John doesnt have a vendetta against Leander Dollymont. John asked his attorney to phone the courthouse in St John’s and find out who was representing a man named Sheldon Troke. The courthouse told him to phone Jim Lythgoe.
LEANDER DOLLYMONT
There was a guy in the house who was a prison informant. John Noftall put plant fertilizer in his coffee. One night in the weight pit an inmate was being beaten to death by a weight bar almost. This inmate spent ninety days in hospital. Leander didnt want something like that to happen to him. He was very scared of John Noftall so he figured he had to do something to cover his own back. John said they couldnt force you to move from one prison to another because he refused to testify. Leander told him there was a woman psychologist in Springhill who was aware of Leander’s connection with Sheldon Troke and that she had turned over information to the police. It was a story Leander devised. He told John Noftall that’s how it came out and they bugged the cell—because he asked Leander why would they bug your cell—Leander told him that’s how it came about. He talked to the psychologist and she turned over information. Leander refused to testify, they wouldnt keep him and Sheldon Troke in the one prison. He didnt tell John Noftall he was a prison informant. He portrayed a different image. Leander said that Sheldon Troke was also at Springhill. He told a story that John Noftall would believe. Leander said his mother was taking action against this psychologist because she had released confidential information to the RCMP. John Noftall asked well why arent you subpoenaed. Leander said it had to do with a psychologist turning over confidential information to the police and there’s an act there that can keep this evidence from being released and his mom’s working on it. Leander told him a story that John would believe. Why wasnt there a charge ever laid? Leander said, There was no other incriminating evidence found.
Leander got his attention. John told Leander he’d done the right thing by not testifying, your year will go quick up here and you done the right thing and if they ever do lay a charge you dont have to say anything. He made remarks like that, so that told Leander he had John’s confidence. Leander had won.
TELEVISION
Plainclothes police officers are carrying concealed weapons in Supreme Court. They are protecting a fellow police officer who is facing charges of dangerous driving. Each day the armed officers are seated right outside the door leading in the courtroom, but protecting him from whom? Nobody in connection with his trial. This is what it’s all about—the theft of two handguns and a rifle from the trunk of a police car. Police officers speculated the guns might be used to free Sheldon Troke. Troke is on trial in Supreme Court for murder. So what’s that got to do with this trial? The trials are happening at the same time. The officer, police suggest, might be used as a hostage to free Sheldon Troke.
JUDGE RICHARD ADAMS
Some of you might have heard on television last evening and on the radio broadcast this morning, something about a matter which is taking place in another courtroom in this courthouse and involves the suggestion that, somehow, a hostage might be taken and that hostage exchanged for Sheldon Troke. I dont know if any of you heard it. It is absolutely necessary that a person comes before the court presumed to be innocent unless and until he is convicted after a fair trial. The suggestion that something like that might happen is detrimental to the presumption of innocence. The other thing is I wouldnt want you to feel that there was something happening which we knew about and you knew nothing about. So, I’m raising it with you now. On the break this morning I spoke to the director of Court Security and my question to him was a very simple one: to your knowledge, is there any foundation, in fact, to the suggestion? And his reply was equally simple: I’ve made enquiries and there is no foundation for the suggestion. So youre in the know now and can put it out of your minds and we will carry on with the trial in the normal way.
LEANDER DOLLYMONT
Leander was down by the clothes room one day and Sheldon was there, hiding his valium. You often come across inmates, they have a hand down their pants inserting a package into their anus. Inmates internally package pills and other drugs and when they need them it takes a bathroom issue to get them out.
Sheldon was down by the clothes room hiding the valium on himself, shifting them from pocket to pocket, separating them to sell. There was other inmates there too. It’s kind of a little hallway and there’s three or four showers for people who live on the wings and Sheldon went joking around with Leander and said with those white teeth I could french kiss you.
That led to oral sex, in the last shower room down. There was inmates over by the clothes room. There’s about a distance from here to that window over there. It was in a pretty shaded area but they probably all noticed.
There was a lot of comments made but it was always in a joking way. There was nobody in that penitentiary going to look at Sheldon Troke and refer to him as a faggot.
SHELDON TROKE
Dolly says they had sex. You’d think he’d remember that.
LEANDER DOLLYMONT
Sheldon said the car had been purchased from Billy Bennett. Leander is related to Billy Bennett. Billy Bennett, at the Cottage Tavern, told Leander that the Trokes had purchased a car from him but there was some type of technicality where the car wasnt paid for till a couple days after Donna’s death. Billy said Paul Troke had access to the car whenever he wanted it.
SHELDON TROKE
Sheldon told Dolly that car wasnt abandoned. That car was broke down and given to George Bennett. Now Dolly dont know George Bennett, but he know a Billy Bennett. Billy Bennett is after spending time in jail down there so he turns around and says oh Paul Troke used to have a loan of that car off Billy Bennett. Billy Bennett never owned that car. Someone else owned that car. When Paul bought that car, it was radiator trouble. The car broke down and he gave the car to George Bennett.
