Suspicion - Where's The Gun?

Episode Date: March 21, 2025

The forensics. How three bullets killed a man. The gun shot residue. Where it landed and where it didn’t land gives homicide detectives some help, but not much. It turns out the case against Chris Sheriffe and Awet Asfaha is weak. Plus, the police screwed up the evidence collection. Things come to a head at the preliminary hearing, where a judge must decide if the charge of first degree murder – a planned killing – is the correct one. Plus, since Chris was just driving the car, did he really know what was about to happen? A judge said no and the case fell apart. Enter a new prosecutor. It was time for a full court press. Audio sources: The science of gunshot residue analysis, The Royal Institution Chief Investigative Reporter Kevin Donovan, who brought you the Billionaire Murders and Death in a Small Town, is back with Murder on Mount Olive, an investigation of a crime the courts closed the book on in 2012. On a sunny day in August, 2009, a man is shot three times at a barbecue. What happens that day will put a budding young soccer star turned carpenter behind bars for life for a crime he says he didn’t commit. This is the story of Christopher Sheriffe and his fight for justice. Subscribers can listen to episodes early each week, plus get exclusive access to bonus episodes. 

My name is Christopher Hicks. I'm a criminal defense lawyer and I've been doing this for several decades. And I have an office on King Street East in downtown Toronto. If there's a lawyer known for taking on tough cases, it's Christopher Hicks. Years ago, he represented one of six men accused in the mass murder of eight members of the Banditos Motorcycle Club. A judge called their slaughter an execution assembly line. More recently, Hicks was the lawyer for an admitted white nationalist caught in the act of driving his truck into and killing four members of a Muslim family in what a judge ruled was an act of terrorism. Like I said, tough cases. He lost both times. Still, he says our system starts with the

presumption of innocence. That's where he comes in. I view my role as doing everything I can to represent my client, bringing all my experience and knowledge to that task. I am not looking for justice. I am looking for defenses. I'm looking to represent someone. Justice is something that is elusive at the best. Hicks was hired by Chris Sherriff's family to defend him on first degree murder charges.

Whether advocating for someone accused of a racist mass murder, or a young black man charged in an apparent gangland killing. Hicks says it makes no difference. I'm just looking for defenses. I'm not trying to figure out what really happened or who did what to whom. I'll never know.

No one's, you know, that's... Sometimes a client has that secret, sometimes others have that secret, but I think in my view it's rarely revealed. And I don't know where the truth lies in most trials. I interviewed Hicks in his Toronto home. It's a 106-year-old house constantly under renovation. Kitchen, upstairs rooms, some major structural work he's had to do. I'm introduced to his renovator.

Kevin is my friend Andrew. He's taking my bathroom apart and putting it together again. Full confession. If I wasn't a reporter, I'd be a builder. I grew up in that world and couldn't resist poking around. Andrew gives me a tour. I took four metric tons of rubble out of the first floor. Okay, okay.

And we'll... The one that got me here two years ago is the second floor bathroom. Tour over, Hicks and I settle into his living room, two comfortable chairs facing each other. I see stacks of files around the room, current cases and old ones from the past. Hicks has neatly trimmed blonde hair,

tinged with gray and dark eyes prone to a squint. He's got the air of a kindly professor. Buttons, his elderly cat, strolls by. Hicks is worried about him. My 18-year-old cat is muscling me for food. For a long time, for a while, I was not able to get him. He wasn't eating.

I was just worried, sick. I didn't know what to do. Now I can't stop him from eating. We talk about the law. Hicks has a lot to say about his profession. He's thoughtful, but also angry. He's just about had it with a criminal justice system he says has too many broken parts.

The lack of legal aid funding to pay for a proper defense being the biggest deficit. Defending a murder case costs hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawyer time, much more if you want to hire investigators and do your own digging. Still, despite being outgunned by a better staffed, better funded prosecution team, Hicks thought he had a good chance of a win with Chris Sheriff. The client presented himself very well. He was a young black guy. He was intelligent. He was going to school. He didn't have a criminal record. And he had a plausible story. He'd given his friend a lift after they'd been out partying with a couple of women on a Saturday night.

And he stopped where he was told to stop. And his friend got out and went somewhere and came back and they drove on. I mean, it was a plausible enough story. And I thought, you know, it was believable. To this day, Hicks wonders about a verdict that to him made no sense. I tell the lawyer, I'm going to tear this case apart and see if I can get to the truth. Oh, well tell me if you find out, will you Kevin? Because I have no bloody idea and I wondered through the whole trial, like why is this guy dead?

