HAROLD LEVY
Jun. 7, 2005. 07:09 AM
Six
years after a murder charge against her was dropped because experts found she
could not have killed her 21-month-old daughter, Jenna, three things are
painfully clear to Brenda Waudby:
Police charged Waudby with killing her daughter in September 1997, based largely on a report by Toronto pathologist Dr. Charles Smith.
Five other experts disagreed. They concluded that Jenna's injuries were inflicted on the evening of her death, when Waudby was out of the home and the toddler was in the babysitting care of a 14-year-old boy.
Smith no longer performs autopsies for the coroner's office.
Ontario's chief coroner, Dr. Barry McLellan, has since ordered an audit of handling of exhibits at the pathology lab in Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, where Smith has his office. Just last week, McLellan told the Toronto Star that a search of Smith's office had turned up missing physical evidence that lawyers claim could exonerate a man who has already served more than 12 years in jail for the murder of his 4-year-old niece.
Today McLellan will release results of that audit at a news conference in Toronto.
News of the discovery in Smith's office revived painful memories for Waudby, 39. Years after charges against her were dropped, she learned that Smith kept for five years an adult hair removed from Jenna's body during the autopsy.
She believes that if Smith had handed the hair to police for DNA testing instead of keeping it in a drawer, she never would have been charged, and her daughter's killer would have been brought to justice.
"I am a person who loved my daughter, who was trying to cope with a tough life, and who was brought up to respect the police and the public authorities," says Waudby.
"If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone else."
Waudby has launched formal complaints and lawsuits against Smith and Peterborough police.
Smith's handling of the Jenna case and two others would later lead to a reprimand from the College of Physicians and Surgeons. The complaint against police was dismissed.
The lawsuits, which are being defended by Smith and the officers, remain before the courts.
Waudby is also pressing the authorities to release a medical opinion relating to her daughter's case that was provided to the Ontario Coroner's office by an expert on child physical abuse.
In April Waudby was again denied access to the document on the grounds that there is an ongoing police investigation.
What Waudby wants, she says, is to clear her name and see someone charged with Jenna's killing.
She wants it for herself, for her son Mac, 6, and her daughter Justine, 15. Most of all, she says, "I owe it to Jenna."
In 1996, while going through a turbulent separation from Jenna's father, she became addicted to cocaine. In October she gave up custody of Jenna, then a 1-year-old, and Justine, then 6, until she got her act together. Waudby soon seemed to have her life back in control, thanks to a Narcotics Anonymous group and parenting classes. She had her children back with her just six weeks later.
"It was rough" Waudby says. "But it was nothing in comparison to what lay ahead."
On Jan. 22, 1997 Waudby returned from an evening out with a friend after leaving Jenna and her older sister with a neighbour's son.
She remembers pulling around a corner and seeing police and emergency vehicles "all over the street."
As she arrived at the door of her duplex, her upstairs neighbour, the babysitter's mother, was there along with police. There had been an accident, she was told. Jenna was at the hospital and Brenda should go to her at once. It would be a further half-hour before authorities told her Jenna was dead.
"It's every parent's nightmare to walk into something like this," Waudby says. "Every parent's worst fear."
The nightmare intensified as Waudby dealt with doctors and police officers.
"I was treated differently at the hospital that night," Waudby said. "There was something in the way they looked at me and questioned me. I felt that I was being treated as if I had done something wrong."
She still went ahead and gave a statement to the police, took a lie-detector test and provided samples of blood and DNA — all without insisting on the advice or presence of a lawyer.
"I did everything they asked," Waudby says. "All I wanted was for them to catch Jenna's killer."
Eight months later, on Sept. 18, 1997, Peterborough police charged her with murder. She became front page news.
"My name had been plastered all over the front of the paper," Waudby says. "The more my name was in the news, the more people thought I was guilty."
Even close family members thought the worst.
Doug Waudby says he's a fan of police investigative shows on TV. When his sister was charged on the basis of forensic evidence, he believed she was guilty.
"You sort of have to believe science," he says.
Waudby was released on bail on the day of her arrest and soon found she was shunned wherever she went in Peterborough, a small city with a population of about 70,000.
"Going to a doctor's office, I was ashamed to give my name," Waudby says. "I was embarrassed to say who I was."
Doug Waudby watched his sister struggle.
"She is almost 10 years my junior," he says. "Now she almost looks 10 years older than me."
Even years later, she sometimes feels under suspicion.
"You take the kids to the park and families get up and leave, the entire park leaves, for no apparent reason," she says.
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Eight months after the death, police charged Waudby with murder |
He could not be reached for comment for this story.
Smith found Jenna had died from blunt trauma to her abdomen anywhere between 24 and 48 hours before her death. His opinion, filed at Waudby's preliminary hearing, became the basis for Waudby's prosecution because it placed her at home alone with her daughter when the injuries were inflicted.
His opinion made no mention of indications that Jenna may have been sexually assaulted.
