he’d not been briefed on Al’s mental health background, nor that much else, for that matter.

“We would never be privy to that sort of information,” he testified.

“I came up with the lion’s share of the ideas,” he told Craig. “It was up to them (the Durham police) if they wanted to do them or not. It was more or less verbal, ad hoc -- yeah, let’s go with that.”

It was during Jack’s testimony that reference was made to the recording that caught cops discussing Al’s mental state just prior to his first confession at the cottage in July 2009. The exchange was inadvertently captured by a body pack worn by an officer, but did not surface until after the prelim concluded. When prosecutors became aware of it, they disclosed it to the defence. The recording caught the police -- somewhat coarsely -- discussing Al’s growing anxiety after the body dump, and as he and Danny awaited Jack’s arrival. Jack had been questioned about his perception of Al’s level of fear -- or lack thereof -- during the prelim. When the issue arose during the pretrial motions, he acknowledged things had changed. Jack admitted on the stand that had he been privy to the tape prior to the prelim, he would have answered questions posed to him then “differently”.

The emergence of the damaging July 7 recording -- Craig and McLean made much of the tape, and what they said was the careless attitude taken by police toward Alan Smith’s mental state as Fearless careened toward its conclusion -- coincided with a startling development outside the courtroom. On Feb. 12, just before midnight, Durham police received a report about an unresponsive man at the wheel of a car in Oshawa. Officers attending the scene found Detective Leon Lynch in the vehicle. He was charged with impaired driving. (Lynch pleaded guilty in November 2014.)

Jack was also pressed on the very nature of the investigation. Craig and McLean were keen to prove that Project Fearless was a classic Mr. Big scenario. The technique had come under increasing fire from critics who asserted that it could coerce false confessions from targets who were either in fear of their lives, or looking to cash in on membership in a criminal organization -- or both. Jack said that while Fearless may have adopted elements of the model -- involving the target in criminal “plays” for instance -- it fell short of being a true Mr. Big operation.

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“Undercover plays are undercover plays,” he said. “Mr. Big scenarios have certain parameters to them.”

He insisted that the mere presence of a crime boss did not define Fearless as a Mr. Big investigation. That’s in spite of the fact the term Mr. Big was used with some frequency by the cops involved in the investigation, he argued. He said the term is often misapplied to simple undercover ops, like Fearless.

“It’s a terminology even people involved in undercover work oftentimes will have fall out of their mouths,” Jack said. “The classic Mr. Big, in my mind, is a high roller, someone portraying themselves as well off.”

Lynch was to be the key witness called by Craig and McLean. He led Fearless.

He called the shots. It was Lynch, the defence reasoned, who identified Al Smith as a suspect, beginning with his failed polygraph test in the summer of 2007. During a remarkable examination that spanned weeks, McLean meticulously took Lynch through virtually every aspect of the decades-long investigation, questioning the detective on his dogged pursuit of Al Smith. McLean contended that early on Lynch became “obsessed” with Al. She argued he developed tunnel vision that led to him investigating Al to the exclusion of other viable suspects.

Not surprisingly, Lynch rejected these assertions. Over and again he insisted he went where the evidence took him, and that the trail led to Alan Smith. He said his hunch was validated when Al confessed. That’s in spite of the problematic nature of some of the information Al proffered in his talks with the undercover cops.

“Through this whole investigation I believed he was involved in this,” Lynch said. “Yes, I agree there are discrepancies and things that are not accurate. It was what it was,” he declared.

McLean spent hours -- days in fact -- reviewing files from police investigations in the ’70s and ’80s, challenging Lynch on his conclusion that the killer was not among the persons of interest identified earlier. She asked in particular about his conviction that Doug Daigle, the man arrested and released in the ’80s, was not a viable suspect. She noted that in 1988 Turner and King, after speaking to Doug Harper and Georgina Kloos, had come to the conclusion that Daigle’s alibi had been compromised. Lynch disagreed. He opined that Turner and King, after hearing Harper express doubt that he called Daigle on the night of the murder, had planted doubt in Kloos’s mind; she told Turner and King she couldn’t recall telling police she was with Daigle in Enniskillen on Dec. 9, 1974. Lynch said the cops made a leap of logic, then confronted Daigle with it, essentially telling him Kloos had recanted her alibi statement.

