Clifford’s parents liked Sheldon. His father gave this man a job. Sheldon was trying to put the fear of God in Donna, he was infatuated with her, he was jealous, he didnt want her leaving him and Clifford never mutilated his mind into ever seeing his sister dead. He absolutely did not contact his mother and explain to her what was going on and tell her to intervene and tell her to get Donna out of there. His mother is old and her health isnt the best and if Donna wanted her to know something, she was very close to their mother, she could tell her on her own free will.
Donna was doing cocaine. She done it with Sheldon, she told Clifford. She was drinking with the Tessiers. Donna had told Sheldon that when her brother Clifford came down here he wasnt going to stand by and watch the bullshit that was happening in her life. Bullshit was her word.
JUDGE RICHARD ADAMS
What’s the problem, Mrs Anstey?
I’m too nervous on this trial.
Youre what?
Very nervous.
That’s true and I appreciate and understand that, but I have to say to you, everybody else is nervous too. This is not an easy thing that youre called upon to do but let me say this—we have one of the best systems in the world where citizens decide in very serious cases on the guilt or innocence of the accused person, so it’s not just left to lawyers and judges. This is a country that, with all its faults, gives a lot to its citizens by way of peace and security. Bad things happen, yes, but they dont happen here as much as they do in many parts of the world and we have a lot of rights citizens in some parts of the world dont have at all. But sometimes, and properly so, obligations go along with rights and every one of the twelve of you sitting here has the obligation which our country has asked you: to decide this matter under her rules and the manner in which these things are decided. Now I know youre anxious, every person sitting here is, including lawyers, police, everybody. Being anxious and worried can’t stand in the way of our duty. If you think about it as a duty, then it is as important as any citizen will ever be called on to do. The Crown is entitled to a jury of twelve. Mr Troke is entitled to a jury of twelve. We can’t call in new people now, the trial is under way. The law does say that in case of emergency, I can discharge someone. Someone could have a heart attack and you can go on with eleven. You can go on with ten if you had to but you can’t go on with fewer than ten. We’d have to discharge the jury, start all this over again which would be an incredibly expensive and stressful procedure for everyone. So what I’m going to do Mrs Anstey is ask you to stay with it. Your fellow jurors will support you and your input into this is just as important as any other juror. All right then, Mr Ash.
KIM PARROTT
Donna told Kim that she and Kim were cousins, that’s the way they looked at each other. Donna took pills every day as she opened her eyes but she took different amounts at different days. Kim never seen her walk around not be able to see what she was doing.
Kim seen a hole in Donna’s bedroom wall where you turn the light on. Sheldon did it with his fist. And marks on her wall next to the kitchen door. Donna said that he kicked her front door in. Kim can’t be certain of the kitchen window. She seen the window broke out, it was covered with cardboard. He done something to it.
The front door, that happened the night they were coming home from Mrs Tessier’s house, and she had the keys in her hand but she said something like she never opened the door fast enough, and he kicked the door in.
The door to Donna’s bedroom he took that with his two hands and hauled it off the hinges and laid it against the wall. Kim seen the door when it was put back on, there was splinters where the hinges are to.
SHELDON TROKE
While Sheldon was going out with Donna he got an apartment on Freshwater Road. Cathy Furneaux was right up over him. He went back to jail again in November. January he got out and he was living on Empire with Donna. He still had the apartment, though. There was times that he’d leave Buckmaster Circle and go down to Donna’s and she wouldnt be there. How long she was left he had no idea. He could haul up there and she’d have left two minutes before. He can’t say that Donna was gone all the time. Sure, he wasnt even there himself.
They were broke up again by Regatta. Sheldon moved to his apartment on Freshwater Road. He asked Donna could he take Cory to the Regatta and she said yes. The day it was supposed to go off it didnt. It went off the next day and he took Cory and Cathy Furneaux’s young fellow, Robert.
