The lifeless body of 20-year-old nursing assistant Gail Miller raised a lot of questions when it was discovered in a Saskatoon alley. Many of the answers have been found in the decades since that frigid January morning in 1969, when an icy fog hung over the Prairie city.
Who killed her? Larry Fisher has been convicted, sentenced to life in prison and denied all appeals. Why did he do it? He was a serial rapist, attacking other women around Saskatoon.
But some of the most troubling issues surrounding Ms. Miller's death have never been fully explained. Why was 16-year-old David Milgaard wrongfully convicted? Why was he kept in prison for 23 years despite all the evidence that he didn't belong there?
Lawyers will start addressing those questions today, as a 12-month Commission of Inquiry revisits the infamous case.
Cecil Rosner, co-author of the 1992 book When Justice Fails: The David Milgaard Story, said he will be especially interested to hear the final months of testimony, which are expected to address the evidence of Mr. Fisher's guilt that somehow got overlooked or ignored during the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Milgaard.
"Who said what? What documents were generated at the time?" Mr. Rosner said. "How is it that we could have convicted somebody else when this other pattern obviously fits?"
Mr. Rosner added: "You would have thought it would have been very clear to either police, or prosecutors, or people in the Justice Department at the time. For me, that's going to be very interesting, to see how those people answer those types of questions."
Hersh Wolch, Mr. Milgaard's lawyer at the hearings, said he will be looking for similar answers.
"It's worth providing answers about how an innocent man was found guilty while the guilty man went free," he said. "And it was so difficult to reopen this case, and why was that? How can that be changed in the future?"
Mr. Milgaard is expected to testify, but Mr. Wolch said he doesn't expect him to attend most of the inquiry. Now 52 years old, Mr. Milgaard has received an apology and $10-million compensation from the Saskatchewan government.
"He squandered 23 years of his life in prison, and he's not going to spend another year reliving the horror," Mr. Wolch said.
Mr. Milgaard's nightmare started soon after Ms. Miller was found raped and partly clothed on Jan. 31, 1969. She had been stabbed 14 times in the body and her throat slashed 15 times. Mr. Milgaard was passing through Saskatoon with two friends at the time, and suspicion fell on him when another friend told police he had seen blood on Mr. Milgaard's clothes.
Police found semen at the scene, but DNA evidence didn't exist at the time. Precisely one year after the discovery of Ms. Miller's body, Mr. Milgaard was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Mr. Milgaard protested his innocence, but his appeals were denied. He escaped twice, and was shot in the back when he was captured the second time.
In 1991, media reports suggesting that Mr. Fisher was the killer prompted then federal justice minister Kim Campbell to request a Supreme Court review of the case. Mr. Milgaard's conviction was overturned the next year, and he was set free.
DNA tests later proved that the semen at the crime scene didn't belong to Mr. Milgaard. A jury found Mr. Fisher guilty of the crime in 1999.