Death's Shadow (7 page)

Pipe Dream

The detectives could see the walls closing in on the killer — for all three homicides. They knew that Carl was still in jail up in Penetanguishene, but time was not on their side. He would soon be a free man; on March 16 he was due to be released for the assault conviction he was serving. In fact Carl had been due to get out sooner than that, on March 9, but had been kept for another week due to bad behaviour. He had been fighting and had also pulled the fire sprinkler in his cell. Extending his sentence in prison was a costly mistake. Dominos were falling quickly.

On March 11 a judge granted Hamilton police a DNA warrant for Carl. The next day he was ordered in jail to provide a DNA sample. Four days later, on March 15, at 5:00 p.m., Detective Dave Place received a call from the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto. It was a match: Carl Hall’s DNA matched the high vaginal semen sample taken from Jackie McLean. That night, at 7:00 p.m., Place and Thomas checked out an unmarked white Crown Victoria and drove two hours to a Best Western hotel in Midland, 20 minutes from the jail in Penetang.

The next morning broke sunny and very cold. Just after 8:00 a.m., a guard called on Carl in his cell. He had visitors. Carl knew something was up after having been asked to give a DNA sample, but just what, he was not sure. He was led into an office where he saw two large men in suits. And now he knew what was happening.
They’re gating me
, he thought — arresting him just as he was about to be released. Dave Place towered over Carl, diminishing him in the space.

“I am arresting you for the first-degree murder of Jackie McLean,” he said. “You may also be charged with the murder of Charlisa Clark and Pasquale Del Sordo. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

Carl was cuffed with a waist chain and leg irons, and loaded into the Crown Vic. A Hamilton police cruiser followed behind. The detectives had a two-hour drive back to Hamilton. Dave Place got Carl talking.

“Any of your family know you’re getting out today?” he asked.

“No, don’t have any family,” Carl said. “Black sheep. I have one sister; haven’t talked to her in four years. My parents, four or five years.”

“The girl that visited you in Brantford — is it Lise?” Place asked.

“Yeah.”

“How do you know her?”

“She’s from rehab.”

“When were you in rehab?”

“In Simcoe, I’m not sure exactly the date. I figured you guys would know I was there.”

“No, we missed that one. What’s the name of that place?”

“Holmes House.”

Carl told the detectives he had to use a bathroom. Mike Thomas pulled the car in at a sprawling highway service centre. The two detectives escorted him in, trying to conceal the cuffs. Thomas wondered what people would think if they knew they were in the presence of a triple murderer.

Back at Central Station in Hamilton, Place checked Carl into a cell just before 11:30 a.m. At 2:00 p.m. Place interviewed him. He asked about that night with Jackie McLean. Carl said they had sex in unit 4 above the Sandbar, but that he did not harm her; he said that they had both left the unit and returned downstairs to another where people had been smoking crack.

“Here’s the problem we have,” Place said. “She’s killed in the apartment ... the one you’re in with her. That’s where she’s found dead.” Place told him about the high vaginal swab, indicating Carl’s DNA on the victim.

“I hear what you’re saying, but I can’t explain it,” Carl said. “I’m not going to change what I said; I can’t explain it.”

Place showed Carl a photo of the metal bar, the murder weapon.

“That’s the weapon that was used to cave in her head.”

“Okay.”

“And there’s no question as to the finding, that you’re responsible for her death.… Did you kill Jackie?”

“No.”

“What happened in there?”

“I told you.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t the truth.”

“As I know it to be.”

Place moved on to ask him about the murders for which he had not yet been charged, of Charlisa and Pat.

“Can we just take a break a bit?” Carl replied. “This is all just nuts.”

Place left for a moment. Alone in the room, Carl looked up at the video camera.

“This is crazy,” he said to himself, then swore several times. “How did I get caught up in this?”

When Place returned, Carl said he didn’t want to talk anymore, not without his lawyer.

“Is there any reason,” Place continued, “that your fingerprints would be found in [Charlisa’s] apartment?”

“I don’t know. I know people that used to live there.... So we are done with the questions now. Okay?”

“Charlisa?” Place said. “Does that name sound familiar?”

