Truscott witness says her police statement was wrong
Last Updated: Thursday, July 6, 2006 | 10:46 AM ET
CBC News
A woman who was nine years old at the time of Lynne Harper's murder in 1959 testified at the review of Steven Truscott's murder conviction that her statement to police 47 years ago appears to be incorrect.
Karen Jutzi told the Ontario Court of Appeal Wednesday that she saw Truscott on a bicycle giving a ride to Harper on a country road sometime after 7 p.m. on June 9, 1959.
Jutzi said she remembered the sighting well because Truscott was riding straight toward her, forcing her to veer of the road and into a ditch.
When she got up, she glared at Truscott, she told the court. That's when she noticed she was near Lawson's Bush, the woods where Harper's body was found two days later.
She told the court that she spent time hunting for turtles with another young witness, Doug Oates, earlier in the day, but wasn't with him when she saw Truscott.
Jutzi's recollections in court contradicted a police statement she signed in 1959 that said she and Oates were together on a bridge when they saw Truscott cycle past.
She said she was shocked when she saw the statement years later because it was incorrect.
Jutzi told the court she remembers police repeatedly asking her back in 1959 if she was sure about what she had seen and when, but she felt like she wasn't saying the right thing and that police were expecting something else.
Truscott was convicted in 1959 of the murder of Harper, a classmate in the town of Clinton, Ont., when he was 14, becoming the youngest death-row inmate. The sentence was later commuted to life in prison.
The original doctor who investigated the case determined Harper died sometime between 7 p.m. and 7:45 p.m. on June 9, but fresh testimony from witnesses and forensic specialists has cast doubts on the time of the 12-year-old's death.
Witnesses began testifying for the judicial review of Truscott's case in mid-June. The court is expected to wrap up testimony with its final witness on Friday.
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