Marilyn WhiskeyJack's Son Recalls the Day he Learned his Mother had been Murdered

Marilyn WhiskeyJack was murdered at Main Rooms in the Downtown Eastside in Sept. 2007. Her son Jerry WhiskeyJack sent the following message to us recalling the day he learned of his mother's death and his hope that justice will be done.


Dear Judge,

It has been a very hard couple years. Our family is trying to deal with this tragedy. I remember when the phone call came in, it felt like a movie. I was in my room watching tv. when the phone rang, I knew something was wrong, the whole house was silent, You could hear a pin drop, My grandmother let out a scream, that gave me goosebumps, my throat swelled up as I ran upstairs. She fell into the couch, clutching the phone. I picked it up to hear and officer telling me that " my mother had passed away". Marilyn Whiskeyjack was a mother of 5 children. I as the oldest had to tell all my siblings, that our mother had been taken away from us. We never lived with her, cause of her addiction, but we all had close contact with her. At our awake, in native tradition, we sit with the body for three days before. Remembering her. The looks on all my brothers and sisters faces, was excruciating. We baried her, in the cemetary. I still remember when I shovelled dirt onto her coffin, I felt empty. This tragedy has been very painful on our whole family. Marilyn was not a rich person. She was not even an important person in most peoples eyes. But she was very Important to us. I never want anyone to feel the way our family feels. We lost someone, that had alot of years ahead of her. She didn't die, from a freak accident, she was taken away from us by someones hands. Someone that didnt know that she had children. Today, Marilyn would of been a grandmother of two babys. One was born two weeks ago, the other was born a month ago. I leave it in your hands, I know that you will find it in you to come out with the right decision. Our family doesn't want this to happen to another family.

Thank you,
Jerry WhiskeyJack (son)

Arrests made in Tyson Edwards Murder

Early this year, the DTES Enquirer ran a post about Jim, a Carnegie regular who picks bottles and cans in the bar district on weekends, being upset at coming across Tyson Edwards lying in the curb by Richards on Richards nightclub. Edwards had been stabbed in front of friends and later died in hospital. Jim talked about the incident for weeks afterward because he was under the impression that Edwards could have been saved if emergency response times had been quicker.

Today, I heard on the radio that police made three arrests in the murder. Two men were arrested in Calgary and one in Moncton, N.B. All have been charged with manslaughter and returned to Vancouver. The police said these three men, if not exactly gang members, were involved in gang-type activity. Edwards was not.

Jim says that while picking bottles in the bar district over the years he has seen lots of dangerous stuff, like gun fire in an alley, that never gets reported in the newspapers.

Australian Slang Catches on in Canada

Have you noticed the new expression that is as popular with twenty-somethings as a new tattoo?

"No worries."

It's Australian slang, meaning "no problem", but it has caught on in Canada.

Sometimes it doesn't quite ring right. Like when the host of Good Morning America thanked twenty year old Alena Jenkins of Vancouver for agreeing to appear on the show to discuss her brother Ryan Jenkins, who was accused of killing his wife, cutting off her fingertips, yanking out her teeth, and stuffing her into a suitcase, before hanging himself from a coat rack. She responded, "No worries."

What we want, what we really, really, want is a safe park

This comment was left today on an earlier DTES Enquirer post, "Murder on the Right Side of the Tracks".  It was a response to my point that the murder of Wendy Ladner-Beaudry in Pacific Spirit Park on the west side park has 75 police officers working on it while Downtown Eastside murders, such as the murder of a young woman at the Cobalt Hotel,  seem to get less resources.    

 

"I was very upset by your post. I resented the comparison. But you are right to a degree. A straight living woman (or man for that matter) murdered in the downtown eastside deserves the same investigative efforts as anyone. I just don't understand why people need to shove comparisons in our faces. There doesn't seem to be any consideration for the person killed or their family; just an opportunity to point out perceived social inequity.