“Not really.”

“She goes by Char. And her boyfriend was Pat.”

“No, I don’t know them.”

“Is there any reason your palm print would be on a bat in that apartment?”

“No, unless it was Paul’s.” Paul was a former tenant of that apartment, and a friend of Carl’s.

“Would it surprise you to know the prints were there?”

“Yeah, a little bit. Maybe when I was there and sold pot ... I don’t, I can’t see it. You guys are way out in left field.”

Carl asked if Place was charging him with the double murder.

“Should I?” Place asked.

“Go ahead.”

“Did you kill them?”

“No. No, I don’t even … no. That’s crazy. No. I never killed anybody.”

“Should I believe you?”

“Yeah.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I’m telling you straight.”

Place told him that an informant had said Carl confessed to a double murder.

“If you say so, but that’s unbelievable,” Carl said.

“How would someone be in a position to pass that on to us?”

“I don’t know…. I think it sounds like a pipe dream. You guys are way off base.”

“How do you think everything’s going to turn out, when all is said and done with?”

“I’m not worried…. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

After two hours of questioning, Place left. Carl looked up at the camera again. “A pipe dream,” he said, shaking his head, cursing.

Warren Korol, who had been watching the interview on a monitor in another room, entered. “I know you think this is a pipe dream, Carl,” Korol said. “But you know, there is somebody out there, you admitted to them that you killed two people. I’m going to find that person.”

“Okay, but that’s inaccurate. I never did it.”

“It’s no pipe dream, Carl.”

Carl had been pressured by Place, but now there was something about Korol’s coolly aggressive manner that bothered him. Korol stared at Carl as though he knew what made him tick, like he was trying to bore a hole through his eyes and out the back of his skull. Carl did not like it.

“Carl,” Korol said, “you need some help, bud.”

“I need help,” Carl said, sarcastically.

“You do. You need help.”

Korol continued: “How did your palm print show up on the bat out of the blue? It was her baseball bat.”

“If you’re so sure about it, why don’t you charge me?”

“One day I will charge you for that double murder. You’ll be charged for three murders. You need some help, Carl.”

“I’m not — I’m not sick.”

“You need some help. You do. You’ve got some troubles, my friend.”

The Right Thing

With Carl locked away in Barton Street jail, Forgan, Thomas, and Korol met to review the details of Carl’s confession that the informant had provided through the RCMP. Korol read the points aloud to the others: male and female victims; baseball bat weapon; white van outside the apartment; a fridge blocked the apartment door. Carl had to move it out of the way.

Mike Thomas, unique among the three detectives, knew crime scene details from both the McLean and Clark/Del Sordo murders. He spoke up. “Pardon me, what was that about the fridge?” he asked.

He knew that the fridge behind the door had been in the Sandbar apartment, not Charlisa’s place. “It’s the same guy; the killer is mixing details of both homicides into one story,” Thomas said.

They had to find the informant, get his statement on the record, and get him to testify in court. Korol kept pressuring the RCMP: they needed the name. The RCMP officials refused; a confidential informant could not be named. Korol was bitter. It wasn’t just about getting another witness in line. If the informant’s identity remained a secret, the defence would surely point at the tipster as an alternative suspect once the case came to court. The defence would raise the issue of who had intimate knowledge of the double homicide. Was it Carl Hall? Or was it the guy who ratted him out? Maybe the guy assisted in the murders. Maybe he was the killer and was framing Carl. Korol knew that they couldn’t risk that; he knew they had to find the informant.

“A guy like Hall has to confess to someone when he’s at his lowest point,” Korol said.

In his car-ride interview from Penetang, Carl had mentioned attending Holmes House for rehab. On March 28 Forgan, Thomas, and Korol checked out a car and headed to Simcoe. They had a search warrant for the rehab centre, to check records to see if Carl had been treated there. Maybe they could learn who he had confided in — a counsellor, perhaps. Before executing the warrant, they spoke informally with the manager to try and glean some information quickly. The detectives said they were investigating a homicide case involving a man named Carl Hall.

“Carl? I remember him being here,” the manager said. “He admitted to a resident named Shane Mosher that he murdered two people.”

