by Anne Emery
MacEwen presented his first group of witnesses: the police officers who first arrived at the crime scene, the arresting officers, the detectives who conducted the investigation, and the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Jordyn Snider. A number of items were entered as exhibits, including Podgis’s heavy, brown, gum-soled, blood-tainted shoes and the lab report showing that it was Jordyn Snider’s blood on the shoes.
The facts were as Monty had read them in the file: the body was discovered at around two fifteen in the morning, lying face up near the statue. The Crown’s theory was that the struggle between victim and killer had taken place very close to the statue of St. Bernadette, and that Jordyn had at one point reached out to the statue, presumably to try to hold herself upright. There was a smear of blood on the face of the saint, and this had come from the victim’s gloved hand.
Monty had a few questions for Constable Truman Beals. “Constable, did you conclude that the victim had been killed where she was found, as opposed to having been transported from another location?”
“Yes, it was apparent from the scene — the blood distribution and everything — that the struggle had happened right at that spot.”
“A lot of blood around the area?”
“There was some on her body, yes, but not a wide distribution.”
The cop knew exactly what Monty was up to with that question, trying to find a way to claim Podgis had got blood on his shoes from walking through the grounds some distance from the body. Monty had one more question for Beals and then he would get off the subject. “From your experience investigating murders, Constable, stabbings in particular, would you expect the killer to have a lot of blood on his clothing?”
Beals was not going to give any more than he had to on this one. “It all depends on the circumstances. I’ve seen perpetrators’ clothes with a lot of blood, but I’ve also seen them without. You just never know.”
The medical examiner, Doctor Andrea Mertens, gave the cause of death as cardiac tamponade. She explained that the heart was enclosed in the pericardial sac, and that the killer’s knife penetrated the sac and the aortic root, where the aorta met the heart. As soon as the aortic root was pierced, blood would have rushed in and filled the pericardial sac. This would have compressed the heart and caused it to stop beating. The victim would have been incapacitated almost immediately. There was another wound to the chest, non-fatal, and a laceration to the side of the neck. The Crown got the doctor to confirm that the murder had been committed in the place where the body was found.
Then, to close off another avenue for the defence, Bill MacEwen asked about blood. “Doctor Mertens, you have testified that one of the two wounds sustained by Ms. Snider was to her heart. Would this cause blood to pump out and travel, so to speak, some distance? Onto the clothing of a person standing close to the victim?”
“Not necessarily. There would have been a great deal of internal bleeding. But with a wound like this, caused by a very sharp object, the skin and muscle tissues would have retracted when the knife was withdrawn, and this would have prevented a lot of external bleeding. The wound to the neck would have bled some, but there would have been no spurting of blood.”
The next witnesses were two receptionists at the Halliburton House Inn. One testified that Podgis had left the hotel around seven thirty, and she wished him good luck with his show that night. The other said he saw Podgis come in around one thirty in the morning. There was no conversation between him and Podgis.
After that came Ward Sanford, who had discovered the body when he walked through the churchyard on his way from work as a bartender. He testified to the facts set out in his statement, with one addition.
MacEwen asked him, “How close did you get to the body?”
“I went over to the point where I was about three, three and a half feet away. Then I took off and called the police.”
“So you may have been as close as three feet?”
“That’s right.”
“Did you have any blood on your shoes?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“I was wearing grey and white sneakers. I went back and waited near the scene for the police to arrive. Once I saw the precautions they were taking to avoid contaminating the crime scene, I began to worry that I might have done that myself. Or I might have got blood on myself. I looked everything over, my clothes, my sneakers. No blood. The police checked me out too, I guess to eliminate me as a suspect and to see what my sneaker treads were like. If they found my tread marks and they knew I wasn’t the killer, they’d be looking for other kinds of footprints. They didn’t find any blood either.”
“Thank you, Mr. Sanford.”
Thank you indeed. The witness was a godsend for the Crown. And bad news for Podgis, who claimed to have been much farther away and yet managed to get blood on his shoes.
Sanford was followed by Betty Isenor, a middle-aged woman who lived in the big grey wooden apartment house on the corner of Morris Street and Hollis. The nineteenth-century building was a landmark, with a great wraparound veranda and a rumoured history as a brothel at one point in its life. Now it provided rental accommodation for people of modest means who wanted to live downtown. On the morning of September 24, Betty Isenor had been awakened by noise, got up, and looked out her window, and saw Pike Podgis running from the churchyard. She pretty well stuck to her original statement, except to add that Podgis had been looking “wildly” behind and around him as he ran.
There were a couple of points Monty wanted to make with her on cross.
“Ms. Isenor, what time was it when you say you were awakened by noise?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t look at the clock.”
“Where is your clock, in relation to your bed?”
“It’s on my bedside table but I didn’t turn the light on, so I didn’t see what time it said.”
