Court Hears Details Of Decades-Old Killing
Monday, November 24, 2008 at 13:34
Details surrounding the death of a Montreal Lake band member over three decades ago were revealed in a Prince Albert courtroom this morning.
The first piece of evidence submitted today came in the form of a recorded phone call to the RCMP.
On January 30th, dispatcher Shannon Conroy fielded a call from William George Lafaver.
The elderly man said “I want to report something that happened a long time ago that caused a person to die”.
When the dispatcher asked for more details, Lafaver said it was 1974 or 1975 at the boundary fire tower of the Prince Albert National Park that he and Caroline Roberts were alone.
When the dispatcher asked if he was the one responsible for her death, Lafaver replied “Yeah”.
In a muffled recording played in court this morning, Lafaver said Roberts was drunk and that the two had got into an argument.
He said that he hit her head on the floor so hard, that he thought she had passed out — before he finally called for help the following day.
The dispatcher told Lafaver she would get a police officer to come talk to him.
It has been 33 years since Roberts died.
Lafaver was questioned about her death at that time, but was never charged.
That all changed soon after he made the call to the Mounties earlier this year, and prosecutors are hoping to convict him on a single count of manslaughter.
His lawyer has questioned whether police did enough to inform him of his right to have a lawyer assist him with a videotaped statement.
The judge is expected to rule later in the trial whether a videotape in which Lafaver describes the incident in greater detail will be allowed in as evidence.