On March 7, 2009, Erin Gregory stumbled into the worst nightmare imaginable. The previous night, a Friday, her mother Gwenda had been babysitting Erin’s 18 month-old. The proud Grandmother was supposed to return the child Saturday morning to Sturgis, where Erin lived with her partner and three children. Grandma did not show up.
Erin rushed over to her parent’s home in Usherville, a hamlet of eight families approximately 30 kilometres away. She went to the front door; it was locked. She could see a lamp and the TV were on inside. She recovered the spare key and entered the house. It was quiet save for the sound of running water. Her daughter’s coat was hanging on a hook, which was normal. Her mother’s clothes were in a pile on the living room floor, which was very unusual.
Erin headed toward the sound of the running water. In the bathroom, she found her mother’s body, throat slashed wide open, lying in the tub in a pool of blood.
Erin screamed for her daughter, whom she found safe, but soiled and half undressed in her crib in the spare bedroom.
Slow motion justice
For three years the horrific crime went unsolved. Then on June 8, 2012, the RCMP made an arrest. Jaycee Mildenberger was Gwenda and Alton Gregory’s next-door neighbour, a friend and co-worker of Alton’s.
There had been many rumours and much suspicion about Mildenberger in the tiny community and surrounding area, but police never had enough evidence to lay charges until they got a confession through an eight-month, $311,000 Mr. Big sting.
A preliminary hearing was scheduled for March 2013, but did not proceed because the defence consented to commit the matter to trial. Eventually, a voirdire for a justice of Court of Queen’s Bench to hear a Charter of Rights and Freedoms application was scheduled for March 2014 with the trial to begin September 15. The voirdire was adjourned until the September 15 date and a new trial date set for January 2015. The trial did not proceed in January either.
Finally, on June 8, 2015, exactly three years to the day after he was arrested, Jaycee Mildenberger went on trial for the murder of Gwenda Gregory.
Verdict
On June 30, 2015, Yorkton’s Court of Queen’s Bench erupted briefly in spontaneous cheering and applause as a jury found Jaycee Mildenberger guilty of first-degree murder.
Friends and family of Gregory were visibly ecstatic with the ruling they had waited to hear for six years and three months. Mildenberger’s eyes teared up in the prisoner box as the realization hit he would be spending a very long time in prison.
Before passing sentence, Madam Justice C.L. Dawson heard victim impact statements from Erin Gregory, Amanda Masley (Gwenda’s other daughter) and Alton Gregory.
Erin recounted the devastation left in the wake of the murder, the lack of trust in the village, the nightmares, the interrupted sleep. Her youngest still cries at the sound of running water. Her oldest talks about going to heaven to see Grandma. Erin lost her relationship due to stress; Alton had to sell the family home because it was just too painful to be there.
Amanda talked about closure, how even a guilty verdict didn’t bring any because nothing would ever bring back her mom, her dad’s wife, her children’s grandma.
Alton’s statement, read into the record by prosecutor Andrew Wyatt, focused on celebrating Gwenda and her life. He ended with: “You do not deserve my anger. You are nothing to me now.”
Case for the Crown
On the first day of the trial, June 8, Wyatt said this was a simple case. Gwenda Gregory had been murdered and the jury would hear the man who did it tell them so in his own words, in graphic detail.
Wyatt spent the better part of two weeks, painstakingly putting the pieces of the puzzle together for the Court.
He first questioned Erin and friends and neighbours who had attended the scene. He called Alton and another friend who had worked with Mildenberger to the stand. They all testified to what they saw in the house and how Mildenberger’s behaviour changed. The judge warned the jury that this evidence was circumstantial and they could not use this as evidence of guilt of murder unless they were satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt there could be no other explanation.
The Court then heard from the expert witnesses. The crime scene investigators who collected potential evidence from the home, the pathologist who performed the autopsy, a blood spatter expert. These witnesses established Gwenda’s death was wrongful and where it had occurred, but did not link Mildenberger to the scene.
Wyatt then questioned the key undercover police officers who had conducted the Mr. Big sting that ultimately elicited a confession from the suspect.
It was an elaborate fictional reality that brought Mildenberger into an organization portrayed as a merchandise brokerage. The owner of the business, “John,” had connections to organized crime through his uncles who were major crime bosses in Vancouver. John had gone straight, but he could still call in favours to clean up legal messes for his trusted friends and employees.
They proved this to Mildenberger through a staged scenario in which Mr. Big cleans up an assault problem for one of John’s drivers.
They also proved to Mildenberger that a person can get away with almost anything without judgment. The one cardinal sin, however, was lying.