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“They told him it (the alibi) was gone,” Lynch remarked, hinting that Turner and King conveyed false information to Daigle. “I don’t agree with that statement,” he said. “They kept saying, that’s not true and they’ve got a witness that’s going to say differently.”

Daigle concluded that the cops could produce Kloos at trial and portray him as a liar, Lynch surmised.

“They’ve knocked him off his alibi by giving a statement that I don’t think is correct.”

“You wouldn’t expect a person with a real alibi to insist on it?” McLean asked.

“I can see that changing when you’re told your alibi is gone,” said Lynch.

He insisted again the cops were wrong when they assumed Kloos had recanted.

“It’s maybe their recollection of the interview but I don’t think it’s accurate,” he said. “I don’t think he had anything to do with it. I believe Daigle (was) with Georgina Kloos the night of the murder.”

McLean vigorously challenged Lynch on his faith in polygraphs; Lynch maintained their value as a preliminary investigative tool. The polygraph is an effective means of telling from the outset whether a subject is being truthful or not, he said.

“I believe it is a reliable tool,” said Lynch. “It is for inclusion or exclusion.”

McLean accused Lynch of placing “blind faith” in technology that is neither 100-per cent accurate nor admissible in court. But Lynch stuck to his guns. A pass on the polygraph, he said, is a significant indication of innocence.

“If they pass the test I do exclude them based on the test results,” he said. “I would have liked (Daigle) to come in for a polygraph examination. But he would not do that.”

Similarly, the polygraph was among the factors that excluded Doug Smith as a person of interest, Lynch said.

“I didn’t feel there was any need to look at him,” Lynch said. “I didn’t think he was a suspect at all.”

McLean asked, what about the suggestion Doug hired someone to kill Bev?

“He’s given a lot of statements about his actions. There’s nothing in the file to corroborate he was involved in a murder for hire and had his wife killed,” Lynch said. “I’m content if he passed a polygraph examination about killing his wife he 146

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also did not hire someone to kill his wife. If he had set up the killing of his wife, I would expect he would fail the polygraph. When somebody passes a polygraph, to me that’s a strong indication he’s not involved.”

Over and again McLean challenged Lynch on his conviction that Al Smith was the killer. She focused on his reaction to Al’s tale to the undercover cops about making off with 40 pounds of pot. Al had changed his story as the detectives pressed him on it, but held on to the detail about the huge amount of weed. McLean asked if Lynch had been troubled by the glaring inaccuracy.

“Not really,” said Lynch.

He theorized that once Al was assured by Jack that no one would be checking up on his story, he felt the freedom to tell the truth -- but that he maintained some embellishments. Maybe, Lynch reasoned, Al thought his buddies would be far more impressed with 40 pounds than the six or seven ounces that were actually taken the night Bev was killed. Maybe he didn’t want his pals to know he’d shot a young woman to death over a few bags of dope.

“I felt he was giving truthful things for a couple of reasons, one being he was caught in a lie (after his July confession) and he knows that. And he’s just received assurance there’s going to be no more private investigator. Once he got assurances and he’s convinced, he hears it’s not going any further, that’s when he starts talking.”

Why would Al Smith care if Jack thinks he lied about Maunder being involved? McLean asked.

“I don’t know why he would care,” Lynch replied. “He may be concerned or care he hasn’t told the truth and he’s the only one in this whole thing who hasn’t told the truth.”

“And yet he continues to lie,” McLean observed.

“I’m not going to agree everything he said on the ninth (of November) was not true,” Lynch asserted.

But parts were lies, McLean suggested. Lynch agreed, noting that the fact that Al persisted in padding the story with untruths presents a bit of a conundrum.

“He says, yeah, everything else is true. And from an investigative standpoint, we’re stuck with that. I’m not rationalizing at all,” he insisted. “That’s just how I heard it.”

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checked out.