It was in the fall of the year, Donna was looking for a car and she asked Sheldon if you see a cheap car, to let her know about it, and there was times before this when he was in jail he’d be talking to her suppertime and she’d tell him that she’s going into Eugene Driscoll’s garage that night. A friend of his got a Cougar for sale and he told Donna about it and she told him that she never had the money. This car was in good shape, so Sheldon told her to tell Driscoll about it. He sold cars and Donna said, He’s here now. So Sheldon said, Let me talk to him, and he spoke to Eugene about the car. When you give her the gas, instead of having the hand to come up, she had digitals. It was a nice car and Sheldon explained it to him what the car was like and told him who owned it.
Sheldon was sent to a drug addiction program out in Corner Brook. Humberwood. He was straight for two months. He’d go to AA meetings. Donna even come to a couple. But he was drinking a lot. If he dropped into someone’s house and they had liquor, he’d have a couple of drinks of it.
One night they were home and Donna phoned Cory’s father to see how Cory was doing. Cory was the youngest and got a tendency to get spoiled and Cory’s father they were just after having a newborn. Cory wanted to come back and Donna got mad. Sheldon tried to explain to Donna, Cory’s feeling that he’s not getting the attention with this little youngster. She wanted to drive out over the road and Sheldon said, Donna, you can’t go driving out in your car, the ball joints and everything, and she flew right off the handle.
He was rushing into the Avalon Mall picking up some more Christmas presents. Donna was out. He got Sharon to help wrap the gifts. He gave Sharon the gifts that her and Cory were going to give to Donna. There’s pictures there of the youngsters, both of them dressing the tree, putting the ornaments on.
Just after Christmas they went down to Mrs Whalen’s for supper. They ended up having a fight. They went out after, but not together. Their relationship could be good for two weeks then it was like there was animosity for a couple of days. Donna’s mom gave her a half bottle of liquor. Sheldon ended up drinking it and got really drunk. They were arguing. It was like everything would come up and he give Donna a smack in the face and put an ashtray through the kitchen window.
That night Donna called her mother. Mrs Whalen come to the house. She had words to say and asked Donna to come home with her. Donna said no, she wasnt going down. Sheldon shouldnt be drinking liquor, her mother said. He should have more sense.
Sheldon went to sleep. The next morning there was a box there. Cory was after getting a toybox for Christmas and it come in a cardboard box. Sheldon got the box and put it up to the window and cleaned the glass up. They talked about all the arguing and drinking and Donna doing her pills and Sheldon took it upon himself to go out and talk to certain people. He went to Addictions. It’s at the Miller Centre across from the penitentiary. He admitted that he had hit Donna. They never had a group themselves for this kind of relationship. The parole service was paying for him to go there so they told him he should have a talk to his parole officer. Sheldon knows what his parole officer is like. You go to see your parole officer, he’s locking you up. They said Sheldon youre after telling us this story. Something got to be done. He went to Alan Thorne the next day. He sat there and took some notes and left the office and he come back and said, Sheldon, I was just talking to my boss and he tells me I got to revoke your parole. There’s no warrant drawn up right now, but youre aware of it that youre revoking your parole. Sheldon said can I go and come back and he said, if you go now, youre going to be unlawfully at
large. Donna’s car was out by the door, Sheldon said, and she lives a good ways away. Alan Thorne said, I’ll bring the keys over to Donna. Sheldon phoned Donna and told her what was going on and she asked, Why would you go and do a thing like that?
Sheldon sat in the waiting room. He waited for a half-hour, no supervision, just picked up a magazine. The guy from the paddy wagon, he was going to put the handcuffs on him. Sheldon said, Roger I’ve been waiting half an hour for you. He looked at Sheldon. Alan Thorne come out and Roger asked the parole officer and Alan said he’s here a good hour and Sheldon went off with Roger to the lock-up with no cuffs. Alan brought the keys over to Donna and Donna said it never took place and Alan said, Sheldon tells me youre arguing a lot, and Donna asked was his relationship the little white house with the picket fence?
Sheldon was downstairs in the lock-up and a guard come in. It was Donna wanted the keys to the Freshwater apartment. She wanted to close it down. He had to sign a note to consent for Donna to have the keys and he signed it and gave the guard his keys. It was a bed- sitting room with a small kitchen and a bathroom. He had a stereo, a VCR, a TV, bedroom suite, a chesterfield chair, all his clothes. Donna packed everything away in boxes, put the dishes in one box and taped the box and the bedding, the linen from the bathroom in other boxes. She got her father’s pickup and she moved everything back in her apartment.
