Honour on Trial Read online

  Introduction

  FOR more than three years, as a reporter with the Kingston Whig-Standard, I covered the murders of Zainab, Sahar, and Geeti Shafia, and Rona Amir Mohammad.

  The three-month trial that opened in Kingston on Oct. 19, 2011, attracted, for Kingston, unprecedented national and international media attention. Each day of the trial, TV network satellite trucks were lined up along the front lawn of the Frontenac County Court House, beaming their reports to the world. The media circus had come to town, bringing with it an urgency and intensity unfamiliar to the city.

  The media is a ravenous beast and, in the Internet age, never sleeps. It was not unusual for me to start the day by giving a radio report from home, a telephone update for television somewhere along the road to the courthouse, then spend the morning listening to testimony, typing out a lunchtime hit for the Web, hearing more testimony in the afternoon, and then writing a 1,500-word story for the next day's edition.

  The 12 men and women of the jury bore a heavy burden. The Crown did not have to establish the how and the where, nor even the why, to get a first-degree murder conviction. It was not necessary to prove which of the three accused dealt the final blow. The Crown had to prove only that they played a premeditated role in causing the deaths for all three to be found guilty.

  Then there was the second court, that of popular opinion. Almost from the outset, the 150-seat courtroom was full every day until, by the end of the three months, people were lined up, waiting to get in to witness the morning and afternoon sittings. Every statement and piece of evidence was scrutinized. The foyer outside the courtroom was abuzz as Kingstonians mingled with journalists and discussed what they had heard, or speculated about what the next witness might reveal. While the sensational details of the case drew the public in, there was a real desire for justice to be served.

  Throughout the trial, I was often asked how I dealt emotionally with the evidence. Forty-eight witnesses would appear over the course of the three months. With relentless news deadlines, there was little time for self-analysis. As journalists, we have to respect the legal process, particularly the presumption of innocence. We follow the story line like everyone else. What became most disturbing was watching the mountain of evidence pile up against the three accused as they sat stone-faced in the prisoners' box, showing little if any emotion, steadfastly denying responsibility for the deaths.

  As the Crown played seemingly endless hours of interrogation videos with the accused, the performances were at times mesmerizing, almost dreamlike. Reality and unreality were often interwoven to produce a confusing narrative. In the absence of eyewitnesses, the three accused would tell police investigators and the court conflicting stories that defied logic. But in the end, the strange actions and contradictory statements of the accused proved their undoing.

  We were all witnesses to a deeply sad story. But it was a story filtered through translations, video clips, and witnesses who expressed how little they actually knew about what was happening to the women in the Shafia household. With the murders, it became obvious that a new wave of immigration had brought with it challenges for young women wanting to fit into Canadian culture.

  Since sitting down to write a book about the Kingston Mills murders and poring over the thousands of pages of evidence and transcripts, I've felt as if I were waking from some terrible dream. It was difficult at the time to believe that the three people meekly led into the courtroom each day in handcuffs, heads bowed and faces expressionless, could be capable of something as heinous as the crimes they were accused of. For all of us connected to this tragedy, the story of how these four women died will continue to haunt us.

  Paul Schliesmann

  The drive home…

  MONDAY, June 29, 2009, had been a warm 26ºC in Niagara Falls, dropping a few degrees as evening approached. For a family about to embark on a seven-hour drive home to Montreal, 6:45 pm seemed like a late checkout time. The motel surveillance camera recorded it all, including the time. The young man paying the bill at the counter of the Days Inn in Niagara Falls was Hamed Shafia, conducting the transaction in English; his father, Mohammad Shafia, stood beside him, watching attentively.

  The Afghan family of ten — three adults and seven children — was about to begin a long journey late into a southern Ontario summer evening. According to Mohammad Shafia, it was the decision of the whole family to leave so late in the day. They were travelling in two vehicles. Hamed and Mohammad were in the front seat of a silver Lexus SUV, Hamed at the wheel. In the back seat of the spacious luxury vehicle were two younger sisters and a younger brother.