What's the motive? From the Toronto Star, I'm Kevin Donovan, and this is season four of Suspicion, Murder on Mount Olive. Episode Four, Where's the Gun? In the last episode, I told you about Chris' mom Marjorie and her fight for her son's freedom. Then I went to prison to meet the man who is 12 years into a life sentence for the first-degree murder of furniture maker Bishan Golub, Kim, to his friends. Chris didn't strike me as a killer.

He's soft-spoken, not threatening. He's amassed a considerable number of educational certificates and is doing construction work, all behind bars. He's most proud of his counseling certificate. He's become a peacemaker between inmates and guards. In this episode, I'm going to take a hard look at what police and prosecutors had in what I'll call the first phase of this case, a preliminary hearing to determine if there was

enough evidence for a trial. Now, with all murders, you need to start at the beginning, the dead body. This 34-year-old man was found on the street, having apparently been shot. This body is contained within a body bag sealed with seals number 1215477 and 1541285. It is identified by an identification band on the right wrist. Kim Gollob lies face up on a stainless steel table in the coroner's building in Toronto. The forensic pathologist, Dr. Toby Rose, is a veteran. She's done more than 3,000 autopsies in a career spanning three decades. With her is an assistant and two homicide detectives.

Doug Sansom, the lead investigator, is hoping Dr. Rose will find something to strengthen his case. He's already charged Chris Sheriff and Awet Asfaha with first degree murder. This is what the detective told me when I asked if he rushed to judgment. If I've got enough to lay the charge,

I'll lay the charge. My case gets better as I investigate it? Great. If it doesn't, well, we'll see what happens. But most times, your case just keeps getting better. So my style was, let case just keeps getting better. So my style was, I'll just keep this thing moving, lay the charge, if I got enough to lay the charge,

which we did that night. So what did Sansom have in the first 16 hours to support the most serious charge in the criminal code? He had a witness putting Chris's family car in the area, and only a vague description of the driver. Police figured that was the getaway car, and Chris was at the wheel. But police had conflicting descriptions of what the shooter looked like. Some had him as tall, some average height. One person said the shooter's hair was braided. Two others

say they're not sure. They hadn't found a gun, and no ballistic testing had been done, as the bullets were still in the victim's body. Detective Sansom hoped the postmortem would yield some clues. The words you're about to hear are from the pathologist, Dr. Rose. I've asked a medical student to read from the report she filed in court. The body is that of an adult man, five foot ten inches and 200 pounds in weight. The body is unclothed. A gold-colored ring is present on the right middle finger.

Dr. Rose noted that the body had signs of recent violence, the shooting, and of medical intervention. Clamshell thoracotomy incision, roughly sutured, 57 cm in length. EKG tabs. Oral endotracheal tube, secured with tape. Kim Gollib was vital signs absent before he was rushed into the ER. Still, doctors cracked his chest, hoping to save his life. The thoracotomy incision is the medical intervention noted in her report. Before Dr. Rose makes her own cuts,

she examines the exterior of the body, turning the dead man on his side with the help of her assistant. Gunshot wound to back, penetrating left upper chest near axilla. Grazed to lateral wall of left ventricle of heart, no blackening or stippling. Gunshot wound to right lateral surface of chest, no blackening or stippling.

Penetrating gunshot wound to right hand, no blackening or stippling. Blackening and stippling refers to what happens when a gun is fired at close range, the muzzle within a couple of feet of the target. The blast releases the projectile and a cloud of gases. Those gases leave burnt gunpowder marks and cause a tattooing or stippling effect as grains of unburnt powder strike flesh. Dr. Rose found none on the skin. Next, she opened the body up.

Three gunshot wounds were present. Gunshot wound to back, penetrating left upper chest near axilla. Organs injured, left lung, heart. A bullet was recovered. Kim Gollib had been standing just outside a small yard where a barbecue was being held. The bullet that killed him entered at the center of his back. To get a mental image, think of the bottom of a person's armpits viewed from behind and draw an imaginary line between the armpits. The bullet struck about an inch below that line. It passed through the left lung, grazed the heart, and lodged in the muscle at the front

of the chest. Dr. Rose noted that the lung would have collapsed immediately, he'd be struggling to breathe, and blood would spurt from the tear in the heart. This was a fatal wound. The second bullet, it entered on the right side of the back, just under the armpit. That bullet did almost no damage and exited at the front under his right breast. Dr. Rose calculated the trajectory and determined the bullet traveled from back to front in an upward direction. She speculated the victim was bending forward when he was struck. Maybe, and this

is my speculation, Kim Gallup was hit by the first bullet, bent over in pain and shock, and that's when the second bullet struck. Penetrating gunshot wound to right hand. A bullet was recovered. This injury is a bit mysterious. We know that a bullet entered Kim Golub's right hand, palm side, just below the thumb. It lodged in the center of the hand.