The Cobalt situation is a poor comparison in my mind because the individuals involved have already rejected society's rules. Why should society exhaust itself untangling their nasty web. They were participating in illegal acts so they deserve less of our resources. Honestly, I don't even care who committed that murder. It's one less drug user/seller to deal with.

But when a presumably "straight- living" woman is attacked and killed in a normally safe public park it does raise alarms. Hundreds of people use that park each day, not to sell drugs or practice prostitution but to get exercise, walk their dogs and socialize peacefully each day. Most women don't enter the park alone but now NONE can without very real fear. 

Maybe part of the problem is that we desperately need to believe and preserve areas as safe in a city where so much has become almost forsaken. I was born and raise here, I've lived on the eastside and the westside as well as some suburbs and I definitely need to feel like there are areas that are "sacrosanct". Untouched by violence, drugs and all the other negative and destructive forces at work in this town. We used to shop at Army and Navy when I was a kid. Back then the people you saw were down and out, some were alcoholics, but I wasn't afraid. Now it has become a total hell whole, drugs everywhere. I actually worry that my shoes might be penetrated by a needle if I'm not careful of where I step.

I really don't think it is such a bad thing for people who make different choices in life to want and even expect to be able to feel safe."

Sharon Get your Gun

There is something so Canadian about the reactions of women runners to the murder of Wendy Ladner-Beaudry in Pacific Spirit Park at UBC. Over and over again, women have been telling the media that they will get a whistle.  One woman said she will be giving out whistles.  American women would be holding taser parties or applying to get real guns.  But Canadians seem to be long past thinking along those lines.

Except for Sharon Gregson.  

Gregson, a Vancouver School Board trustee, caused a furor when she posed on the cover of a gun magazine and stated that she believes that women should be allowed to carry guns for personal protection.  

Actually, if there is anyone who should be feared it's Sharon Gregson.  Canadians Opposing Political Psychiatry have a paper trail of evidence establishing that Gregson is one of the trustees who has been covering up the use of criminal tactics and political psychiatry by the School Board to deter bullying complaints.  These tactics are behind the current international boycott of Vancouver School Board diplomas.  Gregson is not roaming the woods ready to pounce and murder but the tactics she has tolerated at the VSB, particularly smear tactics involving the manufacture of psyhiatric and police records to destroy the reputation of a complainant, could conceivably result in the death of a targeted citizen.   But when it comes to Gregson's gun stance, I'd like to hear more from her.  

Over the past month, the American radio show Coast to Coast radio has twice had a guest -- I'm trying to remember his name -- who did his Ph.d research on gun violence.  He claims that gun men on shooting sprees in the U.S. consistently choose places where guns are prohibited; unarmed people make easier victims. In Vancouver yesterday, the would be jewelry store robbers on Robson St. ran out of the store immediately after the owner fired one shot.  I was surprised the owner even had a gun. 

Dr. Laura has a gun.  She's a karate expert but she's not relying solely on that to protect her if she is a victim of crime.  She has a problem with California's gun law though, that requires that you keep your bullets separate from your gun.  Dr. Laura makes fun of the fact that when being attacked you have to stop and load the bullets into your gun.  That's about as effective as jogging in Pacific Spirit Park with a whistle.   A whistle is better than nothing, but I think women jogging should at least carry a knife; afterall, they have to have something on them to carve up the apple they take with them for a snack. 

The Body's Old-Fashioned Need to Cry

I was listening to CBC yesterday and a reporter was summarizing Saturday's memorial for Wendy Ladner-Beaudry at UBC.  He said the message was "Don't mourn her loss", celebrate her life and cherish those you love in your life.  

This is a fashionable approach to death, but I'm suspicious of it.  I don't have a problem with celebrating the life of a person who has died, but at times it seems like an attempt to do an end run around mourning.  The attitude seems to be -- I'm not talking specifically about Ladner-Beaudry's family here -- that mourning is a downer so focus instead on the positive of the deceased person's life and get on with yours.   But there is no substitute for deep mourning.  

Sometimes there is nothing to do but cry. 