According to evidence at the preliminary hearing and other court documents, the emergency room physician and an admitting nurse both made notes at the time of damage to the toddler's rectum. A firefighter and a police constable both mentioned possible sexual abuse in their notes.
Smith's report also omitted mention of the "curly hair" found near Jenna's genitals.
Peterborough police, who claim they were not told of the strand, confirmed that they obtained the hair about five years later when an officer reviewing the case interviewed the pathologist — and Smith handed him an envelope containing the hair.
Police refuse to say whether it matches the DNA of anyone involved in the case.
"If the police had been given the hair at the outset so that it could be tested for DNA, I doubt that I would have been charged with murdering my daughter," Waudby says.
But she doubts whether the hair is of much value as evidence now because it was not carefully tracked over the years.
Waudby listed Smith's handling of the hair in her complaint to the College of Physicians and Surgeons. She also alleged that Smith failed to perform a standard rape test on Jenna's body.
The College reprimanded Smith in 2002 over "deficiencies in his approach" to the Jenna case and two others.
Smith discussed his handling of the hair in a letter to the College in 2001. "The police, who are responsible for the submission of evidence in a homicide investigation, chose not to submit this material for analysis," Smith wrote. "It remained under seal in my care. I have asked the police investigators to reconsider their decision...."
Since the reprimand, Dr. Smith's work has come under more scrutiny.
In April the chief coroner ordered a review of how the Sick Kids lab has handled exhibits from major cases since 1991. That followed a Toronto Star report that Smith misplaced tissue samples that lawyers for William Mullins-Johnson were seeking so they could arrange for an independent evaluation of the evidence from his trial.
The Sault Ste. Marie man, then 24, was convicted of murder in 1994 after a jury trial in which scientific evidence played a major role in determining the time of death, the cause of death and whether the victim had been sexually assaulted.
They concluded that Jenna's injuries had been sustained on the evening of her death, when she had been left with the teenage neighbour.
At Waudby's preliminary hearing, the babysitter acknowledged that he took Jenna to his apartment upstairs the night she died. The court also heard that the teen had an anger management problem. In court documents he admitted that he hit people and did unpredictable things when angry.
Waudby alleged in a complaint filed with the Peterborough police force in July 2002 that officers never fully investigated the teen, who is now in his early 20s.
Deputy chief Kenneth Jackman dismissed the complaint by letter two weeks later, saying it was filed too late.
Waudby followed up her complaints in late 2002 with an $8.5 million lawsuit against Smith, the lead investigator and the Peterborough police service.
In her statement of claim Waudby accused Smith of "withholding evidence he recognized did not fit the theory advanced by the police."
A statement of claim contains allegations which have not been proven in court.
Smith replied in his statement of defence that he pursued his duties as a coroner "in a careful, competent, diligent manner, and in good faith.
"The post-mortem examination performed by Dr. Smith was thorough, according to standards and done in good faith," the document says. "Appropriate sampling was taken, and follow up investigations conducted. Likewise, where appropriate, consultations from other experts were obtained."
The lead investigator and the Peterborough police services board say in their statement of defence that they "had sufficient cause to suspect, interrogate and surveill (sic) the Plaintiff and ultimately had reasonable and probable grounds to arrest, charge and detain her with respect to the death of her daughter."
The lawsuit is still before the courts.
Eight years after Jenna's death, Waudby says she has lost hope that the force will make an arrest — because of the passage of time and because "they have already bungled it once."
She rests her hopes for clearing her reputation on an independent medical opinion on Jenna's death provided to the chief coroner's office by Dr. Kenneth Feldman, a Seattle-based expert on child physical abuse.
The Feldman report was commissioned by then-deputy chief coroner Dr. Barry McLellan. Now chief coroner, McLellan told the Toronto Star his office provided Feldman with Smith's report and other materials.
A spokesperson for the Children's Hospital in Seattle said that Dr. Feldman could not discuss his report due to confidentiality provisions.
Waudby asked McLellan for a copy of Feldman's report when she learned about it in 2002. She renewed her request recently. But McLellan says a decision to release it is up to Gilkinson and the Peterborough police.
Gilkinson says there is nothing he can do because there is no prosecution before the courts.
Deputy-chief Jackman has declined to release it.
Jackman says that, while he appreciates the investigation has "dragged into seven or eight years," he cannot release the opinion to Waudby because "the fact remains that this thing is an active investigation."
Jackman says there are no officers working full-time on the case, but would not provide details of the investigation.
"This kind of investigation takes time," he says. "We are not going to put a time limit on it."
Time is exactly what troubles Waudby.
"It's eight years later and still no arrest? What if there is never an arrest?" she says angrily. "That report is going to remain buried forever, and that dark cloud will always be hanging over me and my family."
Doug Waudby says that his sister cannot be exonerated by the authorities soon enough. "All this is just draining the life out of her," he says.
"They owe Brenda closure."