Thu, September 30, 2004
THERE'S INSUFFICIENT evidence that Elizabeth Bain was ever introduced to Paul Bernardo, a Crown lawyer argued yesterday in the final day of an eight-day appeal hearing before the province's highest court. Howard Leibovich said fresh evidence given to a private investigator by a woman that she introduced the two at a church around Christmas of 1985 is not verifiable and possibly never took place.
The woman -- a girlfriend of Bernardo from 1984-87 -- can only be identified as AB -- later said "she was not sure the encounter ever took place," Leibovich told the three-judge panel. "AB's evidence is totally unreliable," he said.
Bain also never mentions Bernardo in her diaries, in which she was known to write about everyone she had ever met, especially someone she has befriended, the Crown lawyer argued.
Without that link, the Baltovich argument that Bernardo is a more plausible suspect in Bain's 1990 disappearance and murder fails, he said.
"The appellant has failed to show a significant connection to this case," he said.