Honour on Trial (2 page)

Mohammad Shafia and his son Hamed knew they would all be stopping here again in a few days on the return trip. What the four passengers in the Nissan did not know was that the trip and the car itself were part of a cold-blooded and shocking conspiracy.

Kingston Mills…

THE morning of June 30 started out like any other for John Bruce, a canalman for 22 years with Parks Canada. His regular morning routine was to park his car at the lower level of the Kingston Mills lockstation, put his lunch in the office, and make his way to the upper lock area. His 11-hour shift began at 8:30 am but Bruce usually got there around 8:00. There were a number of tasks to complete: raising the Canadian flag, taking the padlocks off the sluices that control water flow through the locks, putting up sunshade umbrellas, and marking water levels.

Routine is important along the Rideau Canal, which has operated continuously since its completion in 1832. Built by the British to enhance security against the sometimes-hostile American neighbours to the south, just across Lake Ontario, the Rideau Canal was never used much as the strategic military route it was meant to be. Hostilities between Canadians and Americans faded away and the railway eventually usurped steamboat travel. By the 1900s, the Rideau Canal had transformed from a commercial waterway into a popular vacation destination.

The two vessels John Bruce saw docked at the upper lock level on Colonel By Lake the morning of June 30, a houseboat and a sailboat, were typical of the canal's modern-day traffic. If these pleasure boaters wanted to be "locked through," they would have to wait. The normal routine at Kingston Mills was to move boats from the lower level first, lifting them from the waters of the Cataraqui River through the first flight of three locks, past the turning basin, then into the last lock that enters into Colonel By Lake, where Bruce was stationed.

There were, indeed, boats at the lower level this morning so staff began locking them through just after 8:30. Then Bruce made an unusual discovery — what appeared to be a car underwater and bumped up against the outside of the upper lock gate.

"I called on the radio once I realized there was a car, to tell them to stop," Bruce would testify in court just over two years later. "It was about 9 am. I saw oil rising out of the water. The car was right along the lock gate."

Along with the student canalmen working that day were two experienced Rideau staff members, Bob Martin and lockmaster Kevin Nontell. The lockages below were halted as Nontell and Martin made their way to Bruce's vantage point.

"We figured maybe it was a stolen car that had been dumped," Bruce recalled. "Kevin would have been calling the police. We stopped the locking operations." The car was in about 6.5 ft of lake water, its front end pointed toward the east wall.

For the lock staff, the fact that a car was impeding canal operations was more of a nuisance than anything. They'd seen a number of objects — including bicycles and even a snowmobile — dumped in the locks or the nearby millpond over the years. But when Nontell realized where the vehicle was situated — and the odd position it was in — it didn't seem to add up.

"It sounded so far-fetched, I thought it was a joke," the lockmaster would recall in court.

It wasn't just the position of the car in the water that was puzzling. How did it even get into the water where it was found?

"Nobody was thinking it was anything sinister. We were thinking it was a graduation prank — kids pushing a car into the water," Nontell testified on October 24, 2011, at the Kingston Mills murder trial. "It just seemed like a really odd place to find a car and probably not easy to get it in there. It would take some effort. It looked like something that would be planned."

At the scene, the police had not arrived after more than an hour, and Nontell made a second 911 call. Constable Brent White, a 10-year veteran of the Kingston Police force, received the dispatch at around 9:55 am. White was about a five-minute drive from Kingston Mills but, as he also noted at the trial, there was no real urgency to the situation.

At 10:23 am, White pulled up at the Mills where he was flagged down by John Bruce, who directed him through a green metal swing gate so he could drive his cruiser near the edge of the lock where the mystery vehicle had gone into the water. White and Bruce peered over the side.

"We get these calls a lot where you have a stolen vehicle in the water," the officer testified. He suspected some prankster had chosen this point of entry for a specific reason, thinking, "This is going to be found when the locks are opened the next day," he said.

