Witnesses in Kociuk trial contradict murder timeline

Witnesses contradict murder timeline
Saw victim after officials say she was slain: witness

- A neighbour saw Beverley Dyke sitting outside her house a day after Crown prosecutors say she was killed nearly 26 years ago, a jury was told Monday.

- Greg Kalen testified he was fixing his bicycle outside his Fawcett Avenue apartment building when he saw Dyke, 48, sitting on the curb in front of her house. He is positive that she was alive and well on the afternoon of May 16, 1984.

- Kalen, who had to refer to his 26-year-old police statement to refresh his memory, said he was struck by Dyke’s “odd behaviour.”

- “She was just sitting there for an hour ... going back and forth to the front doorstep of her house,” Kalen said.

- Crown pressed Kalen to concede he might have been mistaken about the date he saw Dyke.

- “If I said it, I believe it to be true,” Kalen said.
- The Crown has previously stated their theory that Dyke, 48, was attacked on May 15, then discovered in a wooded area near the Winnipeg airport May 17.
- "I have absolutely no reason to lie," Kalen said when pressed by prosecutor Brian Wilford about the accuracy of his evidence. Kalen disputed suggestions he might be mistaken about the date, saying he vividly recalls seeing Dyke that day.
- "She was going back and forth from her front door to the curb. Because of her odd behaviour I looked out my apartment window a few times," he said.

- Another defence witness, entomologist Gail Anderson, also cast doubt on the Crown’s theory of when Dyke was killed. Anderson said the presence of certain insects in Dyke’s body suggested she was killed sometime between the afternoon of May 16 and the early morning of May 17.

- The defence alleges Dyke’s real killer was a man named Leonard White, a woman-hating convict who confessed to the murder in 1988. White died in 1999.

- Jurors were told Monday that White was hospitalized on May 17, 1984 after slashing his wrists. According to an agreed statement of facts, White provided hospital staff with no “intelligible” reason for the suicide attempt.

- Robert Kociuk, 68, is on trial accused of raping and stabbing Beverley Dyke to death on May 15, 1984 and leaving her half-naked body in a wooded area near the Richardson International Airport after his DNA was matched to the semen found on Dyke's body. He was arrested in 2005 and has now pleaded not guilty to first degree murder.
- Kociuk denied in a videotaped police interview having any contact with Dyke, but his lawyers have now conceded a DNA match. No further explanation or evidence has been given to jurors about that issue and Kociuk was not called to testify in his own defence.
- Kociuk was initially interviewed as a potential suspect because police saw him in the area where the killing occurred the afternoon of May 16 -- the day Kalen insists he saw Dyke alive. Kociuk had been under police surveillance for armed robbery and claimed he was meeting someone to buy a gun for his next heist. Police found a knife in that area that they believe was linked to the stabbing, but investigators soon lost the weapon, which has never been recovered.

- The Crown and defence have now closed their cases. Closing arguments are set to be heard Wednesday.
- Jurors should start their deliberations on Thursday after the Judge gives her charge to the jury. 

Trial date set for Candace Derksen cold case Winnipeg murder

Trial set for accused in Derksen cold case

- "Mark Edward Grant has pleaded not guilty to one of the city's most notorious cold cases and is now slated to begin his jury trial on Jan. 17, 2011. The first-degree murder case is expected to last six weeks."

- Grant, 44, was ordered to stand trial last fall following a three-week preliminary hearing.

- "Grant was arrested in 2007 after police reopened the investigation into Derksen's unsolved slaying. The 13-year-old girl was grabbed off the street on Nov. 30, 1984, bound with rope and left to freeze to death inside a shed. Her body was found on Jan. 17, 1985 following an exhaustive search that included hundreds of Winnipeg citizens who volunteered their efforts."

- Grant had escaped from prison and was wanted on a Canada-wide warrant at the time of the killing. 

- Grant was initially questioned by police but said he had no knowledge of Derksen other than what he had learned from the media.

- Three pubic hairs were found on Candace's body, although police said that she wasn't sexually assaulted. Four scalp hairs that appeared to have been lightly bleached near the roots were found on Derksen's clothing. Police weren't able to test the seven hair strands for DNA until technology improved in July 1993.

- "Unfortunately at that time, police were on a different investigative path and looking at a dangerous sex offender as a potential suspect in what proved to be a false lead."

- Police re-tested the 7 hair samples for DNA testing in 2001 but they received no profiles of any individuals.

- "In 2006, police learned a private Thunder Bay lab had the ability to run more extensive hair-shaft DNA tests than the Mounties offered. The testing involved identifying the "maternal lineage" of the subject donor, which is DNA passed from mother to child."

- A year later, police tracked down Grant and interviewed him about the case. He was just released from prison in 2004 and was still deemed a high risk of sexual re-offending. 

- He refused to provide a voluntary DNA sample but police obtained his DNA anyway.