  The second vehicle was a black Nissan Sentra sedan. The mother, Tooba Mohammad Yahya, was the only licensed driver in the car. Beside her in the front passenger seat was her eldest daughter, Zainab. The 19-year-old was particularly anxious to return to Montreal. Zainab was about to become engaged to marry a distant cousin, a young man named Hussain Hyderi. She had spoken with him by phone that day and they planned on making their relationship official in just two days' time, on July 1. In the back seat of the Nissan sat two more of Tooba's daughters, Sahar, 17, Geeti, 13, and a woman named Rona Amir Mohammad, known to the Shafia children as "Mother Rona."

  The 2005 Nissan had 113,130 km on it when Hamed and Mohammad had purchased it only the day before the family left on their vacation. A spacious Pontiac Montana minivan sat in the driveway of the family home at 8644 rue Bonnivet, in the Montreal suburb of St. Leonard. It was a tight fit for the passengers in the Nissan, especially for Rona, Sahar, and Geeti in the back seat. But no one cared. After the turmoil that had recently engulfed the family, the trip to Niagara Falls had come as a welcome and unexpected diversion, their worries left behind if only for a few days.

  The Shafia family holiday had been an unusual excursion from the outset. A week earlier, on the morning of Tuesday, June 23, 2009, they'd headed north along Highway 117 toward the village of Grand-Remous on the Gatineau River. It wasn't their ultimate destination — far from it. The Shafias planned to drive all the way to Vancouver, covering a distance of about 5,000 km, remaining in Canada for the entire trip. That first day they travelled just 250 km to the town of Mont-Laurier and stayed there overnight. The next day the travel plans were suddenly and radically altered. The new destination would be Niagara Falls, the same vacation spot they had visited the previous year.

  Before leaving Mont-Laurier, the family stopped at a McDonald's restaurant. Mohammad and Hamed went for a 15-minute walk. Father and son were close confidantes. Mohammad spent most of his time abroad on business trips, mainly in Dubai. He was a successful importer and had recently gotten into the lucrative business of exporting used cars to the Middle East. Hamed was getting more and more involved in the car business, conducting online car searches. He also helped manage the shopping plaza they'd bought in Montreal, collecting rent and arranging for work by tradespeople. At the beginning of June, Hamed had joined his father in Dubai, spending two weeks there. When they returned to Montreal, they informed the family of their plans for the cross-country trip.

  Climbing back into the two vehicles at Mont-Laurier, the family now headed southwest, crossing into Ontario at Ottawa, then on to Brockville where they picked up Highway 401, the main autoroute across Ontario. By now it was evening and they were approaching Kingston, where they decided to take a bathroom break. The message travelled between the cars via Sahar's cellphone in the Nissan and Hamed's in the Lexus. The two vehicles turned off at the Highway 15 exit, took a right turn going north for a short distance, then turned left onto Kingston Mills Road.

  They stopped at the Kingston Mills lockstation, the southern terminus of the historic Rideau Canal. The seven kids stretched their legs and wandered around the grounds as boats
slowly made their way through the series of locks. They used the bathrooms located in the Anglin Centre next to the picturesque turning basin. Mohammad remained in the parking lot of the lockstation. The Shafias stayed for about a half hour to 45 minutes.

  Mohammad Shafia and his son Hamed knew they would all be stopping here again in a few days on the return trip. What the four passengers in the Nissan did not know was that the trip and the car itself were part of a cold-blooded and shocking conspiracy.

  Kingston Mills…

  THE morning of June 30 started out like any other for John Bruce, a canalman for 22 years with Parks Canada. His regular morning routine was to park his car at the lower level of the Kingston Mills lockstation, put his lunch in the office, and make his way to the upper lock area. His 11-hour shift began at 8:30 am but Bruce usually got there around 8:00. There were a number of tasks to complete: raising the Canadian flag, taking the padlocks off the sluices that control water flow through the locks, putting up sunshade umbrellas, and marking water levels.

