A key witness whose testimony helped convict Steven Truscott of first-degree murder confessed to lying about her story to a group of fellow nursing students, an Ontario Court of Appeal heard yesterday.
The court was told the confession happened in the fall of 1966 at Montreal's Douglas Hospital when Elizabeth Hulbert and Sandra Stolzmann attended nursing school with Jocelyne Gaudet, a star witness in the Crown's 1959 case that saw Mr. Truscott convicted in the slaying of 12-year-old Lynne Harper.
Mr. Truscott was sentenced to death at the age of 14; the sentence was commuted to life in prison and he served nine years before he was paroled.
At a party with classmates, Ms. Gaudet confessed to lying about her testimony when conversation turned to Mr. Truscott's Supreme Court appeal, Ms. Hulbert and Ms. Stolzmann said.
"This person crossed the room, piped up and said, 'I was one of the witnesses at the Steven Truscott trial and I lied,' " Ms. Hulbert told the five-judge panel, now in its second week of sitting.
At the original trial, then 12-year-old Jocelyne Gaudet said that on June 9, 1959, Mr. Truscott asked her to meet him in Lawson's bush, a wooded area near Clinton, Ont., where Lynne's body was later found.
She said Mr. Truscott asked her to keep the meeting a secret, allowing the Crown to theorize that when Ms. Gaudet couldn't make it that night, Mr. Truscott took Lynne instead and killed her.
But yesterday the court was told that seven years after her initial testimony, Ms. Gaudet admitted it never happened.
"My deepest . . . scariest memory is when she said, 'They got the wrong guy. They got the wrong guy,' " Ms. Stolzmann said. "All she said was, 'Why are they going after Steven? They should have been going after the guy in the yellow truck.' " Later in her testimony, she said she wasn't sure if it was a car or truck.
Ms. Stolzmann testified that on the night of the confession, Ms. Gaudet told her that she was Mr. Truscott's former girlfriend and had followed him on June 9 because she saw him with another girl. She said she lied about her story so Mr. Truscott wouldn't find out the truth.
Ms. Gaudet was supposed to testify at Mr. Truscott's 1966 appeal hearing just weeks after her alleged confession. But when her classmates urged her to step forward and tell the truth, Ms. Gaudet refused and was willing to go to great lengths to avoid testifying, the court heard.
"She was a very determined person that she knew she wasn't going to testify to recant her earlier statement," Ms. Hulbert said. She added that Ms. Gaudet said, "I'll get myself admitted to a psychiatric facility" to avoid testifying.
Ms. Gaudet was admitted to a psychiatric facility weeks later, making her unable to testify in court, a Montreal radio station reported in 1966.
Ms. Stolzmann said she was so unsettled by what she heard that night she contacted police, eventually giving a statement to an RCMP officer. It's unclear what happened to the statement.
Ms. Gaudet was subpoenaed to testify in 2003 during an investigation into the case by former Quebec judge Fred Kaufman. Of the 21 witnesses called, she was the only one who refused to speak voluntarily. She eventually told the judge she couldn't remember details of what she said in 1959 but that police put pressure on her so that she changed her evidence.
Catherine Beaman, a childhood friend of both Lynne and Mr. Truscott, also testified yesterday, telling the court that she and Lynne hitchhiked on several occasions.
The information is crucial to Mr. Truscott's claim that Lynne planned on hitchhiking to Clinton the day she was raped and murdered. Mr. Truscott told police he last saw Lynne get into what appeared to be a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air after giving her a lift to Highway 8 on his bicycle.
Outside the courtroom, Ms. Beaman said she wants to see justice for Mr. Truscott.
"I never believed he could do that," Ms. Beaman said. "We thought [the police]had it all wrong and he'd be home in a heartbeat. Little did we know."