The Death of Donna Whalen

by Michael Winter

  They took him to the lock-up. He knows Bemister and Hedderson were armed because youre not allowed in the lock-up downstairs with handguns and they opened the trunk of their car and put their guns in the trunk.

  Everything he handed over. Hedderson asked him what these keys are belonged to and Sheldon told him. He was put in cell number 9, then he was transferred to Her Majesty’s Penitentiary. He was out in the yard at recreation time. There was an inmate there. He come over with a newspaper and he asked was there anyone locked up for this murder. Sheldon said I dont know, why? and he handed Sheldon the newspaper and the statement in that paper for the public not to worry because the person who did this is in jail.

  GARY BEMISTER

  Gary Bemister and Inspector Hedderson executed the parole warrant and they were going through Sheldon’s belongings at the lock-up downstairs and these keys were a part of his possessions.

  Gary tried the keys at the crime scene. They had street patrol personnel guarding the scene with deadbolt locks put on the front and back doors and the keys were given to him. The original lock sets were also on the door. He tried the knob several times and the door would not open unless you had to physically kick the door. Short of doing that the door would not open without the use of the key.

  A black purse. It’s the purse that partially covered the face of Donna Whalen. Gary interviewed Kim Parrott at police headquarters. He searched this purse and seized a tape player as well as a cassette tape that was in the tape player.

  The tape quality was very poor. Gary started making a transcript from the tape and he requested the tape be enhanced. He sat down and played the tape, wrote out as much as he could, went back over portions that were not clear and he found the more you listened to the tape the more your ear got attuned to the voices and with each playing he picked out more of the conversation. When the digital tape came back he borrowed the cassette player and it was the same process. He heard that tape possibly ninety or a hundred times over the past nineteen months.

  The tape is incoherent. The subject matter of the conversation is all over the place. There’s a song you can’t pick out. On a couple of places on the tape you hear a background noise, a radio or a stereo. There’s one occasion where the tape appears to have been stopped.

  SHELDON TROKE AND DONNA WHALEN ON TAPE RECORDER

  Sheldon: What are you laughing at?

  Donna: I’m laughing at you.

  Donna look I’ll show you what I’m going to burn all right this is called a match.

  What are you doing?

  What’s Kim saying.

  I dont know Sheldon. She dont have a phone I havent been talking to her. You dont want me—

  You’ve got no friends Donna. Your friends are—wait now—why dont you answer me.

  I was frightened to death.

  I would never hurt you, never. First time in my fucking life that I cried, I never ever cried in my life Donna I never did.

  DONALD SAUNDERS

  In Special Handling a person is less mobile. The unit is smaller, five prisoners, and there are many searches. Someone charged with murder more than likely ends up in the Special Handling Unit, but of course there are other categories of people that end up there. The person in Special Handling has the same rights as a prisoner in any other part of the prison. For visits they are assigned a private room and a staff member is right there in that room within hearing distance. The length of the visits and the frequency are the same.

  Rule number one is that all inmates entering or exiting the SHU are stripped and searched. Youre given a fresh issue of clothing when he comes out of the unit and your other clothing taken and searched during the visit. The search of visitors varies from a routine frisk to a complete exploratory frisk.

  There are times when they do shakedowns. They take an area and go in and do a more detailed security search. There was an inmate in Special Handling caught with bullets.

  Prisoners in Special Handling have no contact with other inmates. Food is brought to the unit and the way the building is designed each unit has a lobby area and off that area are the cells and it is in this lobby that all inmates eat their meals. The lobby is locked and sealed. There are guards in a control centre who have total vision of the unit. The cells in those units are monitored through closed circuit television, so if a person is in the lobby he’s seen through a window and that’s what they call actual vision. If he is in his cell he is seen on a TV screen.

  The cells run around one side of that lobby. The lobby is inside the SHU. They have two entrances to the lobby and they come off a corridor, they are electronically controlled and can be manually operated.