Despite the feeling that he was dealing with an elaborate prank, White had several questions. "Is there a crime scene here?" he kept asking himself. After talking with John Bruce, White became even more suspicious. The gate through which he had just driven his cruiser was locked every night. Bruce was sure of that — it was part of his routine to check the padlock before leaving at 7:30 each evening.

A quick scan of the area indicated to White that the car would have had to take a winding S-shaped course around the lockstation grounds, past a substantial rock outcrop, to arrive where it had. "That gate was locked and wasn't opened up until the next morning," said White. "I'm thinking, 'How does that vehicle get there?'"

By 10 am, boat traffic had started to build at both ends of the lockstation. Lockmaster Nontell was relieved to see White show up. Lock staff were ordered to remain at the two-storey office located at the midway level of the operation. No work was getting done and the boats were backing up.

One of the boaters travelling northward up the canal that day, John Moore, asked canal staff what the delay was about. He was told that a car was nudged up against the top lock gate, so he went up to have a look for himself.

Moore turned out to be the right person at the right time at Kingston Mills. A lieutenant in the Canadian Navy, he'd been a ship's diver for 18 of his 28 years in the service. Along with his son and a friend, he had been camping at Cedar Island just off Kingston the night before. They were heading north to the village of Manotick. Moore had his diving gear on his boat so he offered to go down and assess the situation.

No one could give him official clearance to make the dive — not the Parks Canada staff, not Brent White. But Moore decided he would make the dive anyway and hefted his gear up the steep stone steps to the upper level of the lockstation. At the very least, he could get a licence plate number so police could run a check on the vehicle.

Around the time Moore was preparing his scuba gear, White decided to look around the lockstation grounds for some clues as to how the mystery car had ended up in the water. He found lacerations along the edge of the stone lock wall. "You could see where the concrete was scraped," he said.

This was puzzling in itself. The car had to be manoeuvred over the edge of the wall between the wooden steps of the lock gate and the metal winch — or "crab" — that staff hand-crank to open the heavy wooden gates to allow boats to pass through. This point of entry was only a few metres wide. It would have taken some tight turning to drive through that space in the dark. The car would have had to be moving at a fairly fast rate not to get hung up. On the top beam of the lock gate, White noticed two plastic letters — an "S" and an "E" — that would prove to be key pieces of evidence at the trial to follow.

White's tour produced more questions than answers. The upper lock at Kingston Mills is at the northern end of the station, cut off from the rest by Kingston Mills Road. Part of this section of road is a metal swing bridge that passes over the top lock. Canal staff turn this bridge when tall boats are being locked through. Otherwise, it remains in position as part of the roadway. From west to east along Kingston Mills Road sit the lock, the gate through which White had driven his cruiser, the rock outcrop, a section of curb, then the millpond controlling water flow over a series of rapids.

White walked around the rock outcrop and found faint black skid marks on the edge of the curb beside the roadway. Behind the outcrop, on the lawn, were two pieces of clear plastic, sitting in the moist grass. He picked them up for a closer look.

"[It] didn't really make any sense why they'd be there," he testified. "I took a look at them, made note of them, and set them back down."

A short while later, White led Kingston Police forensic identification officer Julia Moore to those pieces of plastic, thinking they might be significant. John Moore, meantime, had entered the frigid water. He swam toward the front end of the black sedan and noticed there was no licence plate. In Ontario, cars must have plates on the front and the back.

He made his way along the driver's side of the black car, noting "large, prominent dents and scrapes." Then he got to the driver's side window and found it rolled all the way down. He peered into the car and made a grisly discovery — a woman's body was floating in the murky water, her long, dark hair spreading out in ghostly tendrils. Then he saw a second body further in. The situation was suddenly — and drastically — altered. This was no prank. At the very least it was a scene of tragic misadventure, possibly worse. Moore swam to the back of the car, noted the Quebec licence plate number, and surfaced.