Witnesses that day say they heard three shots, but only two bullets were recovered from the body. One in the chest, one in the hand. It's quite possible that the non-fatal bullet that entered below Kim Golub's armpit and exited out the front of his body then struck his hand. Maybe he'd put it up as he staggered. That would explain the bullet staying in the hand, since it had exhausted much of its energy traveling through his chest. Police never found a third bullet when they searched the crime scene.

So, three bullets fired, only two recovered. Summary and Opinion Cause of death, gunshot wound to back. gunshot wound to back. We'll be right back. After the autopsy, Dr. Rose was able to say what ended Kim Gollop's life. But her examination provided no evidence of who killed him and if anyone else was involved. Since the shooter never came in physical contact with Kim Gollop, there was no DNA to go looking for.

Still, Detective Sansom was certain he had the right guys. Here he is in the interrogation room with Chris Sherriff, laying out his theory. Chris is here and he keeps saying, you're probably died in a lane that's shot and killed us. That's why you're here. A wet was the shooter, Chris drove the car. Since we're trying to understand what police had in the early days, let's dive a little deeper into the witness statements.

Each saw and heard three shots fired by a man who suddenly appeared and then ran back down the street. But when it came to the description of the shooter, the accounts differ. Here are the three main eyewitnesses, Marjorie Boland, Narjit Singh, and Kimora Robertson. Well, he could be about 5'7", I would say. I'm a go-to six feet dog.

Very smart, bold man. He wasn't very tall. He was, I would say, about 5'8". Different heights, age, same thing. I would say he was a teenager. Teenager? Yeah. He was, I would say, probably about 17, 18, the most.

He looked young. Black, he looked like a Somalian guy. A young guy, like maybe 22, 23 years old. Each witness said he was black. But nobody got a great look at his face. Do you remember if you might have had long hair, short hair?

No, because the hood was up over his head. The grey hood. Braids, I think, probably about up to here. Travel look like a thing, like a Somalian ancient blast. That's Narjit Singh, the one who gets the partial license plate. He doesn't tell the 911 operator that day.

But in his witness statement, he says the shooter had a light beard. Marjorie Bolin, the lady who sees the man from her front window, says his hoodie obscured her vision. Black, and he had a... I just saw it very fast because I didn't know if it was a shot, but I did see the gun in his hand, and he had a, like,

a gray top with a hood on. Now let's compare these descriptions to Owet at the time of his arrest. He's 24, 5 foot 11. When arrested, he weighed 180 pounds and had neatly trimmed hair, close cut, with a fade on each side. So short hair on Awet that day, no braids. He did have a pencil thin beard, what's known as a chin strap. The only witness who mentioned facial hair was Narjit Singh, and he described a light

beard, a little more than a five o'clock shadow. Given the factors of stress and emotion, I think the witnesses did remarkably well. Everything happened so fast. It just happened so fast. It just happened so fast. It was kind of like a movie almost. Because it was my first time ever experiencing anything like that. And I was just worried about my kids.

My son was standing right there. Then there's the witness accounts of the gun. One said it had a long nozzle, like a starter pistol. Another said they saw a pipe-shaped object. That might indicate there was a silencer attached, but the noise heard was loud enough to suggest no silencer. As to the type of gun, once they retrieved the bullets, the ballistics team estimated it was a.38 caliber or smaller. And it was most likely a revolver, the kind

of gun that has a cylinder that holds the bullets and doesn't eject the shell casings. Only automatics eject shell casings and none were found at the scene. Police did what I'd call a light search for the gun, the Mazda, Chris and Owette's homes. And didn't find it. So no murder weapon. As to motive, police acknowledge they were in the dark. Here's Detective Sansom trying to get Chris to provide an explanation. What did this guy do? I know he wasn't enough to let you be killed, but he did something to pissed somebody off. Chris keeps saying he doesn't know anything. He just wants to go home. Sansom is working him, coming back again and again to this question.

What did you do? What did you do, Chris? What'd he do? He swung over to his wife and said, Look, I had every one, he said he's sorry, but he didn't mean for it to happen. It was just a bit nonsense over something, whatever. You can hear Chris sniffing, crying at times.

In the video, I can see that he keeps wiping his baggy shirt sleeve over his face. Detective Sansom is telling him, look, I have to tell the dead man's wife something. Chris just shakes his head. This is the only way I can assume he had head. This is not why I'm here. This shouldn't be here. I don't know why I'm here.

I shouldn't be here. That's what Chris keeps saying. As I dug into this case, I kept looking for the evidence that supported the first degree murder charge. No gun, so the next best thing would be gunshot residue. GSR for short. It's explained here in an educational video. When a gun is fired, gunshot residue is released.