This set the stage for Mr. Big. On May 27, 2012, the undercover team felt the time was right to stimulate Mildenberger into talking. The target, as they called him, and John were having dinner at Chili’s when Staff Sgt. Murray Chamberlin approached the table with another police officer. He told Mildenberger the RCMP were still going to get him and warned John he was having dinner with a murderer.
Afterward, Mildenberger denied killing Gwenda to John, but John offered to have his uncles look into the matter. Mildenberger said it couldn’t hurt.
In his own words
On June 5, 2012, Mr. Big met with Mildenberger in a warehouse in Winnipeg. He said he had seen what the police had and, guilty or not, Mildenberger was definitely going to jail. He even showed him a fake memo about some DNA found at the scene.
It could still be fixed, Mr. Big said, if Mildenberger wanted help. The uncles had a patsy willing to take the fall. “Billy” owed the uncles money, the story went, but he couldn’t pay because he was dying of cancer, which meant the obligation would pass to his family. But Billy would cop to Gwenda’s murder, he just needed to know every minute detail of the crime. The “pigs” hold things back, Mr. Big said, so they can spot fake confessions.
Mildenberger told Mr. Big what happened, including fine details about Gwenda praying and begging for her life as he sat waiting for her die in the tub and the sound of her gurgling when he finally slashed her windpipe.
He then took John and Mr. Big to Usherville to show them where he burned the evidence and tossed the murder weapon, a knife he confessed he had taken from the Gregory’s kitchen that fateful night in March 2009.
Investigators went back and found some bits of metal in an ashpile near the snowmobile shack Mildenberger had shown the undercover officers and a knife blade that was consistent with a knife Alton Gregory had reported missing after the murder.
After his arrest on June 8, 2012, for most of a gruelling six-and-a-half hour interrogation at RCMP F Division headquarters, Mildenberger refused to talk, but eventually gave in and repeated the confession adding just one detail he had not confessed to before, that there was a sexual component to the attack.
Case for the defence
Although there was no forensic evidence linking Mildenberger to the scene and the knife was never definitively established as the murder weapon, the evidence did circumstantially line up with the confession evidence.
The defence, led by Saskatoon attorney Brian Pfefferle called just one witness, Jaycee Mildenberger. On the witness stand Mildenberger recanted his confessions.
Under examination by defence co-counsel Scott Hopley, Mildenberger told the court he initially confessed because Mr. Big convinced him he was going to jail one way or the other. He lied to the supposed gangster in order to elicit help. The remarkable detail he had made up in order to make it look good.
He lied again during the warrant statement at HQ because police never told him the undercover agents were not real gangsters. He was afraid for his family, he said.
The knife, he said, was one he had found a couple of years before Gwenda’s murder. He kept it with his snowmobile until he had to use it to cut some cords loose from his treads, discovered it was a poor blade, and threw it in the woods.
Sentencing
In a first degree murder trial there are four essential elements the Crown must prove: 1. That it was the defendant whocaused the death; 2. That the death was the result of an unlawful act; 3. That the accused had the intent to commit the act; and 4. That the killing was either a) planned and deliberate, b) part of a sexual assault; or c) part of a forced confinement.
In this case, the critical element was whether it was Jaycee Mildenberger who caused Gwenda Gregory’s death.
During closing statements, Pfefferle attempted to paint Mildenberger as a victim and the evidence as tainted by the deceit and manipulation of the Mr. Big operation.
Wyatt ridiculed Mildenberger’s trial testimony saying the only reliable evidence the defendant ever provided were his two confessions.
It took the jury eight-and-a-half hours to decide in favour of the Crown.
Pfefferle admitted it was the confessions that were the key factor.
“The confession evidence heard in the case was obviously really damaging evidence,” he said. “We did seek pretrial exclusion of the statements, but that request was denied. It was absolutely the most significant evidence in the trial. There was no forensic evidence linking the accused to the crime; essentially his own words convicted him.”
And that would be the likely foundation of an appeal if Mildenberger decides to make one.
“Appealing the admissibility of the statements will be a consideration,” Pfefferle said.
The Supreme Court ruled last year that statements obtained through Mr. Big operations were inherently problematic shifting the onus of proving them admissible to the Crown. The Mildenberger trial was preceded by a voirdire in which Dawson ruled the confessions admissible.
The judge wasted no time with the sentencing merely saying that Mildenberger had been found guilty of brutally murdering Gwenda Gregory by a jury of his peers.
“There is little more to say,” she said, pronouncing the mandatory sentence of life with no parole eligibility for 25 years. With time served, Mildenberger will be in jail until at least June 8, 2037. He will be 71 years old.
Wyatt said simply that the verdict was “justice.”
