Dr Galgay prescribed a turbuhaler for asthma and some Atasol. These things are not addictive. On that last visit he prescribed nothing. He did a letter for Housing. Donna was aware that he was not going to prescribe her medication. She was using excessive drugs—Lomotil, for instance, is an opiate derivative used to manage bowel disorders, a disorder Donna did not have. Dr Galgay never saw her under the influence of drugs and some of these medications were obtained for the purpose of selling. Herself and friends were involved in obtaining these prescriptions from various doctors and outpatient departments.
SHELDON TROKE
Donna was after buying things. She bought that bedroom suite off Rod Tessier’s father, and she also bought a microwave oven from a girl who owed her forty dollars. Donna gave Sheldon no indication that she was going up to Toronto and staying. She asked him to sand the dressers so she could paint them black. Donna asked about certain areas of town. There was apartments across from Kmart on Torbay and right across the street there’s a building and she was thinking about moving over there, but it’s a highway and cars are just zimming back and forth and when Cory gets older, he can go across a street and get into a car. That’s why she wanted to move. They talked about Buckmaster Circle and Sheldon said look you sees what goes on at Buckmaster Circle, and she said well, what about down on the bottom?
Donna used to go to First City. She called it uptown, country and western music. Sheldon wasnt into country music. One time him and Donna were broke up about a month and Donna come over and said that’s some friend you got—your friend’s trying to slap the make on me. Sheldon said who and she told him and he said do you want to go with me or do you want to go with him? And they got back together that night.
Sheldon got arrested one time for drinking. He was really drunk on Water Street and had a quarter ounce of hash on him. He got picked up and went back to jail for that. Donna told him, If you dont start coming home at a reasonable hour, I’m going to lock you out. He wasnt taking her serious. He come home one night about four in the morning really drunk and he knocked on the door and there was no answer and he knocked again. He booted the door in and went over the steps. He went out in the back hall and booted that door in. Donna wasnt in bed and he figured she was in bed with Cory but she wasnt there, so he assumed they were all in Sharon’s room.
The next morning Donna woke him up and asked him why did he boot the doors in. It dawned on him that they’d all been over to her mother’s so he felt foolish. I’m a carpenter, he said. I can fix the doors. He hauled his pants on and walked out in the living room and her mother was there. Agnes was shaking her head, laughing at him. He asked Donna, Want to put me on some breakfast? and she looked at him and said when you come home last night you had wings and chips, why dont you put that in the microwave?
He was back in jail and released in September. He come out of the Cotton Club drunk. The police know if he’s walking down the road or driving and they sees him, they know who he is and that he’s got drinking restrictions.
One night him and Joey Yetman went over to Buckmaster Circle and got really drunk. The next day Donna is there and Sheldon’s sister Iris and Sheldon was asking Joey how he got home last night and Joey said he didnt know. There was a girl brought Joey home and later on Sheldon and Donna started arguing about that and Donna thought they were with girls, but it was Iris that give Joey the run home because Iris lives down from Joey.
They went on a tear one weekend up to Joey’s house and Donna found out and they were arguing about that. Joey Yetman has a girlfriend and there was a couple of times that Donna come up to the Circle and there’s a Cuban girl talking to Joey and Donna asked Sheldon if Joey was going out with her and Sheldon said he didnt know.
When he first started going out with Donna, Rod Tessier used to go to Donna’s house. Rod and Donna had a fight. When Sheldon was in jail, Donna asked him to ask Rod not to come around the house any more. So Sheldon asked him and a couple of months later, Donna said that Tess was going to beat her up. Rod has a sister that people call Tess but Sheldon thought Donna was talking about Rod because they call him Tess too. Rod come up in the Circle one day and he was sot in his car and Sheldon was down in the car having a few words and he ended up giving Rod a punch in the face, but it was the wrong Tess.
BERTHA TROKE
Bertha knew Donna Whalen very well. She first met her at Cathy Furneaux’s. Cathy used to go with Bertha’s son Raymond. Bertha used to go back and forth to Cathy’s and this day Donna was there. Donna was a very friendly person and she asked Bertha did she know her mother Agnes and they got to talking.
