Jennifer Hicks stands at the graveside of her twin daughters, Krista and Karen, who both drown to death on Aug. 4, 2002: ‘There is no justice for me or my girls.’Paul Daly
Jennifer Hicks was getting ready to take her twin daughters, Krista and Karen, to the demolition derby in Gander on that sunny August morning in 2002. The three-year-olds were immaculately turned out as always – not one strand of their thick, glossy hair was out of place. They were raring to go.
Out of the blue, Ms. Hicks recalls her husband and their father, Nelson Hart, who usually didn't do much with the girls, offering to take them to a park while she finished dressing. She needed about 45 minutes to have a bath and get fixed up.
"He didn't seem contrary or nothing like that," Ms. Hicks said recently in a rare interview. "I said, 'Alright, you can take them.'" But no more than 20 minutes later, he was back – and her life, which had never been easy, became so much worse.
The girls were not with him.
"He said that Krista was in the water and he drove all that way [more than 10 kilometres] and never called nobody and never done nothing about it," Ms. Hicks said in her strong Newfoundland accent. "I asked him where Karen was and when I got in the car Karen wasn't there."
He told her he left Karen at the park, too. Ms. Hicks was frantic.
They arrived at Little Harbour park on Gander Lake and saw Krista floating face down by the wharf. She was still alive and an ambulance rushed her to the hospital. As for Karen, she was also in the water and pronounced dead at the scene. Krista held on until the next day – and died in her mother's arms.
Five years later, after an elaborate RCMP "Mr. Big" sting operation, which cost taxpayers more than $413,000 and would later make Canadian legal history, Nelson Hart confessed to the murders, was convicted by a jury and sent to prison.
But in late July, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled his confession was inadmissible – that the police preyed on his "vulnerabilities" by offering him cash and friendship. By doing so, the court ruled, the police "deprived H [Mr. Hart] of meaningful choice about whether to give an incriminating statement to Mr. Big."
Without his confession, Newfoundland and Labrador authorities had no evidence against Mr. Hart. So, on the day after the anniversary of that fateful trip to the park, he was set free.
In the 12 years since the deaths, Ms. Hicks has gone from fiercely supporting Mr. Hart to fearing him. On most days, when she's not visiting her daughters' well-kept graves at the local cemetery, she's going over and over in her head what she could have – should have – done differently to keep them away from their father that day.
"I blame myself," said the 40-year-old in her immaculate, one-bedroom apartment with a large picture window looking out on Gander Lake. "If I had the time back, they would never have gone with him. … Why didn't I keep them home?" But then she asked, "Who other can you trust with your kids than their own father?"
Ms. Hicks is the youngest of six, with two brothers and three sisters. She grew up in Musgrave Harbour, a town of about 1,000 people about an hour from Gander, on Newfoundland's northeast or Kittiwake Coast.
Her father, who died several years ago, worked on the dragger boats; her mother, who died nearly two years ago, was a homecare worker.
In the summer of 1997, she and her sister decided to move to Gander, a town of about 11,000 people. It grew up around its international airport, which was once the refuelling spot for transatlantic flights, and it played an important role on Sept. 11, 2001, when North American airspace was closed, forcing flights to land there. The people of Gander took care of more than 6,500 passengers and airline crew for several days.
The sisters were planning to take a business administration course. Ms. Hicks has her Grade 10 and intended to get her high-school diploma first – until she met Nelson Hart.
Six years older than Ms. Hicks, he was a big man, weighing about 300 pounds at the time, though shorter than she is; she's about 5-foot-5. They lived in the same apartment complex and would often bump into each other. Soon, they were dating. She said she liked the way he acted and that he seemed "caring."
But that changed when she moved in with him a few months later.
Mr. Hart suffers from epilepsy. His frequent seizures have plagued him all his life – he has only a Grade 5 education and lived on social assistance. Pearl Hart, Nelson's mother, said the "seizures controlled his life." He also suffered from depression, his mother said.
Ms. Hicks had some experience with seizures as one of her sisters also suffered from them. It was his behaviour, however, that became the problem, she said.
"It was after he got me … he turned around," she said. "He started getting violent and all this kind of stuff … getting mad and smashing up furniture. … He was a jealous and violent person."
Ms. Hicks quit her job as a waitress at the Albatross Motel, because he didn't like her working there. He would wait for her in the parking lot of the mall when she went shopping. One time he put knives to his throat, vowing to take his life and telling her she would be blamed for his murder.
"You've got to be in that situation to know what it's like," she said about being the victim of mental and physical abuse. "If he knew I was getting ready to leave, then he would be all right for so long and say he was going to change and then he would go right back to his old ways again."
His behaviour worsened after the girls were born in March, 1999.