  Concerning letters, prisoners can name three people with whom they are going to correspond. They do limit the number of letters that they’ll pay for and beyond that an inmate has to pay the postage. On incoming mail there is no limit. You can receive letters from anyone and in any quantity but they are subjected to a screening by staff.

  There is privileged correspondence that an inmate can write in a sealed letter, that would include people like a judge, his lawyer, a minister of the Crown, Human Rights or to him, Donald Saunders. However, all routine correspondence gets sent out unsealed or sent at least to the control room unsealed. The letter is scanned, it is recorded and then it is mailed.

  If you were in the SHU, the correctional officer reads the letter. A letter that makes reference to other inmates or staff or security matters is returned to the inmate and told it’s unsuitable for mailing. However, once an inmate becomes known to the staff, and they have a common core of staff assigned to each unit, the degree of screening is lessened.

  Donald Saunders has a photocopy of Sheldon Troke’s correspondence card which keeps the record of all incoming and outgoing mail written by Mr Troke. There was no correspondence written by Sheldon Troke, just a number of items received.

  Prisoners only leave the unit for recreation or a visit. The doctor’s office is on the same floor, just a short distance up the corridor. A person in Special Handling is taken in when there are no other inmates there and he’s under supervision for the duration of that medical visit.

  There are two accesses to this basement floor, stairway and elevator. Staff use the elevator and it’s used for bringing meals and escorting prisoners. However, the stairwell is also used for general population inmates who are going to see a doctor. There is a slight curvature in the corridor so when you get off the elevator or the stairwell you can’t see down that corridor. When the doctor’s clinic is in progress the correctional officer in charge of Special Handling moves into that corridor so that an inmate can’t come down to Special Handling.

  They have recreation by themselves. It’s done on a schedule even though quite frequently Special Handling inmates dont request it. It lasts an hour.

  The inmate submits a list of three names of people with whom he wishes to have visits. He can change that list from time to time. The visiting card is a record of all visits. The visits take place in that waiting area next to the doctor’s office. Occasionally they use the doctor’s office. Space is not something they have an abundance of, so sometimes they go to a different area of the prison and use an interview room that a lawyer or a parole officer entering the prison would have to use.

  Inmates have an advantage over staff, they are there twenty-four hours a day and the staff are only on forty hours a week. Special Handling requires a little bit more experience and ingenuity than in the general population. Even with the best intentions it’s very difficult to prevent things coming into the penitentiary and things going out. You sort of patch a hole and another one opens. Escape prisoners are an example of that. Escapes occur. Strip searches are not searches of cavities in the body parts. They are not permitted to do that, just a visual skin search. The use of different cavities is something that prisoners routinely use in terms of getting things in and out of prison.

  It’s very difficult to get a medical person to agree to do a cavity search. It�
�s not worth the effort to pursue it. Inmates know this. Inmates tend to be up on the regulations.

  The prison culture is pretty standard nationwide and once a person has testified against another prisoner, they usually fit in on a very low strata of inmate subculture. They are rats and you find that the majority of prisoners will, as part of their day-to-day routine, attempt to cause that person trouble and inconvenience and harm. They try to intimidate them prior to testifying. Any prisoner who has been in jail for any time will know this. There is an understanding of what they should and should not do now that they are prisoners. There is coaching between the more senior person and the newcomer. One of those areas of coaching is if you think you hear something or see something and are thinking about repeating it, it might cost your life.

  PAUL TROKE

  Paul spoke to Sergeant Hedderson just downstairs in this building in the lock-up. He’s not doing a line-up unless his lawyer tells him. You know the blond-hair fellow, Paul said, you put him and me in a lineup you won’t tell us apart. The blond-hair fellow he saw that night was Jacob Parrott. Paul knows people in the area. He’s been in a line-up, they remember a face. Tom Vivian downstairs knows him. The lady next door, Mabel Edicott, Paul wasnt in her house and she was never in Donna’s but he was at Donna’s more than six or seven times and a couple of times he waited out in the car up in front for Sheldon. He’s not going in a line-up, that lady might recognize him.