Tears not cried don't conveniently evaporate; I can name more than a few therapists who would agree that they simply get repressed. I read a therapist's account of a depressed man who entered therapy as an adult.  When asked about his mother dying when he was a child, the depressed man said that it hadn't affected him all that much, that he hadn't cried.  So the therapist walked him through the actual moments in which as a young boy he was told that his mother had died.  He saw himself looking down at his little shoes and he saw big tears splashing onto them.  For a moment as a child he had done what the body does naturally, cry profound tears.  But he had soon forgotten that he had done that; he had too soon repressed his need to cry and had gotten on with life. 

When therapist Theresa Shepperd-Alexander's mother died, she didn't look for short cuts.  She later wrote that she had grieved long and deep.   Despite her thorough grieving though, a remnant of her grief caught up with her years later when she was an out-patient at a hospital. Something a nurse said, the way she said it, triggered Shepperd-Alexander's grief about her mother and her eyes filled with tears.  Grief left unfelt continues to try to be expressed.

It seemed a tad air-headed of a Province reporter this weekend to write that people had gathered at Ladner-Beaudry's memorial "to remember not what they lost but what they had". This modern celebratory approach to an ended life may work fine for an hour-long memorial, but it can never outsmart the body's physiological need to grieve long and grieve deep.  Jenna Beaudry said at the memorial that her mother "reminded me every single day that she loved me."  Her mother will never again be around to tell her that. Sometimes there is nothing to do but cry.   

Wendy Ladner-Beaudry: Murder on the Right Side of the Tracks

Wendy Ladner-Beaudry wasn't white trash.  

On Monday, the CBC website printed this about Friday's murder of Beaudry-Ladner in Pacific Spirit Park at UBC:

"Dozens of RCMP homicide investigators continued to scour a heavily forested urban park in Vancouver's west side on Monday, searching for clues in the killing of a jogger."

Dozens?

On Tuesday, Metro News printed this: "About 75 police officers are working around the clock to gather evidence and interview witnesses in the murder of Wendy Ladner-Beaudry, who was killed while jogging through Pacific Spirit Park."

Seventy-five police officers?  

If a woman on the Downtown Eastside, whether white or aboriginal, was murdered, there is no way there would be dozens of homicide investigators scouring the area for clues.  You wouldn't see that on the day of the murder and you wouldn't see it four days later.

Take the young white woman who was allegedly shoved out a window of the Cobalt Hotel during a dispute over drugs. A man who lived down the hall said a homicide detective knocked on his door and asked him if he had heard anything. He said he hadn't. But later he recalled that he had heard what sounded like a cat screeching and had peeked out the door.  He remembered too late though. That homicide detective was gone never to return.  And there weren't dozens of investigators combing the Cobalt for evidence.  

I can understand why women who live high risk lifestyles get less sympathy from the cops and the public when murdered than a straight-living jogger. I don't agree with it -- murder is murder -- but I can understand it; if you treat your own life like it's cheap, then expect other people to treat it as cheap too. But even if a straight woman living on the Downtown Eastside, not into drugs or the sex trade -- and there are many such women on the DES -- was found dead and bloodied in Crab Park like Wendy Beaudry-Ladner in Pacific Spirit Park adjacent to million dollar homes, do you think there would be "dozens" of homicide detectives scouring the scene for clues?  Then you're on drugs.

Another thing.  After the murder of Ladner-Beaudry, there was speculation that the attacker could have been a homeless man in the park.  A neighbor said she had seen an "unusual" looking man in the park who was unwashed and smelled. 

But police know that statistically women are more likely to be murdered by an intimate male partner than a stranger.  At the press conference yesterday, the victim's husband Michele Beaudry provided himself with an alibi.  "I was at Whistler having lunch", he said with a short laugh.  I'm not saying he was involved, but he knows he's being looked at.