- They compared it to the DNA on the seven hair samples and the samples of hair and rope offered a match to Grant's DNA. 

Man falsely confessed to the murder of Beverley Dyke, jurors told

Jailhouse lover reason for confession: ex-cop 

Confession contrived 

An inmate gave a false confession to the 1984 rape and killing of Beverley Ann Dyke because he wanted to stay in prison with his gay lover, a former Winnipeg police homicide detective, David Shipman said Friday.

"He did not do this murder. Leonard White was not our guy," said Shipman, insisting that Kociuk was the one who killed Beverley Dyke. 

He was arrested in 2005 after DNA testing matched semen found on Dyke to a sample taken from him following a robbery conviction in Ontario, in which he was required to provide a DNA sample. 

Kociuk now admits he had sex with Dyke, but denies killing her. He originally denied having sex with Beverley or even knowing her.  

The 48-year-old woman was raped and stabbed 13 times. Her body which was nude from the waist down, was found in a wooded area near the city's airport by a jogger. 

Leonard White, who died in 1999, confessed in a 1988 interview in a Saskatchewan prison, that he murdered Beverley Dyke. 

He had a history of habitual lying.

Shipman said that White would always tell a fictious story right before his parole eligibility because he wanted to stay in prison; he had a boyfriend their. 

White told detectives about elements of Dyke's case, that she had been sexually assaulted, suffered several fatal stab wounds to the chest and where her body was found.

"But Shipman said all of that information had been released by police to the general public as police searched for answers to the unsolved mystery."

"Obviously I hate women. I hate myself for hating women... for being gay," White explained as his motive for randomly selecting and killing Dyke, who he claimed he met at the Maryland Hotel.

 

White claimed another man named "Ricky Morris" raped Dyke, but Shipman could find no evidence such a person even existed, let alone raped and killed a woman. 

If Morris had hung around White, he would likely have a criminal record, but nothing showed up. 

"He (Morris) raped her, I stabbed her. Right in the chest, she tried to stop me, I kept stabbing away, stabbing away. When you're mad, you just want to keep on going."

 

No legitimate evidence to charge White, who wasn't able to reveal any key facts only the killer would have known. He didn't know enough about the murder that could prove he was the real killer. 

Shipman said everything White knew about the murder he could have learned from media reports.

Kociuk’s lawyers argued White knew more than he could have learned from news reports and that his history of violence against women made him a strong suspect in the killing.

At the time of the interview, White was serving an 8 year sentence for aggravated assault in which he forced a knife down a woman's throat and almost killed her.

Kociuk was initially interviewed as a potential suspect because he was seen by police in the area where the killing occurred on the day before Dyke's body was found by a jogger. Kociuk had been under police surveillance for armed robbery and claimed he was meeting someone to buy a gun for his next heist on the day of the murder.

They had the semen sample from Dyke's body, DNA testing didn't exist at the time which meant that Kociuk could not be linked to the murder of Beverley Dyke, which would remain a cold case for more than 20 years.

So far, I believe that the confession made by Leonard White, was a false one and that he is not the real killer. In court on Friday, defence lawyer Roberta Campbell read out newspaper reports about the murder from the 1980's and all the information that White told police, was mentioned in those media reports.

Robert Kociuk on trial for 1984 Winnipeg murder

Cold case: DNA test puts man on trial for '84 slaying 

Sex evidence cited; accused says he never met murder victim 

- Robert Kociuk, aged 68, plead not guilty to first degree murder on Thursday, February 18th.

- The Crown alleges that he sexually assaulted and murdered Beverley Dyke in 1984, when she was age 48. 

- She had been stabbed 13 times in the stomach  and her body was found near the Winnipeg Airport, nude from the waist down.

- In Ontario in 2004, Kociuk was convicted on two counts of robbing a business and was required to submit his DNA. 

- Winnipeg police obtained the DNA sample and compared it with the semen found on Beverley's body and what do guess? It was a PERFECT match.

- Kociuk denied having sex with her and even knowing her. 

- In 1988, an inmate named Leonard White confessed to killing Beverley while he was serving an 8 year sentence in Saskatchewan for aggravated assault.

- He claimed that he stabbed her to death, while another man he said was named, Ricky Morris, raped her. 

- Ricky Morris did not exist according to police records, therefore, White must be lying. 

- White was an habitual liar and his confession was not taken seriously by police. 

- Kociuk admitted to being near the scene of the killing but claims he was meeting a man that he was buying a gun from to commit a robbery in St.Boniface, which happened the next day, a day after the killing of Beverley.

- Jurors will hear from a witness who recalls seeing a car parked near the murder scene two days before the body was found, saying he saw two people in the vehicle and the vehicle is a match to the car that Kociuk had access to at the time of the murder. 

This should be a very interesting trial indeed and I will definitely be following it.