BILLY BENNETT
Billy Bennett has owned two cars. The first one was a Ford Fairmont. She was black with red interior. He scrapped that and sold it to a certain taxi driver at Super Ace Taxi who wanted to buy it. He also owned a Pontiac Bonneville. He broke a pole off with her. She was impounded then after to Collision Clinic where she stays as far as he knows. She wasnt fit to put on the road. Well they had to use the jaws of life on him, had to cut the four doors off her. The drive shaft was in the back seat and the motor was partly in the front seat. She was a light blue.
Billy Bennett has a criminal record. Everything except that assault sixteen months, that’s definitely wrong. His mother’s maiden name is Dollymont. She’s from Placentia. He knows of a Leander Dollymont, also known as Dolly. He’s heard tell of him within the penitentiary as a bit tipsy, but he’s never met him. He’s not a cousin. He could be where he’s from Placentia. There’s a few Dollymonts out around Placentia. Whoever he is he’s full of it.
Billy Bennett lives off Freshwater Road, lived there all his life. That’s close to the Cottage Tavern. He dont go there much now. This car he had he was ready to get it done up, Paul Troke never had access to it. Billy has a drinking problem, he was in hospital there not too long ago. He got pancreatitis again so he tries to stay away from it now. He’s been trying since he got out of hospital. Not trying, he’s been staying off it because he has four cysts on the pancreas.
He done his time for it last year and got picked up for it the year before that. He never got charged for eight months after and he started his time in March last year. The accident itself was the year before that. It took eight months for them to get the blood where they had to send away to see how much his blood reading was. He’s had accidents in between that and after that. They found him in his apartment dead twice. Not dead drunk, dead dead. They had to pull him back to life. This was drugs related, diet pills, yellow jackets. He’s taken a lot of medication but he’s been cutting back. It was alcohol and prescription drugs. Somebody would come up to him and say Billy I saw you downtown last night and he’d say sorry I can’t even remember.
The Cottage
Tavern, he was barred from there. He still got in but if they called the cops he drank at his own residence.
CATHY FURNEAUX AND EUGENE DRISCOLL WIRETAP
Cathy: They should have brought someone in from away that knows what theyre fucking at. They got me harassed to death. I even swore on my mother’s grave and Hedderson turned around and looked me in the face and said youre a liar. I was ripping then. I said I’m the only one got keys to my house which I do but they be’s threw in the drawer but they never asked me where they’s be to. He said there was a taxi came to your door that night. And I said when? And they said did Sheldon come to your house that night? Sheldon did not come to my house because the way my door opens up and closes, Eugene, you got to push in on it because the door is right tight. And I was asleep on the chesterfield. I let them search this house three times looking and then the fourth time they ransacked it. They tore it apart. They actually tore the fucking house apart. So that was four times and then not counting the twenty times theyre after getting statements. Then he’s saying to me your son was up. Your son can go down for accessory after the fact because he’s lying too. I said listen here he’s only sixteen years old. Robert’s not lying. He said youre in with the Trokes tight. I said I went out with one Troke, one Troke only and that was Raymond and he was never in jail the whole four years I was with him and he wasnt either.
SHELDON TROKE
If Sheldon was working, every night he was home. The latest time he can recall Donna coming home is the night her and Iris were out to a club, but he do remember one morning waking up six-thirty and Cory was crying and Sheldon got out of the bed and was going out to let Cory out of his room. At the same time, Donna was coming in from the living room and Donna had her shoes on and Sheldon said to Donna this is an awful hour to be coming home and she said what are you talking about? I’m home since three. Now he dont know if she was home three or not.
JIM LYTHGOE
Leander Dollymont says well how am I going to know this stuff. It’s kind of obvious how he knew, it’s on news reports. We have to answer extremely serious allegations that have been made by Leander Dollymont and by Ruth Vivian. In fact, it would be fair to say that they are the two key witnesses about what Sheldon would have said in one case, being Leander Dollymont, and what Sheldon did and said for Ruth Vivian. Kim Parrott she’s more or less talking about what Donna may have told her or some other little tidbits, but that’s the case in effect. There’s no evidence whatsoever from any of the forensics. As a matter of fact, the evidence so far is that the forensics were botched. We’re in a situation where we have got to be able to deal with these allegations, these are not collateral matters. Did witnesses make up their minds as to guilt. We’ve had numerous witnesses from the Crown stand up and for no valid reason say oh I was afraid of the Trokes. You ask them were you threatened, no I wasnt threatened but I was afraid of the Trokes. The image of the Trokes is out there like a dark shadow hanging over this whole proceeding ready to jump on anyone who is going to say anything that they dont particularly like.
LEANDER DOLLYMONT AND SHELDON TROKE
Leander came forward to testify because what Sheldon Troke told him was bothering him. It wasnt something that he wanted a part of. To go around for the rest of his life knowing that there was a little girl and a little boy out there who lost their mom, who was murdered and somebody had confessed to him that they committed the murder.
Sheldon Troke: Look at me.
Jim Lythgoe: Sheldon.
Sheldon Troke: That wasnt said.
Richard Adams: Mr Troke, any more outbursts and you will be removed.
Robert Ash: Mr Dollymont, youre not going to be intimidated in this court, all right?
Jim Lythgoe: He’s not trying to intimidate him.