Downtown Eastside Man Collecting Beer Cans says Police Ignored Stabbing Victim Bleeding to Death on Street

When I read that a Vancouver Police spokesman told reporters that Tyson Edwards had been “rushed” to hospital after being stabbed around 2:30 a.m. on Feb. 1, I thought of a man collecting beer bottles and cans that night who tells a different story.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Roughly ten days after 21 year old Tyson Edwards, who was becoming a dog-trainer like his father who has worked with the dogs of Marilyn Manson and Sheryl Crow, was stabbed to death outside Richards on Richards nightclub in Vancouver, I heard Jim A. talking about how the cops hadn’t seemed too interested.  ”Are you talking about that young Black guy who got stabbed?”, I asked Jim when I overheard his conversation in the Carnegie Library on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.  I had seen the victim’s mother on the front page of the Vancouver Sun pleading for witnesses to come forward, and his father who had come up from Los Angeles standing in the background. “He was Black or East Indian,” Jim said, “It happened two weekends ago; there’s a memorial outside Richards on Richards.”  He was talking about Tyson Edwards.                                                                                                                                                                                                         Jim, a thin white guy in his fifties, who unlike some Downtown Eastsiders doesn’t make a habit of criticizing police, had been walking around downtown collecting empty beer cans and bottles.  He arrived at Richards on Richards just after Edwards was stabbed.  ”I saw him lying in the curb,” says Jim, who didn’t witness the actual stabbing. There were no police or other emergency workers there yet.  ”I felt for the guy…As soon as I saw him, I could see he needed an ambulance.  ”Take it easy”, Jim said to Edwards and then went for help. “The first thing on my mind was the guy needed an ambulance”.  As Jim walked away, he heard somebody yelling, “He’s dying, he’s dying.”               

                                                   

Photo: A VPD constable at Richards on Richards on Sunday, Feb. 1.  Edwards had been stabbed at roughly 2:30 that morning.

Jim told the doorman at Richards on Richards that there was a man who needed an ambulance. "I told the door man, the Black door man, he was the first one I told,” Jim says.  ”He just ignored me.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

“Then a cop pulled up and I said, ‘This guy needs an ambulance, he’s been stabbed in the chest and he’s bleeding; they [the people with Edwards] rolled him over, he needs an ambulance right now’.”  Jim dipped his hand into his pocket to imitate the constable’s response: “He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his radio and says, ‘I need back up.’  And he puts the radio back in his pocket.”  He didn’t call for an ambulance.                                                                                                                                                                                       

“I was kind of frantic to get an ambulance right away”, Jim says.  

Jim went up to another white male cop, “a big, bald, guy” who had just arrived, and told him that there was a guy over there that needed an ambulance right away, that he’d been stabbed in the chest.  ”He friggin’ ignored me,” Jim says.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Next Jim approached a white female cop who was talking to a civilian male; she was either checking his ID or searching him; Jim couldn't remember exactly.  He told her that there was a guy over there who needed an ambulance right away, that he had been stabbed in the chest.  But she, like the male cops, ignored him. “She was more interested in crowd control”, Jim said in a disgusted tone of voice.”                                                                                                                                                                                                           

I told at least three cops and none of them paid any attention”, Jim says.  He was clearly still upset.  I heard him telling his story to friends on three separate occasions.   

Maybe somebody had already called 911 and the police knew that an ambulance was on the way, I said.  Jim replied that he had noticed people with cell phones but, based on his estimation that “15 to 20 minutes” passed before an ambulance arrived, he speculates that they may have asked for police, not an ambulance.  ”It took so dammed long for the ambulance to get there, I couldn’t believe it.”  He said there is a building just a few blocks from there where ambulances are dispatched and he believes he could have walked over there, gotten hold of some ambulance attendants and walked back, and “would have been there faster than the ambulance.”  [Ambulance paramedics recently threatened to strike, one of their grievances being that ambulance response times are becoming slower.]                                                                                                                                                                      

Regardless of whether an ambulance was in transit, Jim believes police should have checked on Edwards right away, after being told that he had been stabbed and needed immediate medical help.  He says Edwards was obscured from the view of police by “a crowd of Black guys standing around him.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Jim was amazed at the amount of back-up that arrived for police.  ”I’ve seen back up before but I’ve never seen so much back-up. There were cop cars everywhere, lights flashing, paddy wagons, but no ambulance.”      