Donna come down to see him with the youngsters. When Sheldon left the visiting room, he went back to the range and a guard told him to get his gear ready, he was going. Sheldon went out by the door and, walking down the road, he got a taxi. He went to Freshwater Road. He got the money off Cathy Furneaux to pay for the taxi. He phoned Donna’s. Sharon answered the phone and said Donna just went out. Sharon and Cory were there. Sheldon went down and Donna was coming in so Cory and Sharon put him in the closet in Cory’s room. Cory and Sharon were saying come in, Mommy, we got to show you something. And Donna was saying wait now. She was putting some Easter eggs in her room and Cory put his hands up and said shhh dont go saying nothing Sheldon, and Sharon put her hands over Cory’s mouth because he kept saying Sheldon Sheldon. So Donna come in and Cory at the closet said look, and it was just a surprise, for the youngsters. They wanted to do it.
Donna wanted him to work with her father into the graveyard and Sheldon told her that he’d go to work and she wanted him to give up selling drugs and give up drinking and give up all his friends. Not that he couldnt talk to them, but go downtown with them all the time. He agreed to do that. He went to work. He give up Buckmaster Circle. He give up selling drugs and give up going downtown.
He started work in April in the Blackmarsh Road cemetery. Just upkeep of the graveyard. There was days they worked four, five, six in the evening. Sheldon was not used to working. He’d come home tired and lie on the chesterfield, go to bed early. For a month he didnt go out at all.
Donna went out just about every night. Sheldon didnt stop her, but they did argue about it. Sheldon started dropping over to the 301 Club. He was getting used to the work. He hadn’t worked for years and this is outdoors, youre moving around a lot of topsoil and cleaning up and going with a wheelbarrow and shovel. He’d come home and never had no energy to go out and didnt mind Donna going out. Then he started going over to the 301 Club to have a few beer and they argued about that. He’d say to Donna, What’s the difference? You goes out. But it’s different, she’d say. I aint doing what youre doing. What am I doing? I’m over having a beer and shooting a game of pool. And then they argued, well, you’ve got a brother hangs out over there who sells drugs. Next youre going to be selling drugs.
It was weekends he’d go over there. If there was a day it was raining and they didnt work, he’d drop in. One night he got a call. Donna told him she’d be home in an hour. I’m at Kim’s house, she said. I’m going and getting a suntan. Sheldon never questioned it. Another time Donna and Sue Tessier and them went out. They went to a club. Donna come home about three in the morning. After the club they went and had Chinese. Sheldon was in bed watching TV when she come home.
Joey Yetman got out of jail and he phoned Sheldon. Drop up, Sheldon said. Joey said, Want to get a few beer? Sheldon said I got to ask Donna first and Joey started ridiculing him. He asked Donna could he get some beer and she said no and Sheldon said come on, Donna, I’ve got a friend here, I only wants to get a six-pack. And she said well, I dont care if you gets it. So he went down to the store and picked up a six-pack and Joey picked up a six-pack and they come back and it was all tension. He was in the kitchen and the beer was on the counter and Donna was saying, You can’t wait to get them all gone, so he bounced the box off the floor and the beer all broke and they put the glass in a bag and Sheldon said to Joey come on, we goes. They got a taxi.
It was a Friday night and they were sat at the 301 Club and three girls come in. At the other end of the club, there was two pool tables. Sheldon’s brother Paul was there and his girlfriend Trisha playing pool. Trisha had a miniskirt on. Sheldon was up to the bar. He was talking to the bartender. These three girls come in and he knows one of them and the other one he was just after meeting her about a month before. So Monday Donna and Iris are out going around to doctors and Sheldon wasnt working this Monday. He was babysitting Cory and the phone rang and here it was Donna. She said did you have fun at the 301 Club Friday night? The girls over with the miniskirts and everything on. Sheldon said the only one who had a miniskirt on was Trisha. There was a whole load of them over there, she said, and they started arguing over that and the next minute she hanged up and so Sheldon broke the phone. Cory was sat on the bed alongside. What’s wrong, he said, and Sheldon said, Your mom is mad. Cory said, Is she mad at me? and Sheldon said no.