  Paul was stopped by the police on Patrick Street in a stolen car. They took him to the lock-up and he saw two correctional officers. Gary Bemister asked him what he was arrested for and Paul said impaired driving and murder. That’s what Gary says he heard. But what happened was he wanted to have Paul’s ring, and Paul said, What do you want that for, murder? The police were following where he went and they asked him to get in line-ups. They were more or less coming out saying he was involved with it. Gary Bemister said there’s witnesses saw you looking into the window, and it wouldnt have surprised Paul if they did grab him and arrest him. He was drunk. When they asked for his ring they had him in the car, what more evidence do they need, what did they want his ring for? So that’s why Paul said why do you want that for, it’s something to do with the murder. They were harassing Paul everywhere he went. They even question his girlfriend Trisha Hickman.

  GARY BEMISTER

  He picked Mabel Edicott up on Empire and conveyed her to headquarters to show her eight photographs on a card. The person I saw at the back was good looking, she said. He wasnt like anyone on the card. There was one target in the photographs: Jacob Parrott. Paul Troke was not on the card.

  Gary turned her over to Percy Morgan and Percy sat her down and asked her to think back and describe what shape nose, what shape eyes. Think hairstyle, he said, think chin, if he had a moustache, shape of lips. Percy Morgan had an identikit. The chin area was a little bit longer, Mabel Edicott said, it was definitely more round. And the hairstyle is not bad, cut on the sides right close, but his hair was really blond. He didnt have grey hair, he had blond.

  This man, she said, he did not talk as if he was drinking. When Mabel said next door she turned like that and looked down and she thought in this hand here he had a white cigarette. She never seen the filter part, the hand was down like this.

  He had on a heavy grey jacket. The collar was up around his neck. When Percy put the moustache on him the face looked more familiar than without it. He never had no gloves on.

  Mabel’s kitchen light was on in the back hall. You come up the back stairs and you dont know the building you wouldnt know where her apartment was or Donna’s apartment. From the front you would.

  The identikit that Percy Morgan used has since been discontinued by the force and sent back to the States because they were paying quite a high rental on it. Percy does have an older type kit, this kit is about twenty years old. You’d start with a hairstyle and then go with the chin line. What Mabel Edicott felt was the best set of eyes. Some eyebrows. A set of lips, the nose and also a moustache. All this is joined together and held against the white background. Does this look like the person youre trying to describe to me?

  Percy photocopied it with all the different numbers of the sheets so that if you ever wanted to recreate the composite you can do it by looking at the numbers. Then he cuts around it to clean it up a bit to get the numbers out of it, so you can put it on a poster or a bulletin.

  Mabel Edicott said the moustache wasnt thick enough, so he used a pencil and thickened the moustache. That was the only change that was made to the composite. There’s a date down by the neck. Later on she told him the nose was too broad. He tried a sketch. He asked Mabel Edicott to describe the scene. She had heard a knock and she opened the door. So the light showed the person standing in the doorway. The background was dark in the hallway. What she saw was a perfectly lit person with no light from the top or side.

  Percy asked Mabel Edicott how she saw him. What was the general shape of the head and the shoulders. And from the hairline he worked down to the eyes and nose and mouth. That gave him a face. One has to come up with a face. It’s no point in making a drawing from somebody’s description if you dont come up with a face. He showed the face to Mrs Edicott and worked with her on that. Were the shoulders wide or narrow. That gives a better idea of the bulk of the body. Maybe the nose is too long or too short, he made the correction. The drawing is based entirely on her verbal description. This conversation took place at the constabulary office at ten in the morning for about three hours. They stopped for a cup of coffee.

  After he completed the drawing he asked for a group of young blond men, blue-eyed and white. He looked at ten mug shots and picked out one that was very much like the person that Mabel Edicott was trying to describe.

  He wanted to get a feeling. It was instinctive. There was no other reason. He thought it might help if he could see somebody of that age and colouring.