“Is it a digital clock or the older kind?”
“Older, regular kind.”
So no LED light to show up in the dark.
“What was it that woke you up? What did you hear?”
“Footsteps and someone yelling.”
Someone yelling? This was the first Monty had heard of any yelling. And by the look on Bill MacEwen’s face, it was news to the Crown as well. If Podgis was running alone, who would he have been yelling at? Monty was about to break the old courtroom rule: never ask a question if you don’t already know the answer. But he could not pass up the chance that this might help him.
“Tell us about that, Ms. Isenor. What did the voice sound like? What was it saying?”
“I couldn’t make out any words. This was when I was still mostly asleep. I just heard loud voices and footsteps and they woke me up.”
The witness had Monty’s full attention, and that of Bill MacEwen as well.
“You heard more than one voice then, did you?”
She looked to the prosecutor, whose face offered nothing in the way of assistance.
“Ms. Isenor?” Monty prompted her.
“I’m not sure. I thought maybe it was more than one voice. But it couldn’t have been, because when I looked out there was only one person. Him.” She pointed to Podgis.
“Where exactly was Mr. Podgis when you first saw him out your window?”
“Coming out of Byrne Street onto Morris.”
“What floor do you live on, Ms. Isenor?”
“Third.”
“Do you have a view of St. Bernadette’s church from that height?”
“Yes, I do.”
“So the instant that you first saw Mr. Podgis, where was he in relation to the church?”
“He was a little way past the church, almost to the corner with Morris.”
“Quite a distance from your window in terms of being able to hear footsteps. Would you agree?”
“I heard them, and I saw him.”
“But when you first heard the sound of feet, you were still in bed. That’s what woke you up. So at that point, Mr. Podgis would have been even farther away.”
Bill MacEwen got to his feet. “Mr. Collins seems to be giving evidence, perhaps even opinion evidence, Your Honour.”
“Do you have a question for the witness, Mr. Collins?”
“Yes, I do, Your Honour. Ms. Isenor, on reflection now, do you think it must have been footsteps sounding before you saw Mr. Podgis approaching the corner? Do you think that whoever was yelling might also be responsible for the footsteps?”
“I don’t know. He’s the only person I saw.”
“Because the other person or persons had already gone by the time you were fully awake and at the window?”
Again, she looked to the prosecutor for guidance, but he could not help her.
“Let me ask you this. You said voices in the plural. Did you hear two or more different voices?”
“Well, I just thought I’d heard voices or a voice. I was very sleepy at the time. Drifting in and out of sleep.”
“Yes, I understand. When you looked out and saw Mr. Podgis, could you tell if his mouth was moving, as if he was speaking?”
“I don’t remember seeing that.”
“Were the voices you heard men’s voices?”
The witness suddenly looked as if she was in way over her head.
“Ms. Isenor?”
It took her a while. Monty waited. “Maybe a man and a woman.”
Well. This changed the water on the beans, as Monty’s mother-in-law was fond of saying. It was not going to get any better than that. The witness could not have heard Podgis and the murder victim’s voices, if in fact they had been together. The distance between the apartment building and the back of the churchyard was too great. Of course what she heard may just have been a guy and a girl passing by late at night or early in the morning. This was an area of the city where a great many university students lived. But Monty would make as much of it at trial as he could: other people in the area of the crime scene at the same time as Podgis. He thanked the witness and sat down.
Bill MacEwen got up to examine her on redirect. “Ms. Isenor, you did not see anyone else in the area of Byrne and Morris streets when you got up, correct?”
“That’s right.”
“Just Mr. Podgis, running from the church area and looking wildly about him. Is that right?”
“Yes, he’s the only person I saw. And something about him scared me!”
“Thank you.”
Monty leaned over to his client. “Are you sure you don’t want a publication ban?”
“No! I’ve been stuck with them as a journalist. I’m not going to hide behind the curtains now that I’m the one being persecuted.”
The Crown’s next witness was a familiar one. Bill MacEwen called him to the stand and the court clerk swore him in.
“Would you state your full name for the court, please.”
“Brennan Xavier Burke.”
“And you are a priest?”
“That’s right.”
“Where do you work, Father?”
“St. Bernadette’s, the church and choir school.”
“How long have you been there?”
“Since 1989.”
“And before that, where did you live?”
“New York. Before that, Dublin. Rome for a while. A couple of other places.”
“How long have you been a priest?”
“Over twenty-five years.”
“All right. Thank you, Father. Now, can you tell us where you were on the night of September twenty-third?”
“For the early part of the evening, I was at the Atlantic Television studio on Robie Street.”
“And what were you doing there?”
“I was a guest on the Pike Podgis Show.”
“How did you come to be on the show?”
“As a priest I have a duty of obedience to my bishop.”