                                                                    Photo:  Tyson Edwards' mother points to a photo of the two of them at his funeral in Burnaby.                                                                                                                                            

Jim was “perturbed” by the conduct of police as the victim lay bleeding on the curb and would later mention it to a journalist at the scene.  ”I told the CBC guy about it and he just laughed.  I said, ‘It’s not funny, a guy lost his life’.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Jim readily acknowledges that he’d had a bit to drink that night. “But I wasn’t drunk,” he says. When he’s picking cans and bottles on weekends, he explained, it’s common to find a half empty mickey or bottle of wine that bar-goers have left in an alley or parking lot.  He generally sips on one while he walks around picking cans.  Jim has lived on the Downtown Eastside for 30 years and he is known as a guy who enjoys going to the Pacific or the Regent Hotel to drink beer.  But he is not known to get aggressive or nasty when he drinks.  And he’s not a drug user; he even hates marijuana.                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Before the ambulance arrived, Jim left the scene and walked around the block picking up more cans and bottles.  When he passed by Richards on Richards again, he saw that the ambulance had arrived.  ”The ambulance was there; it was behind yellow tape”, he said in a low voice.                                                                                                                                                                          There’s an old tv show in which each episode ends with a male voice saying, “There are eight million stories in the naked city, you’ve just heard one of them.”  There are also millions of sides to those stories.  You’ve just heard one of them.     

Woman Thrown Out Window of Balmoral Hotel

On Sunday, Jan. 18th, a woman is believed to have been pushed or thrown out of the 5th floor window of the Balmoral Hotel on Hastings St. near Main.

The Downtown Eastsider who mentioned the incident didn't know much about it, but he said, "Her picture is all over the place." He was referring to the photocopied photo of an aboriginal woman on bulletin boards around the Downtown Eastside, announcing a memorial.

Bluenoser Blown Away

Photo: police officers collecting evidence at crime scene immediately following the shooting

The man shot and killed at Hastings & Carrall St. on Friday night has been identified as 40 year old Earl Steve Seymour. He was from originally from Glace Bay, Nova Scotia but then moved to Bible Hill, Nova Scotia. In recent years, he had been living in Vancouver. He was known to police, according to VPD spokesperson Jana McGuinness.

Further details of the murder have now surfaced. The suspect reportedly arrived in a car, parked at Pigeon Park, and then walked across the street to a parked minivan in which Seymour sat with a woman.

Upon reaching the van, CBC reports, the suspect said, "The war is on."

"Turtle" McDonald, a witness, says the victim "jumped out of the driver's seat because there was nowhere for him to go." He jumped across the hood of his minivan but by the time he managed to do so, he had taken four or five shots to the head.

After firing a total of six or seven shots, the suspect ran west, on foot, down the alley in the direction of the Army & Navy store and the Cambie Hotel Hostel.

Man Murdered in Mini-Van Near Pigeon Park

In what police are saying was a targeted hit, a man was shot in a minivan tonight near Pigeon Park at Carrall & Hastings St. A young woman in the van cradled the dying man in her arms screaming that she couldn't believe this was happening.

VPD Constable Jana McGuinness said the victim was known to police.

People at Pigeon Park, where drug users and dealers hang out, reported hearing six shots. A male neighbour who had been sitting in his room listening to the radio told the media that he had heard seven shots. Alberta, a thirty-something aboriginal woman who lives at 334 Carroll St. in a suite just over the site of the shooting, told a DTES Enquirer reporter that she heard seven shots. It appeared to Alberta that the victim had been shot multiple times in the head. It was too late to help him as "he was already dead", she said solemnly. Alberta saw a woman with him, whom she assumed to be his girlfriend.

Alberta said the victim was caucasian. The word is that his name was Steve.