  He altered the sketch slightly. It was around the ears. It would have been moving a line or two. Maybe the hairline, there was too much hair around the ears so he moved that away. Mabel Edicott was there while he made the alterations.

  If you look closely you can see where he uses a pencil and an eraser. The colouring came later on.

  She described a person with light hair, and a slight hairline on the upper lip. Percy Morgan could tell from his general colouring what colour his hair would be and the colour of his skin. Were there any scars? No, she said.

  He was a very good-looking man. And his hair was light. So that allowed Percy to believe that his skin would be the same.

  LOUISE MOTTY

  Louise drove the Edicotts to the police parking garage on the fourth floor of Atlantic Place. She knew Paul Troke was in a holding cell and that he would be in courtroom 7, but she never identified Paul Troke to the Edicotts.

  They walked through the main doors of the courtroom and waited until the prisoners came out. There was about eight prisoners. They were handcuffed in twos. They were about five feet away. The court was crowded that day. There was a man being brought out and there was camera crews, several people with TV, and family belonging to this guy. There were officers and lawyers and a lot of spectators, more than you would see down there on a normal day.

  When the prisoners came up Mabel Edicott grabbed hold to Louise’s arm. She said that guy there looks almost exactly like the man at my door. The only thing different was the hair on top of his head was fuller. He’s the same build, the same height, the same hair colour. Now the young fellow that came to the back door had a jacket on, and this fellow doesnt have a jacket on, so I wouldnt be able to tell you about the size. But they could be brothers.

  This was Paul Troke.

  There was one other person coming out of the courtroom with blond hair. Jacob Parrott. Mrs Edicott did not react to him in any way.

  Paul Troke had been in custody for perhaps two days. His hair, it gave the appearance of being gelled or spiked. He was very clean cut, he wore a black dinner type jack
et with black pants on, almost like the suit the accused has on, but it was black, and his hair was gelled on top. Louise wrote notes in her 16-24s. She didnt make them right at the time. She made them after she dropped off the Edicotts and went back to Fort Townshend.

  She drove the Edicotts home and then interviewed Sharon Whalen down in a room in the bottom of Presentation House. Sharon drew pictures and talked. Louise drew with her. Sharon said that she felt that the voice she heard that night was Sheldon Troke’s, but it could have been Jacob Parrott. Her nanny said that Sheldon loved Donna and would not hurt her. Someone must have come into her house while her mother was downstairs at Tom Vivian’s. The person may have hid in the bathroom until her mother returned and then stabbed her. Louise Motty sat on the floor with Sharon at a little table and they drew pictures until Inspector Hedderson arrived. He told Sharon that Jacob Parrott was no longer a suspect. Sharon told him her mother called out to her that night. Inspector Hedderson said, You mean your mother called out to you to help her and you didnt go?

  Sharon said no.

  What would your mother say if she knew you knew who did this to her and you didnt tell?

  Sharon was holding a doll in her hands and was wrenching it. She was obviously upset. Louise, too, was upset by Ches Hedderson’s approach to the child.

  PAUL TROKE

  Paul Troke’s been charged and convicted of stealing cars before. He’s in custody now for stealing cars. He stole that one at the Avalon Mall. The keys were in it and he sat in it and listened to the radio and then decided to take it for a ride. So while he dont have access to a car he’s quite capable of taking one. He’s at Renous, which is a maximum security penitentiary. Paul was originally sentenced to Springhill because of that armed robbery. It was at the CIBC on Water Street with a person by the name of Joey Yetman. Paul had a pair of orange coveralls on and a sawed-off shotgun. He pointed the shotgun at one of the clerks who was trying to get the money for Joey out of the cash register. Paul was stood up there with the gun and he was giving orders. Paul didnt say a word. The clerk says he saw Paul Troke hold the gun with two hands. It had a long barrel. Then Paul Troke said, Open the register motherfucker or I will blow your brains out.