CATHY FURNEAUX
Cathy didnt look at a clock when she left the 301 Club but all clubs closes at two and she didnt leave till the club was closed. It took her twenty minutes to get home. She could have been fast asleep on the sofa by two-twenty in the morning.
She has a long close connection with the Troke family and she thinks of the accused and his brother Paul just like she thinks of her own brother. She’d seen Raymond Troke for about four years. She was in love with the man. Raymond spent a lot of time at her place. He had his own place. They were very close to almost a husband and wife. After his death Cathy stayed close to the rest of his family.
SHELDON TROKE
Donna said he could board there until he got enough money to get an apartment. Mrs Whalen over the phone one day she laughed. What are you, a boarder now? Sheldon wasnt really a boarder. It was just a name put on it. They were still living under the same roof. They werent sleeping together.
He got up for work. He phoned Mrs Whalen. She brought up that she was going to Toronto and she was going to ask Donna if she wanted to go. The topic of the youngsters come up and Sheldon told Mrs Whalen that, if they wanted, he would look after the youngsters.
He went to work and they were in cutting the grass. Sheldon was using the lawnmower and Mr Whalen had the whippersnapper and about eleven in the morning, Donna’s mother and her aunt Edie come in and they were driving down. It was talked about then about babysitting the youngsters.
One oclock they were sat in the truck having their dinner and Donna and Tom Vivian come down. Donna come over to the truck and she asked Sheldon could she talk to him and he said yes and there’s a monument, a big statue, and they were sot on that and Donna was saying that she was going to get ahold of her brother Clifford and her family on the mainland to see if they could give her fifty dollars each to chip in for some spending money up there. Then she asked him would it be any trouble if, after work, he went to Empire because she was going to her mother’s to do some laundry. When they walked back, Donna took the keys off a key ring and she gave Sheldon the keys to the house. Could he fix the hole in the wall. He said give my mother a call because around four she starts to make supper. Donna said she would.
Mr Whalen liked to work overtime. Sheldon told him he couldnt today b
ecause Cory was coming home. They left at four. When he got to Donna’s, she was just leaving. She had a bag with her. He assumed it was laundry.
Donna come home around eleven that night. She was at her mother’s and had laid down. She wasnt feeling well. She was after taking plain Atasols and Atasols with codeine in them.
Sheldon stayed that night at Donna’s on the chesterfield. Nothing went on, no kisses or nothing like that. In the graveyard, when she was leaving, he gave her a kiss but that night there was just talk and watching TV. The next morning her father come to pick Sheldon up. And when he was going through the door, Donna asked him what they were going to do tonight. Sheldon said, I dont know, we’ll do something and he walked over and gave her a kiss. He went down over the steps, got in the truck and went to work.
After work Sheldon’s father come out and picked him up. He went home. He got a shower and phoned Donna. Was she coming in for him. I’ll get Tom Vivian to come, she said. He spent the weekend at Donna’s and he gave her a hundred dollars to go to Toronto. Donna asked him to buy a pack of cigarettes. All he had on him was twenty dollars. He said give me the money, and she said no, you buy it, and Sheldon said all I got is twenty dollars to get some tobacco for the week and Donna was upset and he said, Donna I was after giving you a hundred, and up to Needs Convenience he’d bought a turnip and some milk and rented out some movies for the youngsters. So that’s when he asked Donna for a run home and on the way in the road, they hauled into Stockwood’s and he bought two pouches of tobacco and a box of cigarette tubes, just to show that he really had to buy cigarettes.
He worked Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. That evening they knocked off early. It was raining and it wasnt going to hold up and that night Sheldon had to go to a meeting. It was this new group he was starting and this was the first night. Human resource development.The parole board set this up. Donna was seeing a counsellor and the counselling that Sheldon was going to was a group. He slept at home.
The Death of Donna Whalen Page 7