The three cops stood there, stunned at first. There are those rare moments in homicide where you have a Hollywood “x marks the spot” moment, when time seems to stand still. The detectives looked at each other and smiled. The informant. Knew it. Finally, Forgan spoke. “Well, that’s why we’re here,” he said cheerfully.

The knock on the door at a house in Brantford came later that day. A man answered. Slim, dark hair, boyish face.

Shane looked at the three men in suits, all of them clean cut; he could smell their cologne. “I bet you guys are from Hamilton,” Shane said. “I figured you’d show up one day.”

He agreed to come to the Brantford police station for an interview. He told Forgan he had passed along Carl’s confession several months earlier, to an uncle of his named Don Scott, a retired RCMP officer. Shane had asked that his name be kept confidential; his uncle assured him it would.

Forgan asked him if he wished to have a lawyer present for the interview. Shane thought that he would like that at first, then changed his mind. He was now ready to jump in with both feet. And he had sensed from that moment in Holmes House, when he knew he would inform on Carl, that it would go like this. He wasn’t crazy about the idea of having his name out there, but knew it was probably inevitable. Still, while relieved to hear that Carl was in custody, he was fearful, if Carl was released or found not guilty in court, that he’d be coming after Shane and his family. When the detectives told him that Carl had been taken into custody for a charge in Brantford, fear rippled through him. He wondered if Carl had ended up in Brantford looking for him, to exact payback.

Shane told Don Forgan everything Carl had confessed to him. As he spoke the goosebumps returned; Shane shook with the memory of that night. He was going to be an effective witness on the stand, Forgan reflected. The detectives dropped Shane off at his home. Warren Korol turned to Shane’s wife, Shannon. “You should be proud of your husband,” he said. “He did the right thing.”

Forgan now tightened the screws on the case. He found a man living in Toronto named Paul, who had been a previous tenant at 781 King East, Charlisa’s apartment. Carl’s confession to Shane had suggested that Carl killed Pat and Charlisa out of mistaken identity — that he intended to get payback on a drug dealer. The man named Paul admitted he had indeed known Carl and sold him drugs. There had been a dispute between the two.

Was it enough to offer a motive? Perhaps it was, given that Carl was a man prone to anger and violence, and that he was routinely high on crack for days at a time. And Forgan now knew, through Shane, that Carl was feeling anger the weekend of the double murder for not being allowed to see his daughter on Father’s Day.

On April 16, 2002, Carl Hall was charged with the murder of Charlisa Clark and Pat Del Sordo. Before the news was released to the media, Forgan informed the families. When he met with Charlisa’s mother, Sue Ross, she wept, feeling pain and regret. The murders, she now knew, were a random act. Her Char had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. She couldn’t help but reflect that if Sue had helped find Char a different apartment than the one on King East, her girl would be alive. Don’t do that to yourself, others told Sue. She could not have known what would happen. Yes, yes, of course, Sue knew all that, the logic of it, but it was no good. She had failed to protect Char. The guilt would not fade; Sue could not stop retracing her steps, as though doing so might retroactively turn back time and alter Charlisa’s fate. Why that apartment, of all the places in the city? For that matter, why did Sue even have to get remarried — if she hadn’t, maybe she would have lived with Char, in a nice house, and she’d still be alive.

A week after the arrest, Forgan came by Sue’s house for Eugene’s fifth birthday party. The boy now knew that the bad man was in jail. He cheered when he heard the news. It was, Eugene thought, the best birthday present ever.

Bitter Justice

At the preliminary hearing, family members of Jackie, Charlisa, and Pat heard details of the murders and watched video of the crime scenes. At one point Ruth Del Sordo experienced something very odd. She was certain, after a court officer turned on the crime-scene video from the apartment, showing her murdered son’s body, that while the judge and lawyers could see the images on the screen, she could not. The picture appeared fuzzy; she could not make out anything. To her it was as though a higher power was protecting her from seeing Pasquale like that.

Charlisa’s father, Al Clark, meanwhile, confined to his wheelchair, burned with rage seeing Carl Hall in the prisoner’s box at the hearing. If he were able, he felt that he would jump over the barrier and take the guy out himself.