“Or he’s telling a story that’s true,” Lynch quickly rejoined. “I agree there are inconsistencies there, but he’s telling a lot of items that could be true. It is his story.

It is what it is. I think he’s telling the truth when he talks about what happened.”

McLean raised the issue of motive. Would it be reasonable, she wondered, for Al Smith, who had a wife and child and a full-time job, to murder his young neighbour for a few bags of pot worth maybe $120?

“The money wasn’t flowing in,” Lynch replied. “I think they were like a lot of other families, going paycheque to paycheque. But I can’t say they needed money, so this is why it happened.”

But people get killed every day over matters other than money, the detective said.

“I thought for a long time maybe the marijuana was the motive for the murder,” Lynch said. “I don’t know the motive. In a lot of homicides I don’t ever know the motive. It’s just something that sometimes you don’t find out.”

“Your theory is that he came home from work after 7 o’clock, got a call from Maunder asking for an ounce of weed, so he went across the street and shot his neighbour,” McLean suggested. “Is that right?”

“My theory is that it could have been about the marijuana. It could have been about her telling on him,” Lynch replied.

Lynch also rejected McLean’s suggestion that Al’s confessions -- particularly that of July 8 -- were the result of him fearing for his life.

“I don’t see that, that he was fearful of being killed,” Lynch said. “I know he says he was scared, but listening to when Jack shows up, I didn’t hear anything that was causing me concern. They were talking about things. Everything was jovial.”

Lynch maintained that when pressed, Al sprinkled his confession with kernels of truth. He may have embellished -- or outright lied -- but it was a confession to murder.

“I don’t believe he was scared and he just wanted to get out of there,” the cop said. “I believe he came up with a story because that’s what was being asked of him.

It’s hard for me to know whether or not he just made it up on the spot; only he knows how he formed that,” Lynch said.

The pretrial proceedings continued for months, well past the May date that had been set for the start of the trial proper. By early June, Craig and McLean fin148

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ished calling evidence on their motions; in making her final submissions to the judge, Craig was scathing in her assessment of the police tactics used to ensnare Al Smith.

In the June 11, 2014 edition of Oshawa This Week author Jeff Mitchell details the ‘Mr. Big’ sting carried out by Durham Regional Police, information previously protected by a publication ban.

“This case and what was done to Mr. Smith is an affront to the justice system,” she declared. “Everything that happened here constitutes an egregious abuse of process. This application,” she said, referring to the weeks of evidence that had just 149

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concluded, “has been a five-month lesson in how wrongful convictions happen.”

Craig identified the key player in Al’s demise as Lynch, a cop she accused of having been guided by “tunnel vision” that prevented him from thoroughly investigating other, viable suspects.

“By July of 2007 he had decided Alan Smith was his man,” Craig said. “Two months in, he solved it. Unfortunately for Mr. Smith, there was no looking back at that time. The police used their limitless resources to completely infiltrate his life.”

Craig alleged that Al’s failed polygraph test sealed his fate.

“If you asked (Lynch) what colour the sky was, his answer would be, Mr. Smith failed a polygraph,” she said. “It is as if he lives in some alternate reality where nothing exists except Mr. Smith’s guilt. It shows the extent to which Lynch is obsessed with Mr. Smith. Detective Lynch’s entire focus was on Al Smith. Period.”

Craig was also critical of the other cops involved in the investigation, branding their contention that Fearless was not a Mr. Big operation ridiculous.

“It clearly was,” she insisted. “Why are they all denying this was a Mr. Big operation? The only reasonable answer is that they clearly know they crossed the line in this operation. They’re trying to avoid scrutiny because they know they went too far.”

Craig said that behaviour included the roadside discussion among the cops on the night before the July 8 confession, when they joked about Al having hung himself in the basement to avoid another meeting with Jack. That tape proves the police knew Al was frightened for his life, she said, yet when asked about it during the prelim, Jack replied that he had no indication Al was under such duress.

“He deliberately lied to the court,” Craig told Glass.

The result of all this was a tainted -- and false -- confession, proffered by a man under extreme duress, Craig said.