While Sheldon was in Springhill Institution, Bertha mentioned Donna’s name and he asked her who she was and Bertha told him and he said he thought he knew her brother Clifford. Then Donna was talking to Sheldon on the phone at Cathy Furneaux’s. This was coming close to when Sheldon was getting out and he asked Donna to go to a movie with him.
It was a couple of days after Sheldon got out that Bertha seen Donna at Cathy’s. Donna had been really nervous about the first time meeting Sheldon. Shy like. They were going to a movie.
Donna and Sheldon came to the house quite a bit. The first time it would have been not too long after they had gone to the movie. It was in the morning and the two of them were alone. The children came to the house too. Donna used to call Sheldon her old moose. That was a name she had on him.
Donna talked about Vicki Pinhorn. Sheldon used to go steady with Vicki and she asked Bertha did she think Sheldon still cared about Vicki.
He moved in and then they broke up. Bertha can’t even call it breaking up because tonight Donna would say we’re broke up and tomorrow theyre back together and that was the way it was, broke up tonight and back tomorrow.
Sheldon was sent back a few times towards the penitentiary and Donna visited him. She was afraid she was going to miss his phone call. One day she said that Sheldon didnt love her. Other guys looked at her and Sheldon didnt mind. Bertha said, Sheldon isnt the jealous type.
Most definitely Donna was jealous. Bertha’s been there when she’ve asked people of certain places was Sheldon there, was there any girls there, and even at Bertha’s house if Sheldon dropped in Donna asked were there girls there. Donna made no bones about it.
There was a big confusion over a pair of men’s underwear, they were black and red and they ended up with Sheldon’s clothes and Donna was really mad over them. Bertha said to her why youre mad over a pair of men’s underwear, if it was women’s I could understand. Donna said theyre not Sheldon’s. And Bertha thought about it, they were Paul’s. That’s Sheldon’s brother. Paul had two pairs, blue and red, and so Donna asked how come they would be with Sheldon’s clothes and Bertha said the way they are theyre back and forth and they can wear each other’s clothes. But she was really mad about it. He could have taken a shower out to Cathy’s and maybe he put them on out there. Donna checked it out after. She asked Cathy.
Donna visited Bertha’s house a lot, then that pattern changed the last three months before Donna died. She kept out of contact with them all. Bertha give up phoning her and leaving messages. The last time she saw Donna was late in April and she was at the house with Sheldon one afternoon. Sheldon came in to get a loan of a video and Donna kept saying I got to make a run. She said it over and over again and it come to the point that Bertha wanted to call her out in the kitchen and ask her where have you got to go that’s so important. She was agitated. Sheldon said, Donna if you wants to go I’ll get a way home, and she said no I’ll wait for you but she kept walking around and saying it, I got to make a run. She looked worried.
Sheldon telephoned one day wanting to know Dr Galgay’s number. Donna was with Sheldon’s sister, Iris. Bertha told him Iris wouldnt have been at Dr Galgay’s. She mentioned what doctor they could have been to, because Donna had been gone all day and Sheldon was waiting for her to come home to go out. He was babysitting. Iris had to get the kind of pills that Donna wanted and Donna had to get the kind
of pills that Iris wanted and they couldnt be seen together in to the hospital. Bertha told them they were crazy. Donna told Iris to say she had a toothache and it was really paining and even if it come to the point that she had to cry, and Iris told Donna to say she had the diarrhea really bad and she couldnt stop going to the bathroom. They could be in there for half the night getting pills.
Bertha only met Kim Parrott once. She used to hear her name all the time but Bertha didnt know any of Donna’s friends. Donna told Bertha that Kim Parrott could get diet pills for her until she got too noticeable when she was having Nicholas.
SHELDON TROKE
Sheldon did not know Donna right away. The first one he met in the Whalen family was Clifford. He’d see Donna going back and forth to the store. There was a white store and there was times they used to go down around Pippy Park. That’s where Donna was from. Sheldon hung around with a girl Sears and Donna hung around with this girl Sears her younger sister.
