Girlfriend testifies about slaying victim’s plan to steal winch, drug use

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This article was published 16/05/2023 (850 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Clifford Joseph disappeared hours after he told his girlfriend he planned to steal a winch from his neighbour’s property — the same neighbour who’s on trial, accused of killing him, jurors heard Tuesday.

“There was a conversation (in the afternoon) about Clifford going to the property next door to steal a winch,” Cristin Wise testified. “He never said when he was going to do it.”

Eric Wildman, 36, is on trial for first-degree murder in the June 7, 2021, killing.

Wildman and Joseph lived on neighbouring properties near Stead, northeast of Winnipeg. Prosecutors allege Wildman caught Joseph trying to steal a winch from a trailer parked on his property and drove over him with his car before taking him to another location, shooting him dead, and burying him under branches.

Wise said she went to bed to read around 1:30 a.m. and Joseph went to the garage to putter and work on machinery. She said she texted Joseph about an hour later to see if he was coming to bed, but she received no reply.

Wise said around 3:30 a.m., she looked on a security camera monitor and saw their Ford Ranger pickup backing out of their driveway.

Wise said when she woke up around 8 a.m., Joseph still wasn’t home.

Around 11 a.m., Wise set out on foot to look for Joseph and found their truck abandoned on a grassy road near Wildman’s property. Its doors were wide open and the keys were still in the ignition.

“I knew something was wrong when I saw the truck the way it was,” she said.

Wise said she drove the truck home and walked back to Wildman’s property to look for Joseph. She found Joseph’s toolkit and belt on a trailer next to an attached winch.

Wise picked up the toolkit and belt and took them home before returning with her roommate to search the property further.

“We went everywhere on the property… we looked in the shed, down the well, in the field, everywhere,” she said.

She said she found Joseph’s runners, ball cap and headlamp in a field near a set of tire tracks. Wise took the items home and called RCMP to report Joseph missing.

“I didn’t know why (the items) were there, so I picked them up and took them home,” Wise said. “Later, police told me to put them back in the same position.”

Court was told both Wise and Joseph had struggled with drugs. Wise said Joseph used meth daily and she had completed more than a month in rehab for alcohol and cocaine addiction weeks before the killing.

Wise provided four statements to police in the days following Joseph’s disappearance and admitted she did not immediately tell investigators about his plan to steal from Wildman or about his drug use.

“I didn’t want to get him in trouble,” Wise said. “I didn’t want to see him get charged.”

During cross examination, defence lawyer Martin Glazer questioned Wise about Joseph’s infidelities and drug use, and suggested his killing may be tied to a drug debt.

Court was told Joseph made money cutting and selling wood, as a fisher and doing odd jobs. Wise said Joseph had a large outstanding electricity bill from his previous residence, but to her knowledge, he had no drug debts.

Wise said she didn’t know the identity of Joseph’s drug dealer and she refused to answer Glazer when he asked who sold drugs to her.

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“Where did you get the cocaine from?” Glazer asked Wise.

“That’s irrelevant,” she said.

“So, you don’t know if your drug dealer was also Clifford Joseph’s drug dealer?” Glazer said.

“I don’t know where he was buying it from,” Wise said.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca

Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter

Dean Pritchard is courts reporter for the Free Press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 2019. Read more about Dean.

Every piece of reporting Dean produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.