“He had adamantly maintained his innocence for 35 years,” she said. “The confession is the only evidence against him and it was obtained through trickery in the extreme. He was clearly coerced. To deny the murders would mean serious harm or death.”

The task of responding to Craig’s submissions fell to prosecutor Paul Murray, who took over the Crown’s case after Cindy Johnston, the prosecutor during the prelim, was appointed a judge. Murray urged Glass to reject the defence submission that the investigation represented a grievous breach of Al Smith’s Charter rights.

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He argued the methods employed by the police were proportionate to the crime they were investigating, and that Al had not been deprived of his liberty during his interactions with Jack and Danny -- he could have walked away at any time, but chose not to, Murray said. The police tricked Al Smith, but they broke no laws in doing so, he asserted.

“There’s a difference between tricks and unfair tricks,” Murray argued. “The issue comes down to whether it’s an unfair trick, or a dirty trick. We are not talking about the Marquess of Queensbury Rules. We are talking about the investigation of a homicide. This is the crime society wants (police) to investigate and solve. This is the crime you have to balance with what the police did to investigate.”

Murray acknowledged that courts ought to suppress police tactics that “shock the community”. But the only aspect of Fearless that qualified for that test, he asserted, was the climactic body dump.

“The other criminality is, for lack of a better term, fairly white bread,” he argued. “The bottom line here is that save and except for the body dump, the tricks used by the police were to engage in friendship with Mr. Smith.”

At this point Glass interjected. Did the police trickery, he asked, overwhelm Al Smith to the point where he was effectively under the control of the state? Murray replied that Al was free to extricate himself from his association with the cops whenever he wanted to. The cops launched an extensive and complex investigation, he said, but it did not amount to a Mr. Big ploy.

“But it is not the terminology that matters,” Murray argued. “It is the nature of what occurred during the operation.”

He rejected the assertion that Al Smith’s fear of Jack led to a false confession, either on July 8 or November 9. And he contended that the roadside conversation tape -- so explosive in the view of the defence -- actually portrayed concern among the officers over Al’s mental state, and their desire to alleviate any fears he may have had before they pressed him for a confession.

Murray also came to the defence of Leon Lynch, disputing Craig’s caustic depiction of the cop as an obsessed investigator propelled by tunnel vision.

“This was an officer that engaged in thorough investigation of all potential suspects,” he said, arguing that even after the focus on Al Smith sharpened, Lynch maintained objectivity. “There is no evidence that Lynch told (the Fearless team) that he believed Alan Smith was guilty,” Murray said.

He noted that well after Al’s first confession in July, police continued their 151

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operation.

“(Lynch) got his confession,” he said. “What does he do? He continues to investigate. That is not tunnel vision.”

Murray urged the judge to carefully evaluate the many audio clips from police recordings played during the proceedings. He said they depicted Al Smith as a willing -- even cheerful -- participant in the plays of which he was part.

“We cannot read minds, but inferences can be drawn on words and actions in context,” he said.

The submissions concluded on June 11. Justice Glass had heard 77 days of testimony, 44 of them dedicated to evidence from Lynch. He reserved his ruling, telling everyone to be back in court June 27. A handcuffed Al Smith was escorted out of the courtroom with the knowledge that, if his lawyers were successful, he could soon be a free man.

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Oshawa This Week, June 12, 2014. Having heard the details of the ‘Mr. Big’ operation, Superior Court Justice Bruce Glass retired to consider the case against Alan Smith on June 11, 2014.

JUDGMENT DAY

On a sunny Friday morning in late June, Justice Bruce Glass walked into a packed courtroom, strode to the dais, and began to read aloud his judgment in R. v.

Smith. The ruling, at 20 pages, was brief, but its impact was profound. The decision Glass had to make was whether to grant defence applications to exclude evidence gathered during Project Fearless, or to stay the proceedings against Al Smith alto153

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gether; everyone gathered for the ruling knew that success for either application was fatal to the Crown’s case.

The issues for the judge to consider were numerous. Among them: was Fearless a Mr. Big operation, or simply and elaborate undercover investigation? Were the statements provided by Al Smith voluntary and reliable? The test involved intense scrutiny of the police tactics. Glass had to gauge if Al Smith had been coerced, and if Fearless amounted to an abuse of process.