The next time he spoke with Donna he was at Westmorland. It’s a correctional centre. For a couple of years Sheldon never had much contact with his family because he was away and in there he figured he didnt need that. He was getting released on mandatory supervision at the end of May. He started phoning his family and when he phoned he learned that his brother Raymond was going out with Cathy Furneaux. So he was phoning Cathy’s house and talking to Raymond, and Sheldon asked who was there and Donna Whalen was there and Sheldon said, I think I knows her. He spoke with Donna on the phone. He had three or four conversations with her and got her number off her and he phoned her at her house one night.
He was released from Westmorland and he arrived in Newfoundland the same day. He went to Cathy Furneaux’s house and that’s where he met Donna. It was uncomfortable because they didnt know each other so they just hung around talking and then they left and went to the Avalon Mall and watched a movie. When the movie was over, they went downtown.
They were walking down George Street, there was a girl he used to see, Vicki Pinhorn. He was talking to her for a minute, just saying hello. They went on through a laneway into the La Scala, this was around twelve because the club never opened until one minute after midnight. Sheldon was having a beer. Eugene Driscoll come in and they were talking and then all the regulars. This is Sheldon’s first time in this club in a couple of years. Another friend come in and Sheldon got a gram of coke off him. They left, him and Donna, and went into Donna’s house. Sheldon spent the night at Donna’s. Her children werent there, they were at her mother’s.
Sheldon took this gram of coke and cut it up into six lines. He snorted two and gave Donna the bill that’s rolled up and she snorted one. Now for the whole two years that he knew Donna, he never seen her have any dealings with cocaine. If he seen Donna drunk twice that would be stretching it.
After that first date they got along good. Donna knew a lot of people that he knew. Joey Yetman was just after getting out of jail, six to eight months before Sheldon did, and he was going back and forth to Donna’s house with this blond guy Jacob Parrott.
When Sheldon first met Donna, he cannot say Donna done a lot of prescription pills. When youre in jail, a lot of inmates do valiums. You dont hear tell of people doing Atasols or Tylenols. Sheldon got some off Donna. The first time he took them he got stomach sick. He was drinking beer and got the heaves. So Donna gave him Gravol to stop the upset.
He can’t say Donna took any more pills than the rest of them. She took them on a daily basis. Only twice was Donna really buzzed. One time Sheldon come back and there was a glass of Pepsi on the arm of the chesterfield and there was ice cubes still in it. Donna was sot on the chesterfield. She had her feet up on the coffee table and there was a cigarette in her hand and the cigarette was burned down.
KIM PARROTT
Sheldon was always well behaved except for one time. The night they came back from the christening. Donna was Nicholas’s godmother, the christening was at Mary Queen of Peace. They went then into Rod’s mother’s house and Rod wasnt there so Kim walked over to his father’s because they live next door to each other, it’s not in the same house. There was a big car parked in front. Sheldon was in it. Kim went back over to Mrs Tessier’s and Donna was coming out through the door but Sheldon was stood up in front of her. Sheldon asked Donna to wait in the bathroom. So she was in the bathroom and got tired of waiting and when she was coming out one of Rod’s brothers was there and they called out to her. She went back to see what they wanted and before she could leave the house everybody came over. Donna was holding on to her chin and she was crying and Kim asked her what was wrong. Sheldon had hit her with the palm of his hand and drove her out the hall a little bit.
Rod came in to get the keys for Sheldon and Donna said to Rod he’s going to hit you, dont go out. The two of them were out in the garden and Sheldon hit Rod. Sheldon came back and told Donna to come on so they left and they went home. Rod’s ear swelled up. Sheldon came back the next day and apologized to Rod, Kim was even afraid to let him in. Rod’s brother yelled out and said he was with him.
The next day Donna told her there was construction on Elizabeth Avenue around Churchill Park and Sheldon was driving crazy. Donna had her feet on the dash and her head between her knees and he was driving through signs and on the wrong side of the road and cars were blowing the horn. He was saying something to Donna about being in the house with five men.