Jackie McLean’s older sister, Cindy, was a regular in court. At times she cried, but other times she just felt so angry. She felt like she could kill Carl if she had the chance. She stared at him in court, trying to make eye contact, send a message. At one point he looked right back at her, his expression flat.

The video and photos at the prelim were difficult to watch, but what Cindy would always regret the most was having gone to the morgue to view her sister’s body. Detectives always urge family not to view a loved one in the morgue after a homicide. Family members usually want to feel close to their loved one one final time, but it is never a good idea. It can leave mental scars that never heal. Still, Cindy had insisted. She could never forget how cold it had felt in that room, nor could she ever erase that image of her baby sister.

After the funeral Cindy had felt some comfort having made sure to provide Jackie with the proper resting place, one she would have wanted. It was right next to their mother, their beloved Bella. Cindy wrote a note to their mom, put it in plastic and buried it with Jackie: “I know you’re waiting for her, so here she is, waiting for your lovely arms.”

Ashley, Jackie’s eldest child, also attended the preliminary hearing every day.

Her friends worried about her, worried that she’d be overwhelmed by the stress she was going through. It was true that Ashley had been upset during the investigation. After the police had vacated the Sandbar crime scene, she had sent her boyfriend to check it out for her, look for clues. Crazy, but she couldn’t help it; she had to do something. And if anyone mentioned hearing a rumour about the case, she would corner them, ask them for more information. In court it seemed surreal to her, seeing the crime-scene photos. It was like the victim she was seeing was someone else, not her mother.

When Jackie was alive, she would give Ashley small gifts here and there. One of them was a Nike T-shirt that Jackie had herself worn. Ashley didn’t think much of the gift at the time, but now she treasured it and wore it often. She never stopped seeing her mom in her dreams. In one of them, Jackie appeared and said to Ashley, “This is the last time you’ll see me.” And Ashley argued with her: “No, Mom, you’re wrong. It’s not.” She kept having that same dream, over and over.

Ruth and Flavio Del Sordo purchased a plot in the City of Angels cemetery near their home, and a big stone monument as well, for the three of them: Pat, Ruth, and Flavio. They did not want Pat to lie alone; someday they would join him. After Pat’s burial Ruth went to the cemetery two, three times a week. She was unable to stand at the stone, though. It was too emotional. Instead she knelt before it, speaking to her Pasqua, updating him on what was going on.

Ruth’s sadness never waned and neither did her anger. She lamented aspects of the police investigation and the trial. Justice for Ruth was bitter. Even with the arrest of Carl Hall, she still felt that the system had failed her son, and still believed there had to have been more than one attacker. For the entire family, Pat’s loss remained a wound that did not heal. None of the Del Sordos attended counselling. But Ruth wanted to talk about her son. All her kids were wonderful, but her first-born was a special light, and she would never be the same. When prompted she could barely bring herself to stop talking about her boy: how much he loved his family, life; what a breath of fresh air he was, such a ball of energy; how he was always there for her, a friend and confidant and son all in one. But she could not find many ears close to her to listen. For others in the family, even years after the murder, it remained too raw. It was not a subject to bring up.

When Pat’s sister got married, Pat’s father, Flavio, could not bring himself to enter the church to go and meet the priest in advance. He had not been a consistent churchgoer before his son’s death, and after the murder he had lost his faith entirely. God had let him down. Ruth? She still had faith, but it prompted more questions than she could answer. If God willed all, if everything happened for a reason, why did this happen to her Pasquale? Words did not comfort, nothing did. She could never again play Pat’s music; his CDs were packed away in the house. She could not play any kind of music without thinking of him, and so she avoided it entirely. Such a waste, she lamented, losing Pat’s smile and joy; and also what he would have lovingly created with his talent for woodworking, a passion that ran in his blood.

But Ruth at least felt a smile when she remembered a line from the Book of John spoken by one of the readers at his funeral: “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”

“Yes,” one of Pat’s brothers added in the church, “and now He will have many more rooms, and have the best carpenter to build them.”