Ms. Hicks was so excited when, five months into her pregnancy, she found out she was having twins. Mr. Hart didn't show too much emotion. His mother says he was worried the epilepsy that caused his hands to clench when he had a seizure would be a problem if he tried to handle a baby.
It was a smooth pregnancy. Ms. Hicks took good care of herself and it paid off. The twins were delivered by caesarean section. Karen was born first, weighing 5 pounds, 8 ounces; a minute later came Krista, at 7 pounds. Much bigger in size and personality, Krista was the bossy twin, who ran the show.
Still, the girls were close. They insisted on dressing exactly the same; they were bubbly, always laughing and busy.
A year after the twins were born, a justice of the peace married the couple in the local courthouse. Ms. Hicks remembers she wore a T-shirt and jeans. Mr. Hart wanted to be married – his mother said all he ever wanted from life was to "work and have a family."
But her husband, according to Ms. Hicks, paid little attention to the twins and even seemed to resent them.
One time, she remembers, they were about a year old and she was feeding them when Mr. Hart came into the room, wanting something from her. He said, "You care more about them youngsters than you do me," she recalled. Another time, she said, he kicked his foot through the door of the girls' room when they wouldn't stop crying. He never hit them, she said, but he was "mean" to them.
He gambled. He sold their furniture and cashed in the family allowance cheques. Ms. Hicks said he would go over to a local pub and play the machines – "He would go there when the doors opened and wouldn't leave until the machines shut down [around 2:30 a.m.]"
Despite all of this, Ms. Hicks stayed with her husband – not only through the difficulties of their lives but through the deaths of their daughters. She was so distraught, she barely remembers their funeral, for which she bought Winnie-the-Pooh sandals for their feet, put them in matching hunter-green dresses and curled their hair.
A few days after their deaths, she said Mr. Hart threw out their clothes, stuffed animals and pictures – which, she said, the RCMP retrieved. All of it is now stored in three plastic bins, neatly stacked in a closet in her apartment. She still can't bear to get rid of their things.
Thinking back, Ms. Hicks said she was always a little suspicious of what happened that day at the park – and sometimes she would ask her husband if he "done away with the girls."
"No, I never done away with the girls," she recalled him telling her. But he said he had "stuff in the back of his mind that he was going to carry to his grave," she said.
In February, 2005 – three years after the girls died – her life started to change. She and her husband were living in Grand Falls and he was approached by a man looking for his missing sister. He gave Mr. Hart $50 to help locate her. This was the beginning of the Mr. Big sting operation.
Ms. Hicks said she thought this was "pretty strange." But Mr. Hart told her it was "legit." Over the next few months, her husband earned more than $15,000 working for this man and his partners. Mr. Hart was wined and dined – even Ms. Hicks stayed in fancy hotels.
Through this tactic, the RCMP finally got a confession from Mr. Hart and charged him with two counts of first-degree murder. Ms. Hicks said she "just lost it" when she found out.
"I was going around in circles and shaking," she said.
Again, she stuck by her husband, saying now that through the years Mr. Hart's mother was "trying to convince me that he didn't do it."
For six years she remained loyal to him; she and her mother-in-law visited him in prison. She turned down coffee dates from several men in the community who asked her out.
But in 2011 she met a taxi driver, Scott Parsons, who helped change her life. "There was something about Scott … the way he treated me and the way Nelson treated me was totally different. I thought every man was like him but they're not," she said.
Sadly, Mr. Parsons was killed in a car accident as he was heading to her apartment for dinner. The driver of the other car was charged with dangerous driving causing death.
Two years ago, Ms. Hicks divorced Mr. Hart, and is now in a long-term relationship with Myles Gunn, a fellow Newfoundlander she met through her sister. They are planning to get married.
"Now that I am clear of his family I am thinking for myself," she said.
Ms. Hicks does not work, living on social assistance. For years after the girls died she hardly went out.
She still doesn't venture far from her apartment – too many reminders of the girls in Gander. There are certain parks she won't go to, she refuses to put up a Christmas tree, and people recognize her and talk to her about the twins.
"Every day it's just a struggle for me," she said.
She is thinking of trying to get a job but is worried about her ex-husband and whether he will come back to Gander. She said she wouldn't feel comfortable working anywhere until he is "back behind bars."
Right now, Mr. Hart is living in St. John's. His mother said he is being "looked after" and "treated" as his "nerves are bad." She won't disclose his location, fearing police are angry they had to let him go. She said she never gave up on her son and believes in his innocence.
But Ms. Hicks wants to get him back in prison. "It might take me years, they might find something else, I don't know," she said, trying to hold back the tears. "Why should he be walking the streets, happy-go-lucky, getting away with the girls' death while I am suffering every day of my life without my precious angels?
"If there is anything in my power that I can do, I am doing it. There is no justice for me or my girls. It's like me and the girls are just washed under the rug."