Cops in Cormier trial tell court they were ‘thinking outside the box’ by using photo of duvet cover

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This article was published 02/02/2018 (2799 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An admitted drug dealer who says he sold crystal meth to the man accused of killing 15-year-old Tina Fontaine testified he saw the accused driving a stolen pickup truck in early August 2014, the same month Tina died.

The fifth day of Raymond Cormier’s second-degree murder trial continued Friday in Winnipeg with testimony from 50-year-old Glen McDonald, who said he saw Cormier — a man he knew as “Frenchie” — “almost every day” that summer.

Cormier would pay cash for drugs, McDonald said, or sometimes trade tools for meth.

Cormier, 55, has pleaded not guilty to killing Tina and maintains his innocence.

Crown prosecutors have told the jury they believe Cormier was in possession of a stolen truck he could have used to dump Tina’s body at the Alexander Docks, where it was found in the Red River on Aug. 17, 2014.

McDonald testified Cormier asked him to come to his residence on Carmen Avenue to sell him drugs in early August. When he got there, McDonald said, a blue Ford F-150 pickup truck was parked outside, and Cormier arranged to deliver McDonald tools that were inside the vehicle.

Inside the Carmen Avenue home, McDonald said he saw “Frenchie,” along with another man and woman, and a young girl he said he assumed was the woman’s daughter.

“I never got her name. I was never introduced to her,” McDonald said in response to questions from Crown attorney James Ross. “I just never paid attention to her.”

During cross-examination, Cormier’s defence lawyer, Andrew Synyshyn, suggested McDonald had not seen a young girl during that visit. He referenced a statement McDonald gave to police in January 2016, in which McDonald said: “The girl wasn’t there.”

McDonald admitted on the witness stand Friday that is what he told police.

He testified he heard Cormier having a conversation with someone else about selling the stolen pickup, and said he never saw it again after that night. Police later located the vehicle exactly one month after Tina’s body was discovered.

On Sept. 17, 2014, Winnipeg Police Service Const. Matthew Gowryluk responded to a well-being call, after people reported seeing a man on the 3200 block of Portage Avenue with a bleeding hand, asking for a ride to the hospital. The officer didn’t find the man, but he did find the blue Ford F-150 pickup abandoned with a broken driver’s-side window and shards of glass strewn about.

Gowryluk testified he reported the stolen truck to the homicide unit. It had been reported stolen Aug. 6, 2014 — the same day Tina called 911 to report her friend “Sebastian” had stolen a blue truck earlier that day.

Homicide investigators tracked down the man with the bleeding hand, the jury heard Friday, but he didn’t tell them who gave him the truck.

Its registered owner, Don Schneider, testified he left the keys in it for a few minutes while he was doing a landscaping job in St. Boniface on Aug. 6. When he came back to the truck, it was gone, and he didn’t see who took it.

When Schneider saw his truck again at a Manitoba Public Insurance location later that summer, he said it had been vandalized and “very well washed.”

Investigators found no DNA from Tina nor Cormier in the truck.

Also Friday, WPS homicide investigators working on Tina’s case initially didn’t realize identifying a duvet cover would become a significant piece of evidence in the case, jurors heard. Officers were “thinking outside the box” when they started showing a photo of a piece of bedding to potential witnesses.

Two witnesses, a mother and daughter who had invited Cormier to live in a tent in their backyard prior to Tina’s death, testified Thursday they were sure they’d seen him with the same kind of duvet cover Tina’s body was later found wrapped in.

The 5-3, 35-kilogram pound teen was tied up in a duvet cover and weighed down with 11.5 kg of rocks. Her body was found after a passerby reported seeing something suspicious in the Red River near the Alexander Docks.

About four months after Tina’s death, WPS Sgt. Jeff Stalker and his partner, Sgt. Myles Riddell, talked to Ida Beardy and her daughter, Chantelle, and showed them a photo of the same kind of duvet cover. Stalker said the women were shown the photo separately in December 2014. Their eyes lit up, he said, with “immediate recognition.”

“I had never done this before… it’s thinking outside the box,” Stalker said, when he was questioned about the decision to show a photo of the duvet cover — a decision that came from Sgt. John O’Donovan, who was directing the high-profile homicide investigation.

“To be honest, I don’t know if we expected — and maybe we should have — the identification that we got,” Riddell said.

Homicide investigators had been tasked with conducting a city-wide canvass to trace sales of the duvet cover, which was manufactured for and sold exclusively by Costco Canada. Police got production orders for three Costco stores in Winnipeg and found out more than 800 of the duvet covers had been sold, about 100 of them in the same “Chloe green” pattern as the one that was found with Tina.

It is beige on one side, green on the other and had a brown leaf pattern.

Another witness, who is expected to testify later in the trial, told police he remembered Cormier having a “blanket with a fall scene and brown leaves,” according to the officers’ testimony Friday.

The Crown is expected to complete its case against Cormier by mid-February.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

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