Vancouver Police blocked off Pigeon Park and a nearby alley, as well as the Cambie Hostel pub [known by locals as the Cambie Hotel] a couple of blocks west, with reams of yellow tape and several police cars. They weren't allowing any new customers into the Cambie pub, a blow to revenues on a bustling Friday night. A few clusters of people who were already inside the pub were allowed to remain.

The police were not saying whether there was a connection between the heavy police presence at the Cambie Hotel and Pigeon Park. But witnesses say they saw police cars racing to the Cambie Hotel shortly after the shooting.

A female police constable standing beside yellow crime scene tape at Columbia & Hastings, told photographers to be careful where they stepped as blood was streaming down along the curb. I looked down and sure enough, there was water mixed with blood flowing past my foot toward the sewer grate. The body was apparently lying on the street near the Columbia Street entrance to the old Sunrise Hotel on Hastings St. I couldn't see it from where I was standing behind the yellow tape at around 8:00 p.m. but, according to Alberta, it was not removed by the coroner's black vehicle until 12:30 or 1:00 am.

The windshield of the van was cracked where it had been penetrated by bullets. There were also bullet holes on the side of the van.

The shooting occurred at roughly 6:30 p.m. and at 8:00 p.m. the police crime scene van (see the van with the open rear door in the center of photo at top of page) was processing the crime scene.

DETAIL Left Out Of Press Conference About Aqsa Parvez' Murder

A press conference about the murder of Aqsa Parvez given extensive coverage by the CBC and CTV "features Sheik Alaa El-Sayyed, imam and head of Mississauga’s Islamic Society of North America — that’s the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) that has been declared [by U.S. prosecutors] an unindicted co-conspirator in terrorist financing, a small point left out of every single account of this event."

That quote is from Morgaan Sinclair's article, "Why Is This Girl Dead??? Aqsa Parvez and Islamic Double Speak" on Blogger News Network. Sheik El-Sayyed said at the press conference that the murder of Aqsa Parvez has nothing to do with Islam.

[Dag, who used to contribute to Jihaad Watch, says Sinclair is correct about the ISNA being an unindicted co-conspirator.]

Evidence That The Murder of Aqsa Parvez Was Pre-meditated

Muhammed Parvez faces second degree murder charges for strangling his daughter, Asqa, on Monday. But prosecutors continue to interview her friends and have the option of raising the charge to first degree, if there is enough evidence that the murder was pre-meditated. There is some evidence of pre-meditation:

“She got threatened by her father and her brother,” said Dominiquia Holmes-Thompson, who had known Aqsa since the two entered high school. “He said that if she leaves, he would kill her.”

Comments from friends to the media also revealed that when Asqa would spot her brother on the street, she would scramble to put on her hibjab, saying,"He'll kill me."

But it is unlikely that the charge will be raised to first degree murder because the standard of proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" is so high. The fact that Asqa had gone home to get her belongings when she was killed by her father on Monday morning, could be used by the defense to raise doubt in a jury's mind about how seriously the advance threats to kill her should be taken.

Whiskeyjack Murder Suspect Picked Up on Downtown Eastside

Last night on the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver police picked up "a person of interest" in the murder of Marilyn Whiskeyjack. Constable Tim Fanning told CKNW that a male was arrested and is being questioned "but at this time there are no charges." Police believe Whiskeyjack knew her attacker.

A Carnegie member pointed out yesterday that with Crime Stoppers willing to pay up to $2,000 for a tip and it being over a week before welfare cheques are issued, "there are going to be some hungry drug addicts". One of them might be tempted to tip police, he said.

Whiskeyjack was stabbed in Main Room at 117 Main St. late Friday night. She died an hour later in hospital.

Whiskeyjack's murder is Vancouver's 15th homicide this year.

Boy, 14, to be charged with 2nd degree homicide in death of 13 yr. old

The Vancouver teen accused of fatally stabbing Chris Poeung will be charged with second degree homicide, VPD Constable Tim Fanning told reporters today, not manslaughter as originally anticipated.

"The new charge means the prosecution will allege the youngster used a weapon that he should have known could cause death", the Globe and Mail reported.