There was laughter in the courtroom at that.
“And on this occasion?”
“The bishop gave me my orders: go on the show.”
Laughter again.
“Are you telling us you did not want to appear on the program?”
“That’s correct.”
“Why not?”
Monty rose to object. “Your Honour, with respect, I do not see how Father Burke’s feelings about the program are relevant to the question before us today.”
“Mr. MacEwen?”
“Your Honour, Father Burke’s reluctance to go on the show, and the events that unfolded during the show, are relevant to the conversation we are putting in evidence, a conversation that occurred sometime after the conclusion of the broadcast.”
“I’ll allow it. Go ahead, Mr. MacEwen.”
“Father Burke, I was asking you about your enthusiasm, or lack of enthusiasm, about appearing on Mr. Podgis’s TV show. Could you tell us a bit about that?”
“Last thing in the world I wanted to do. I don’t like talk shows, which, from my experience of hearing them on the radio — I’d never seen the TV version — involve a lot of shouting and rudeness and lack of depth with respect to whatever is the topic of the day. I saw no value in participating.”
“But Archbishop Cronin thought differently? He thought it was a worthwhile endeavour?”
“He told me it would be mud wrestling.” Bursts of laughter greeted his remark. “But if religion and the faith were being debated, we should put someone forward to explain our position. So of course I deferred to a higher power and turned up for the event.”
“Who else was on the show?”
“Professor Rob Thornhill of Dalhousie University. He teaches sociology. And Pod — Mr. Podgis was the host.”
“You were to debate Professor Thornhill, was that the idea?”
“Yes, Rob would speak from the point of view of a non-believer, and I would argue in favour of belief.”
“Belief in God.”
“Yes.”
“Tell us how it went.”
“Dennis Cronin was right. It had all the dignity of a mud-wrestling match. That was no fault of Rob Thornhill, who is one of the most pleasant and mannerly people I know. It was Podgis and his vulgar remarks, and his pandering to the audience and really, it seemed, the lowest common denominator in — ”
“Your Honour!” Monty exclaimed. “This characterizing of Mr. Podgis in such a way is uncalled for and not at all helpful in this proceeding. I would ask the court to admonish the witness to stick to the facts, and to comport himself with the dignity he seems to demand of others.”
Monty was getting the death stare from Burke’s coal-black eyes. He affected not to notice.
“Mr. MacEwen?” the judge asked. “Is this a bit of editorializing by the witness? Are we straying a bit from the facts here?”
“Your Honour, the atmosphere on the set of the show is relevant to what occurred later. But Father Burke, perhaps you could just let us know what happened, and not spend as much time on your own characterization of Mr. Podgis’s style of performance.”
No reply from Burke.
“So. Father Burke. What happened on the show?”
“Mr. Podgis asked a couple of questions about religion and science, and I gave my answers, imparting some facts and history that seemed to have been hitherto unknown to Podgis and his audience. But I was constantly interrupted by crass and puerile remarks directed at me or at the audience. When asked what reasonable arguments one can make for belief, I began to lay the groundwork for my answer but again was interrupted by crude comments and gestures.”
“And what happened then?”
“I decided I’d had quite enough, and I got up and left.”
“You walked off the set?”
“Right.”
“Did you notice any reaction from Mr. Podgis as a result of that?”
“No. I didn’t give him another look.”
Bill MacEwen took a few seconds to review his notes, then resumed his examination.
“What did you do after that, Father Burke?”
“I drove home to the parish house.”
“And?”
“Stayed there for a few minutes, took off my collar, and put on casual clothes, then went out again.”
“Where did you go?”
“Midtown.”
“The Midtown Tavern on Grafton Street.”
“Right.”
“And what went on there?”
“I enjoyed a beer and talked to a few people there, and then I left.”
“What happened when you left?”
“I started to walk down Grafton Street and I was accosted by Mr. Podgis.”
“What time was this?”
“Around half-eleven.”
“Eleven thirty?”
“Yes.”
“Now, what do you mean, accosted?”
“He lurched towards me on the sidewalk and started roaring into my face.”
“What was he saying?”
“He was blathering on about the show, and who was I to walk off the Pike Podgis Show when he got dozens of appeals every week from people who were dying to appear on the program. I tried to step around him and get on my way, but he tried to block me.”
“How did you react to his attempt to block you?”
“I suggested that he let me pass.”
That was not the version of events Monty had heard, but he would get to that in time.
“Was anything else said at that point?”
“Words were exchanged.”
“Tell us about that.”
“I may have said something to the effect that if he didn’t get out of my way, I would make him consubstantial with the pavement beneath our feet.”
“Consubstantial meaning . . .”
“One in substance with the pavement, as in I’d pound him into it and then walk over him to get away.”
Muted laughter and a stern look from the Crown.