White had finished his tour of the grounds and walked back to the edge of the lock as Moore broke the surface. "I can remember him coming up and saying there's at least two females in there, maybe more," said White. "He gave me a licence plate number. They ran it through dispatch." White knew he had to act fast to seal off the area with police tape and call for assistance.

"I was thinking, this is pretty difficult, to get in this spot. [The car] would have to be driven in on purpose," he told the court. "This was either suicide or deliberate."

John Moore dove to the submerged vehicle a second time, this time noting more details. "I saw very clearly a young woman in the front half of the vehicle. She was not in a seat. She was floating."

Moore described the body as being in the "deadman's float" position. The Ontario Provincial Police diver who later videotaped and officially noted the scene that day would identify the body as that of 13-year-old Geeti Shafia.

"I could tell she was very young," said Moore, who was shocked by the calm expression on the girl's face. "She looked like she might have just been having dinner, conducting normal day-to-day life and, suddenly, it was over."

He could see a second body behind Geeti's in the front seat. It was Zainab Shafia, also free floating.

Moore would offer up another observation during his time on the witness stand. The fact that the driver's side window was completely rolled down, he said, would have allowed "more than ample space for someone to get out of the vehicle. The driver's side window was fully open and she could have gotten out, even if she couldn't swim, and [stood] on top of the vehicle." The roof of the car was barely two feet below the surface.

There were no lockages on June 30, 2009, at Kingston Mills. The canal staff on duty, at least half of them summer students, were kept away from the upper lock and tasked to perform maintenance jobs like painting. The couple of boats that had started the ascent only made it to the middle lock, known to staff as the "fish lock," and were returned to the lower-level docks.

Information was sketchy. One of the staff had seen a car with a Quebec licence plate at the lockstation the previous day with several young women in it who appeared to be intoxicated. However, police were unable to establish any links between that information and what had actually happened.

The night before…

IN the very early hours of June 30, about seven hours before canal staff made the chilling discovery at Kingston Mills, the phone rang in Robert Miller's bedroom. Miller was the manager of the Kingston East Motel and lived in the apartment behind the office, on call night and day. The man on the speaker phone asked Miller if he could book some rooms for the night. Miller checked the clock beside the phone. It was 2 am. He asked the man to wait, got dressed, and unlocked the office door. Waiting for him were a short and stocky man in his fifties and a younger, taller, slim man with dark hair.

"They were both speaking and said they needed two rooms," recalled Miller. They wanted two rooms with two beds in each. The manager asked how many guests would be staying. There was a limit on the number of people allowed in each room. "The initial answer was six," Miller testified. "The younger gentleman said, 'There might be nine of us.' They sort of looked at each other and [then] said six. They settled on six people. I said, 'Will that be three for each room?' and they agreed." The two men conversed in a language Miller didn't recognize.

Rooms 18 and 19 at the Kingston East Motel each contained two queen-sized beds, a television, and mini-fridge. The younger man, Hamed Shafia, filled out the registration forms while his father, Mohammad, took the keys and went over to the rooms. Hamed paid in cash then left the office. Miller stood at the desk and filled in the registration book.

While he was still at the counter, Miller looked out the office window and saw the SUV the men had just arrived in backing away from the building. The only way in and out of the motel grounds was along the driveway running past the front office. Miller said he got a brief glimpse of the driver. It appeared to be the younger man. Miller thought this was strange. Barely 20 minutes had elapsed since the pair had first appeared at the office door.

Stranger still to Miller was the direction in which the SUV headed when it got out to Highway 15 — it went north toward Highway 401.

"It struck me as a little odd someone would come in at two in the morning and leave and go back toward the highway," he testified. A right turn would have taken them toward downtown Kingston and a Tim Hortons restaurant a couple of kilometres away from the motel that would be open at that hour.

His interest piqued, Miller decided to stay up for a while to see when the SUV returned. He played a video card game until deciding it was time to turn in. He had to be back on duty at 6 am. The last thing he did was check the time on his computer. It was 2:26 am and the vehicle still hadn't returned.