The accused 14 year old will remain in jail until his appearance in provincial youth court on Tuesday.

Vancouver Police: from forensic fumbling to racial profiling

A cliffhanger. That’s how the murder trial of Dennis Knibbs ended it’s third day on Thursday.

Michael Vandenaneele, a former cocaine addict turned journeyman welder, testified that he dropped by the New Wings Hotel to buy cocaine the night of April 4, 2005. He was chatting with the desk clerk, when he saw Dennis “Rocka” Knibbs and his cousin Ian Liscombe come down the stairs with a “guy in arms”. The guy was “a very close friend of Ekoh’s” – Ekoh being a nickname for Nabib, one of the men Knibbs is accused of shooting that night. Liscombe and Knibbs were yelling at the man they were holding, demanding to know Ekoh’s whereabouts, whether he was in the building. When they got to the first landing, they told the guy to get out of the building.

Liscombe and Knibbs then stood around on the landing. “We were congregating, talking,” Vandenaneele recalled. A few minutes later, a native guy living in Room 15, Charlie being his surname, came out of his room. “That drew Ian’s attention”, Vandenaeele said. “Ian asked him if he had seen Ekoh or if Ekoh was in his room.”

Liscombe was headed back upstairs with Knibbs trailing when, Vandenaneele says, he doesn’t know “what possessed” Liscombe to first walk over to Room 15 and open the door. The door opened about 18 inches, and then slammed back in Liscombe’s face. “Rocka was right behind Ian trying to push the door. Rocka was pushing higher on the door ‘cause he’s a little taller than Ian.” Then Vandenaneele spotted the shot gun: “I could see about 2 feet of a barrel….when the door flew open, you could see the barrel of the gun.” The witness who went over the sequence of events a couple of times said, “That’s when one gun went off, I seen Ian fall to the floor.”

It was here that spectators were left hanging. Who was on the other side of the door when the gun went off. Who was holding the shot gun? Was it Ekoh? Ekoh of course ended up dead.

Vandenaneele’s story is corroborated by testimony given this morning by Laura Lee Wayne, an admitted prostitute and daily user of “rock” cocaine and sometimes heroin. Wayne, a thin 25 year old with bangs and neck length brown hair with an obvious auburn rinse, lived at the New Wings at the time the shootings occurred. She had been upstairs “getting ready” to go out to work as a prostitute, when she heard a loud noise downstairs, followed by several more loud noises. When she went down, she saw Knibbs standing near Room 15. “I heard him say, ‘He shot my cousin first.’” His voice sounded “scared” to her. She also saw a shot gun sticking out of a bag on the floor, which she said she picked up and took downstairs to police, although the transcript of her earlier police interview has her saying she “got caught with the shot gun.”

Statements made in a police interview by another witness, Susan Panich, an admitted cocaine addict, also dove tails with Vandenaneele’s testimony. Panich, a skinny 45 year old with brownish blond shoulder length hair, was living with her boyfriend Ian Liscombe at the New Wings when he was killed. She and Liscombe sold drugs. In her view, Liscombe and his cousin Knibbs got along “very well”. But she acknowledged that there was some animosity between Liscombe and Echo, the latter whom the prosecutor described as having a “dark complexion and a goatee”. In her view, Echo “was jealous of Ian.” who was more successful at selling drugs. “He tried to cut Ian’s grass”, she said, explaining that she meant “take his customers away.” She testified that Echo hit Liscombe over the head with a bat, requiring 1 ½ -2 inches of stitches. “Echo was barred out of the hotel the day he hit Ian on the back of the head.”

The prosecutor asked Panich to recall “any conversation you may have heard between Rocka and Ian about ‘roughing someone up’”. But he could get no acknowledgement from her that any such conversation had occurred. The prosecutor pointed to a section of the transcript of her interview with police, asking her to read it, “Does it help you recall any conversation?’ She would concede only that Liscombe was “a little pissed off.”