Robert Ash: Did you ever see that type of anger before?
Leander: Yes I did.
Sheldon Troke: It’s hurt.
Robert Ash: Mr Dollymont you dont have to stare at him, if he stares at you, just ignore him, all right?
Okay Mr Ash.
SHELDON TROKE
He says to Robert Ash that he cannot go around and have it on his conscience about two youngsters. Them youngsters are the farthest thing from his mind. The things that he got up here and said were not said. He’s trying to use two youngsters to save hisself from going to jail. The first thing he asked was that he’d get a year. What do you do out of a year in a federal institution? Two months. He was out on parole for fraud. Two years, they go federal. While he’s out on parole he gets picked up again. What’s he looking at this time? Three, five years. So he turns around: I got these stories.
They were on the same range for five weeks. You got a range there that’s thirty foot wide, seventy feet long. They got cells going down both sides and at the bottom of the back of the wall you got three cells. A TV in the middle of the floor. You got sixteen cells. Sometimes there’s inmates has their doors open and their radios going. There could be three people in one cell talking. Two in another cell talking. There could be five in another cell talking. Two out watching TV, three out in the kitchen.
Leander Dollymont wrote him. He sent two cards and a letter. Now Leander Dollymont goes around in the pen and he’s very feminine. All the inmates see this. They dont pay no attention to that. Theyre not biased, at least Sheldon’s not anyway. The guy’s a homosexual, he sent letters. It means nothing to Sheldon what he wrote.
DONALD SAUNDERS
Sometimes mail is dropped off at the gate or at the Administration building and it’s sent down by the Guard Room to the inmates and it do not go to the correspondence office to be searched. Sometimes staff reads it and passes it on themselves. It’s a practice to remove all stamps that come into the penitentiary. Sometimes liquid hashish is underneath the stamp and it’s just a precaution they take. They destroy the stamps.
Mail that’s accepted at the gate after hours will be brought to the Guard Room. This is done to help out an inmate—he knows his mail is after being dropped off at the gate and he might say look Mother dropped me off a letter, can you get it for me.
The two letters that you have there they should have been recorded but they werent.
Towels on the doors are not supposed to be there but sometimes they do be there. It’s up to the staff members to take them down. The cell doors are just ordinary doors with a little opening, ten by ten, for Corrections Officer to see in through. And sometimes, whether it’s going to the bathroom or just an inmate wants to be just left alone, a towel will be passed over the glass. They could have a little cardboard sign put in the window, just to block out the view.
If a guard comes onto the unit that message is spread around so all of the inmates know a guard is in their area.
If an inmate got a letter that was smuggled it would make sense that you’d tear off the stamp so that anybody casually seeing it will assume it had gone through the proper system. All mail received coming in and out of the penitentiary is supposed to be stamped as Censored.
This havent been done. It is supposed to be done. A few years ago inmates complained, they’d be sending their mother a card in the Mercy Home, and all of a sudden they got a card in for their mother with a big stamp on it Censored H.M. Penitentiary. So that was stopped, we didnt censor cards going out. From then on it seems like it has fallen off that these letters are not censored. I’ve checked with the man in Admissions and he is not stamping them as he is supposed to.
That’s mail going out. And coming in, both of them are supposed to be censored. That if he went down to the unit as a warden and seen that letter in anyone’s cell, without this mark, Censored, then it got in without the right way.
Two staff members are supposed to open the mail in case there’s any money, you have proof that two guys read it. That’s placed in the inmate’s fund and he is given a form of how much money was in his letter.
SHELDON TROKE
Sheldon is in this courtroom, he’s here and theyre saying that he’s going to kid
nap a cop. Sheldon’s father comes in and they tries to ridicule him saying he’s home and he’s watching the news or watching the clock. Can you blame him? Every time his children goes out, theyre in this courtroom. Theyre going to kidnap cops. That shows that your cops lie. They get caught right at the quarter line. Sheldon done everything in his power to help these police officers and they turn around and do nothing but accuse him. Not once did Sheldon say to them, you can’t have this or you can’t have that. It’s all he says, you dont need a warrant. Whatever you wants, you can have it. They phones him up one night and asks him to go with them and do something, he does it. He passes everything with flying colours. He’s fucking crucified. Excuse the language. Is there anything else you want him to do? You can sit there. You can twist everything around. No matter what you do, Sheldon Troke still did not kill Donna Whalen.
Leander is an out-and-out liar. How could Sheldon confess to him that he killed Donna when he didnt kill Donna? Sheldon asked his lawyer Jim Lythgoe to launch a complaint and that complaint was drawn up and it was brought down to him to sign and Sheldon read it before he signed it. He knew what was coming on TV. The night it was supposed to come on TV, it did not because it was handed in too late. It come on the following night after.
Sheldon was upset when Hedderson was on the news. They put a car on the news then five days later they say Paul Troke owns the car and this is Sheldon’s brother. Then he gets on TV saying, yes we’re after Sheldon. We’re going after Sheldon. They gives a statement from Ruth Vivian. Nine days later, she gives another one. The next day they comes and charges him.
The Death of Donna Whalen Page 22