The judge’s analysis quickly tipped in favour of the defence, although Glass did reject the insistence of Craig and McLean that police were hampered by tunnel vision. The cops did not blindly pursue an innocent man simply to resolve a troubling case, the judge ruled: “The investigators appear to have acted in good faith.”

But that was the end of the good news for the prosecution. Glass found that Fearless was indeed a Mr. Big operation, and that Alan Smith had been caught up in a whirlwind of deception and trickery that swept him toward circumstances in which he gave questionable confessions.

“One might conclude that even if the police did not set a course to be nasty and mean to Mr. Smith, the development of this investigation took the defendant to the level of being under the thumb of the state, having been through the criminal justice mill in 2008 and having been told by lawyers after the withdrawal of that second-degree murder charge to remain silent,” Glass said. “The (Fearless) investigators were not known to be police officers, but they pumped Mr. Smith for information and basically forced him to become part of their alleged criminal organization when he had to assist as an accessory after the fact of murder by disposing of the corpse of the drug dealer ... the next day, Mr. Big pressured him to reveal a deep, dark secret that was serious enough to force him not to disclose information about (the) apparent murder of the drug dealer.

“Coercion was evident,” the judge declared. “Basically, Alan Smith was not allowed to remain silent. Rather, he was asked to repeatedly disclose information about a murder.”

And then, Glass pronounced judgment on the confessions gleaned through Fearless: “His account of the 1974 murder of Beverly Smith had many holes in it,” he said. “One might say that you could drive a Mack truck through the accounts, to the point that you would question whether this was nothing more than a pack of lies.”

Glass outlined the inconsistencies in the confessions, the departures from the real story that had been highlighted over and over by the defence.

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“How could anyone believe any of this account?” the judge wondered. “His story is highly suspect, to the point that it is very unreliable. It is the product of pressure by state agents in an adversarial role, even though they were not known to be police officers.”

The judge declared the case to be “an example of an abuse of process” and a Charter breach. “Although society has an interest in having this criminal allegation heard at trial on the merits of the allegations and the evidence, in my opinion the use of this information, obtained in this manner, would shock the sense of trial fairness in Canadian society.”

A stunned silence prevailed as the conclusion became evident. Glass ruled that the confessions resulting from Fearless would be excluded. The Crown’s case, he noted, was obviously now “at an impasse”. The most appropriate disposition for Al Smith, it was agreed, was that he be released on bail until the Crown made a decision on how best to proceed. Glass granted the Crown a month to weigh its options.

About an hour later, Alan Smith, wearing a new blue shirt and, for the first time in years, no shackles or handcuffs, pushed open the front door of the Oshawa courthouse and strode uncertainly into bright sunshine. Trailing him were Craig and McLean, as well as his brother, Joe. Al paused, blinked, squinted through the lenses of his glasses, then began to walk, a piece of paper clutched in his hands. He was immediately besieged by a scrum of reporters but said little.

“I’m glad to be out and with my family after four and a half years,” he said, then began to walk briskly toward an SUV that pulled up to the curb.

He climbed in, slammed the door shut, and nodded to the mob of journalists.

Then the vehicle pulled away and Alan Smith was gone.

McLean and Craig commented little, cognizant that the Crown still held the hammer in the case. As long as there was a hint of a chance of the prosecution breathing life into the proceeding, it was unwise to crow about victories.

They had to wait only a month. On July 28 prosecutor Fred Stephens, Paul Murray’s co-counsel, announced that the prosecution of Alan Smith would not continue.

“There is no reasonable alternative but to discontinue the prosecution and invite the court to enter an acquittal,” he said.

He noted, however, that the Crown retained its right to appeal Glass’s ruling on the exclusion of evidence.

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The result was not a surprise, but it had a profound impact. Barb Brown sat on a courtroom bench, sobbing quietly as Rebecca, Beverly Smith’s daughter, tried to console her.

When Al smiled and pumped a fist toward his family members, Rebecca, graceful and restrained throughout the years of press conferences, court appearances, and disappointments, reached the limit of her patience.