Donna took threats serious. She wouldnt go home. She went up to the hospital where her mother was and her mother phoned and told Sheldon that Donna wasnt coming home so she stayed at Kim’s house.
Donna was a bit conceited, yes. If she walked by some men she’d mention to you oh look theyre looking at me. She was a bit paranoid too. She thought Kim was telling people things and it got back to Sheldon. About her and Jacob Parrott and how Donna was robbing food with Rod Tessier for Sheldon’s lunches. Sheldon knew that she got caught shoplifting but he never found out about it for two weeks before she died. Sheldon didnt want her getting in trouble, he had a record and she didnt need one.
Donna bought a police scanner from Eugene Driscoll. Donna took the scanner down to Sheldon to see if it was a good buy. Sheldon was home looking after the children. There was a bill of sale with it, it wasnt a stolen police band, it was a bought one. It was late. Donna had run out of gas and got home around two-thirty.
Another time Sheldon had stabbed the coffee table and told her she’s lucky she’s walking, the next time it’ll be a body bag. He tipped the table over and stabbed the bottom of it. With his hands. Like put them underneath and flipped it. The knife was in Donna’s kitchen. After Donna died Kim and Rod moved her furniture out. Kim put the coffee table down in the basement. There’s a mark in the bottom of it. She put it upstairs and used it, then the police come and took it.
Donna had this tape recorder for two weeks. If she wanted to set up a situation to put on tape, she had time. You could tell by the sound of her voice that she was nervous but she said that she was okay. She said it was a comfortable situation for her. There’s situations been worse, she told Kim. A lot of yelling and screaming. The tape was calm as compared to what had happened in the past.
Thursday night before she died Donna was on the phone with her mother and she seen a shadow down by her front door. And when she went to look to try and figure out whose shadow it was, it ran from the door. A few minutes later Sheldon came there and he went out looking.
Donna went to clubs. She went with Tess, that’s Rod’s sister, Sue Tessier. Kim doesnt know if anybody was there babysitting or if Tom Vivian was watching them from downstairs.
Donna showed Kim a bruise on top of her knee. She said she took and hit Vicki Pinhorn’s face off her knee. Donna said she didnt want to fight Vicki, but she wanted to keep up the reputation.
Donna used to call and yell at Sheldon. Kim never knew if he was saying anything back to her. That’s how Kim got the impression that Donna instigated arguments with him. Donna was shocking for getting Sheldon
on the go. She made out she was talking to a guy on the phone, then she laughed and told him she was talking to Kim. She’d phone and say are we going out tonight, and Kim wouldnt be going out with her or anything, Donna just wanted to get Sheldon on the go.
She stayed with Kim one night that weekend her mom was in the hospital. Kim watched the kids for her to go up to see her mother. Donna slept on the chesterfield.
A couple of months ago Donna was having a cigarette when she got a telephone call from a man who said he could see her in her bedroom and then made a sexual innuendo to her. A few days later Donna was walking up to Kim’s house and a man followed her around the old-age home. She’d walk so far and he’d drive ahead and stop and then she’d go and he’d go and when she got upside Kim’s door he drove down the road and blew the horn. Kim saw the car. It was a rose colour, a Grand Am, it wasnt brand new. Donna phoned her mother first and then Kim told her to phone Sheldon. Sheldon came and picked her up.
Sometimes Donna was talking to Kim on the phone and she’d lower her voice. She was afraid Tom Vivian was listening. They were talking once in Donna’s house and Donna was like shhh he’s down there listening. The TV was on downstairs and it was like it was on in Donna’s living room. Kim asked why was he listening and Donna said Tom’s right infatuated with her.
One time Donna asked her to hide a gun and Kim told her no. Donna was afraid Sheldon would shoot her. Donna hid this gun in the Vivians’ basement but the Vivians didnt know about it. Kim never seen it. Donna went through their basement one day to go up to her place. She put the gun up in one of the beams. Then she put it down in a shed in back of her mother’s house, in a box of Christmas decorations. Sheldon wanted it back so she took it out of there and gave it back. He wanted to get it cleaned.
The Death of Donna Whalen Page 3