In addition to reluctant witnesses in withdrawal, today saw the return of the VPD’s mistake prone forensics expert, Constable Mark Christensen. Yesterday, Christensen had admitted that his report had falsely identified a large bullet hole as being on the left side of a victim’s chest and a small one being on the right side when in fact it was “the opposite.”

Today Christensen came to court armed with a voluntary admission that he had incorrectly reported the condition of the shot gun when it was delivered to him from the New Wings crime scene. When he opened the bag and removed the shot gun, the slide containing a fingerprint of Knibbs’ was not in a forward position as he had reported yesterday, but back. And the chamber was not closed as he had reported, but open.

Christensen also acknowledged that in his 2005 report, he had mistakenly identified a fingerprint on the shot gun as being from the left “ring” finger when in fact it was from the left “middle” finger. “I wrote the wrong thing down in my report,” Christensen said. “You made a mistake”, defense lawyer Glen Orris asserted, driving the point home as the jury listened. “So you’ve worked your way back from patrol since then?”, Orris kidded him. “I’m not infallible”, Christensen politely retorted, adding that he’d like that fact noted on the record, and shown to his wife. Laughter.

Christensen excused his false identification of the fingerprint as being from a left “ring” finger instead of a left “middle” finger as a “typographical error”. He was prone to that excuse. He had used it yesterday when it was pointed out that he had identified Constable McLaughlin, the officer who had taken the crime scene photos, by an incorrect badge number in his report. [McLaughlin had taken the crime scene photos, Christensen explained, with a camera with a malfunctioning flash. Many “didn’t turn out” and had to be taken again at a later date.]

There was one mistake made by the VPD in this case, though, that could prove more embarrassing than any made by Constable Christensen, a mistake inadvertently revealed by Orris: racial profiling. As Orris and the judge reviewed sections of the transcripts of an interview police conducted shortly after the murders with Laura Wayne, a 23 yr. old resident of the New Wings, Orris mentioned that the VPD questioner had “asked her about her relationship to black guys”, specifically if it was a “pimping” relationship. Wayne, who looks Caucasian but has been identified by police as "native", told police that this was not the case, that she was “an independent”.

Laura Wayne did not appear to be under Knibb's control, although she was living with him in Room 50 until "they shut the Wings down" after the shootings. "We were sort of seeing each other but not really", she testified. She had actually developed a "boyfriend-girlfriend" relationship with another New Wings resident, John Whalen, whom she called John Jr.

Laura Wayne did not make herself easy for a man to control, as the beleaguered prosecutor found out: she barked at him in response to questions, once saying "Fuck!"under her breathe, and twice firmly chastised him, "I think you've established that!" Her rebellious nature also permeated the police interrogation of her immediately following the shootings. When prodded about her drug use, she told police, "I'm a professional; I should get a badge for it". She went on to say, “It’s like taking a shit and wiping your ass. I do it everyday

Overall, testimony today opened wider the window onto one of the worst addresses on the Downtown Eastside. Tenants behind “every second door” of the New World Hotel had drugs for sale, according to Panich. “Ian, John, Rocka, Susan, Teeth, and Donnie”, were selling drugs out of there, according to Van Vandenameele. Two machetes were found slid between the mattress and the box spring in Room 15, according to Christensen, and a bullet was found on the floor as well as a couple of shell casings. Lots of small clear plastic baggies were found in the room too, the type Christensen knew to be used to package drugs for sale. And drugs were found in the pocket of a beige coat. Police style batons were not an uncommon sight, according to Panache: “A lot of the guys have them”. Knibbs’ had such a baton in his hand as he stood in the hall after the shootings, according to Wayne. Liscombe had a handgun in his room according to Pinach, a handgun which Wayne told police he carried in his pocket “like a fuckin’ wallet”.

A reminder that the New Wings world was not confined to a few bad blocks on the Downtown Eastside came during questioning of Constable Christensen. Orris asked about a search warrant listing blood stained clothing, a police style baton, and a 38 caliber revolver, served to a “young woman who was obviously frightened” at 1421 East 2nd Ave. A nicer neighbourhood.