“You fucking loser,” she called to Al. “She knows you did it.”

Alan Smith was charged not once, but twice, in the 1974 murder of Beverly Smith. He was released at the Oshawa courthouse July 28, 2014. A month earlier, an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled all of the evidence gathered during a highly questionable Mr. Big sting was inadmissible at trial. Richard Lautens / Toronto Star

Once again the press was waiting outside the courthouse. This time Al Smith, looking far more composed than a month earlier, in a brown suit with a shirt and tie, and sporting a fresh haircut, strode confidently by. Again he was sparing in his

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comments.

“I am glad the ordeal is over with,” he announced, before being whisked away.

Craig told reporters the police had “crossed the line” in their all-out pursuit of Al, employing the questionable Mr. Big technique to do so.

“Mr. Big operations are notorious for resulting in false confessions,” she reiterated.

Paul Murray refused to comment. But he did privately counsel a reporter to keep an eye on a pending Supreme Court of Canada decision, R. v Hart, which was expected to be a judgment on the viability and constitutionality of Mr. Big operations. As went Hart, he hinted, so might go Smith. Indeed, the defence had quoted extensively from the Hart arguments as they implored Glass to exclude the evidence against Al.

As it turned out, the wait was not long. Just a few days later, R. v Hart was released. And it was good news for the defence. The Supreme Court ruled in the case of Nelson Hart, a Newfoundland man who confessed to drowning his two daughters after being convinced he was being welcomed into a lucrative criminal organization headed by a powerful crime boss. The court found Hart’s confessions to undercover officers were unreliable and couldn’t be used against him at trial. The court concluded that while Mr. Big operations can be effective, they also risk entrapping innocent people.

While the ruling didn’t result in an outright prohibition on police embarking on Mr. Big operations, it did impose a stringent test to be applied to evidence resulting from them. Mr. Big confessions would henceforth be deemed presumptively inadmissible. The ruling placed an onus on the Crown to convince judges that the evidentiary value of confessions gleaned from the stings outweighs the prejudice created against the accused. And prosecutors would be required to introduce evidence that corroborated the confessions.

It was easy to gauge the impact the ruling would have on the Smith case.

Glass’s analysis of the investigation was almost echoed in Hart. And the new rules -- the presumptive inadmissibility of evidence gathered during the operations, and the requirement of corroborative evidence to bolster the confessions -- seemed to rule out any chance of the confessions gleaned through Fearless ever being put forth in a courtroom. The 30-day appeal window for the Crown passed quietly. The case against Al Smith would not be resurrected.

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“We don’t understand,” Barb Brown told a Toronto Star reporter later. “How can you hear a confession, then they open the door and let him out?”

McLean acknowledged the anguish endured by Bev’s family, a cruel cycle of hope and disappointment that spanned decades of investigations and arrests.

“That’s the trouble with the Mr. Big crap,” she said. “It’s all manufactured, and then the families are as much victims as the (defendants).”

So all these years later, there is no conclusive answer to the question: Who fired that fatal shot in that kitchen? Alan Smith continues to insist he did not murder Beverly Smith. His confessions, he says, were the product of his fear.

The case remains unresolved. Forty years later Bev Smith’s killer, whoever it may be, still has not been brought to justice.

With each year that passes, the possibility of that justice ever being meted out grows more distant.

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About the author

Jeff Mitchell is the crime and courts reporter with Metroland Media Group Ltd.’s Durham Region Division. A reporter for the past 30 years, he is also the author of ‘The Sky Was Crying: The Killing of Kegan Davis’ and ‘Young, Innocent and In Prison: The Robert Baltovich Story’.

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Copyright Notice © Metroland Media Group Ltd. Durham Region division.

All rights reserved 865 Farewell St., Oshawa, ON L1H 6N8 Publisher: Tim Whittaker Editor-in-Chief: Joanne Burghardt Managing Editor: Mike Johnston Author: Jeff Mitchell Cover: Adam Nizio The Coldest Case: Durham’s 40-year murder mystery?

ISBN: 978-1-927696-43-9 Look for future e-reports at durhamregion.com

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