  Routine is important along the Rideau Canal, which has operated continuously since its completion in 1832. Built by the British to enhance security against the sometimes-hostile American neighbours to the south, just across Lake Ontario, the Rideau Canal was never used much as the strategic military route it was meant to be. Hostilities between Canadians and Americans faded away and the railway eventually usurped steamboat travel. By the 1900s, the Rideau Canal had transformed from a commercial waterway into a popular vacation destination.

  The two vessels John Bruce saw docked at the upper lock level on Colonel By Lake the morning of June 30, a houseboat and a sailboat, were typical of the canal's modern-day traffic. If these pleasure boaters wanted to be "locked through," they would have to wait. The normal routine at Kingston Mills was to move boats from the lower level first, lifting them from the waters of the Cataraqui River through the first flight of three locks, past the turning basin, then into the last lock that enters into Colonel By Lake, where Bruce was stationed.

  There were, indeed, boats at the lower level this morning so staff began locking them through just after 8:30. Then Bruce made an unusual discovery — what appeared to be a car underwater and bumped up against the outside of the upper lock gate.

  "I called on the radio once I realized there was a car, to tell them to stop," Bruce would testify in court just over two years later. "It was about 9 am. I saw oil rising out of the water. The car was right along the lock gate."

  Along with the student canalmen working that day were two experienced Rideau staff members, Bob Martin and lockmaster Kevin Nontell. The lockages below were halted as Nontell and Martin made their way to Bruce's vantage point.

  "We figured maybe it was a stolen car that had been dumped," Bruce recalled. "Kevin would have been calling the police. We stopped the locking operations." The car was in about 6.5 ft of lake water, its front end pointed toward the east wall.

  For the lock staff, the fact that a car was impeding canal operations was more of a nuisance than anything. They'd seen a number of objects — including bicycles and even a snowmobile — dumped in the locks or the nearby millpond over the years. But when Nontell realized where the vehicle was situated — and the odd position it was in — it didn't seem to add up.

  "It sounded so far-fetched, I thought it was a joke," the lockmaster would recall in court.

  It wasn't just the position of the car in the water that was puzzling. How did it even get into the water where it was found?

  "Nobody was thinking it was anything sinister. We were thinking it was a graduation prank — kids pushing a car into the water," Nontell testified on October 24, 2011, at the Kingston Mills murder trial. "It just seemed like a really odd place to find a car and probably not easy to get it in there. It would take some effort. It looked like something that would be planned."

  At the scene, the police had not arrived after more than an hour, and Nontell made a second 911 call. Constable Brent White, a 10-year veteran of the Kingston Police force, received the dispatch at around 9:55 am. White was about a five-minute drive from Kingston Mills but, as he also noted at the trial, there was no real urgency to the situation.

  At 10:23 am, White pulled up at the Mills where he was flagged down by John Bruce, who directed him through a green metal swing gate so he could drive his cruiser near the edge of the lock where the mystery vehicle had gone into the water. White and Bruce peered over the side.

  "We get these calls a lot where you have a stolen vehicle in the water," the officer testified. He suspected some prankster had chosen this point of entry for a specific reason, thinking, "This is going to be found when the locks are opened the next day," he said.

  Despite the feeling that he was dealing with an elaborate prank, White had several questions. "Is there a crime scene here?" he kept asking himself. After talking with John Bruce, White became even more suspicious. The gate through which he had just driven his cruiser was locked every night. Bruce was sure of that — it was part of his routine to check the padlock before leaving at 7:30 each evening.

  A quick scan of the area indicated to White that the car would have had to take a winding S-shaped course around the lockstation grounds, past a substantial rock outcrop, to arrive where it had. "That gate was locked and wasn't opened up until the next morning," said White. "I'm thinking, 'How does that vehicle get there?'"

  By 10 am, boat traffic had started to build at both ends of the lockstation. Lockmaster Nontell was relieved to see White show up. Lock staff were ordered to remain at the two-storey office located at the midway level of the operation. No work was getting done and the boats were backing up.

  One of the boaters travelling northward up the canal that day, John Moore, asked canal staff what the delay was about. He was told that a car was nudged up against the top lock gate, so he went up to have a look for himself.

  Moore turned out to be the right person at the right time at Kingston Mills. A lieutenant in the Canadian Navy, he'd been a ship's diver for 18 of his 28 years in the service. Along with his son and a friend, he had been camping at Cedar Island just off Kingston the night before. They were heading north to the village of Manotick. Moore had his diving gear on his boat so he offered to go down and assess the situation.

  No one could give him official clearance to make the dive — not the Parks Canada staff, not Brent White. But Moore decided he would make the dive anyway and hefted his gear up the steep stone steps to the upper level of the lockstation. At the very least, he could get a licence plate number so police could run a check on the vehicle.

  Around the time Moore was preparing his scuba gear, White decided to look around the lockstation grounds for some clues as to how the mystery car had ended up in the water. He found lacerations along the edge of the stone lock wall. "You could see where the concrete was scraped," he said.

  This was puzzling in itself. The car had to be manoeuvred over the edge of the wall between the wooden steps of the lock gate and the metal winch — or "crab" — that staff hand-crank to open the heavy wooden gates to allow boats to pass through. This point of entry was only a few metres wide. It would have taken some tight turning to drive through that space in the dark. The car would have had to be moving at a fairly fast rate not to get hung up. On the top beam of the lock gate, White noticed two plastic letters — an "S" and an "E" — that would prove to be key pieces of evidence at the trial to follow.

  White's tour produced more questions than answers. The upper lock at Kingston Mills is at the northern end of the station, cut off from the rest by Kingston Mills Road. Part of this section of road is a metal swing bridge that passes over the top lock. Canal staff turn this bridge when tall boats are being locked through. Otherwise, it remains in position as part of the roadway. From west to east along Kingston Mills Road sit the lock, the gate through which White had driven his cruiser, the rock outcrop, a section of curb, then the millpond controlling water flow over a series of rapids.

  White
walked around the rock outcrop and found faint black skid marks on the edge of the curb beside the roadway. Behind the outcrop, on the lawn, were two pieces of clear plastic, sitting in the moist grass. He picked them up for a closer look.

  "[It] didn't really make any sense why they'd be there," he testified. "I took a look at them, made note of them, and set them back down."

  A short while later, White led Kingston Police forensic identification officer Julia Moore to those pieces of plastic, thinking they might be significant. John Moore, meantime, had entered the frigid water. He swam toward the front end of the black sedan and noticed there was no licence plate. In Ontario, cars must have plates on the front and the back.

  He made his way along the driver's side of the black car, noting "large, prominent dents and scrapes." Then he got to the driver's side window and found it rolled all the way down. He peered into the car and made a grisly discovery — a woman's body was floating in the murky water, her long, dark hair spreading out in ghostly tendrils. Then he saw a second body further in. The situation was suddenly — and drastically — altered. This was no prank. At the very least it was a scene of tragic misadventure, possibly worse. Moore swam to the back of the car, noted the Quebec licence plate number, and surfaced.

  White had finished his tour of the grounds and walked back to the edge of the lock as Moore broke the surface. "I can remember him coming up and saying there's at least two females in there, maybe more," said White. "He gave me a licence plate number. They ran it through dispatch." White knew he had to act fast to seal off the area with police tape and call for assistance.

  "I was thinking, this is pretty difficult, to get in this spot. [The car] would have to be driven in on purpose," he told the court. "This was either suicide or deliberate."

  John Moore dove to the submerged vehicle a second time, this time noting more details. "I saw very clearly a young woman in the front half of the vehicle. She was not in a seat. She was floating."