This leaves a trace on the shooter, the target, the gun, the bullet, and the spent casing. All of which can help investigators. Using a search warrant, police seized some of Awet and Chris's clothing. The tests on the clothes took two months. They didn't have the results when they charged them, but they did in time for the preliminary hearing. I was able to get the report and also have the court testimony of the forensic scientist, Dr. Elisabeth Lindsay.

I've asked a student to read her words. Gunshot residue is the term applied to the particles of metal and metal compound that are emitted from the gun at the time it is discharged. GSR science has taken some big leaps forward since his case. It had to with the introduction of so-called green ammunition that doesn't use heavy metals. But back when this shooting happened, GSR detection primarily looked for particles composed of lead, barium, and antimony. Dr. Lindsay explains why the naked eye can't see GSR. These particles are tiny and are on the order of 1 tenth to 1 fiftieth the diameter of a human hair.

When the trigger of a gun is pulled, the firing pin hits the primer at the end of the bullet, setting off a chain reaction that ignites the gunpowder and propels the bullet forward. propels the bullet forward. Gases from the primer fly out the muzzle and some can also escape from the rear of the gun. These gases carry GSR. The finding of the gunshot residue particle or particles on somebody's hand or clothing means the person was in the vicinity of a gun at the time it was discharged, whether the person is the shooter or merely a bystander in close proximity. GSR detection is a combination of old-fashioned and modern tech. To see if there was any GSR to analyze, Dr. Lindsay used a device called a stub, an aluminum cylinder with sticky double-sided tape on the end.

That's the old-fashioned tech. Between two and four stubs are typically used on each garment and each one is dabbed 40 times. For example, 160 dabs if a shirt is long-sleeved, 80 dabs if it's a t-shirt. The idea is that the GSR particle sticks to the tape, which is then machine analyzed with an electron microscope. That's the high-tech part. Where GSR is found is important. The sleeve of a long shirt worn by a gunman holding a gun

versus, say, the back of a sweater of a person who happened to be nearby. Let's start with a gray short-sleeved t-shirt seized from Awet's home. Four particles of gunshot residue were identified from the tape-lift samples on the t-shirt. Three of the particles were on the front of the shirt, one on the back. Dr. Lindsay also examined a white hoodie with a comic strip pattern on it and a pair of blue jeans, both seized from Awet's home. She didn't find GSR on either one. Oddly, a long-sleeve sweatshirt hoodie seized from Awet's home, similar to the one witnesses

said the shooter was wearing, was never tested. Dr. Lindsay explains why in her report to the court. A hooded sweatshirt recovered from Mr. Asfaha's bedroom was not examined for gunshot residue, as gunshot residue was identified on Mr. Asfaha's t-shirt. That doesn't make sense to me, since witnesses said the shooter was wearing a long-sleeved hoodie and police believe Awet was the shooter. Surely they would have wanted to check to see if there was GSR on the alleged shooter's sleeve. It seems investigators were satisfied

that they found GSR on Awet's T-shirt, theorizing that Awet tucked the fired gun under his hoodie as he ran. Police did examine a gray hoodie found in Chris's bedroom, but there was a problem with the handling of that hoodie. You see, there's a collection protocol, and I'd have to give the Toronto Police a failing grade in this case. Each item is to be carefully bagged,

keeping it flat so that if there is GSR, you'll know where it landed, and it won't transfer to another part of the garment. The hoodie seized from Chris was balled up in a bag by police. Dr. Lindsay spread the hoodie out and did 160 tape lifts and found GSR. My findings were that one particle of gunshot residue was found on the sweatshirt. The single particle was found on the front of Chris's hoodie, the one he apparently had with him that day in the car. This was an important discovery for the prosecution team. Even though Chris never denied being the driver of the car,

prosecutors liked that they now could put him close to a fired weapon. Hearing all of this, I had two questions. First, how many GSR particles are normally found on clothing that has been around a gun? Dr. Lindsay testified that when she finds GSR, it's usually between one and three particles. More than 10 would be unusual. My second question, and this gets raised at the trial, how easy is it for a particle to transfer from one piece of clothing to another?

As long as the GSR bearing surface makes contact with the other surface, then transfer is possible. Dr. Lindsay went a bit farther. She conceded there doesn't even have to be contact. Turns out these particles are highly transferable if they're not embedded in clothing. They can fall off, float through the air on a breeze. That day it was hot.

Chris had been wearing his hoodie, then taken it off. Hicks, Chris's lawyer, proposed this scenario to Dr. Lindsay. Chris had his hoodie on the console between the driver and passenger seats. A wet, the alleged shooter, gets in the car and one GSR particle floats off his clothing and lands on Chris's hoodie. Dr. Lindsay says, yes, that's a plausible scenario, not a stretch at all. In another attempt to explain where that one GSR particle came from,

Chris's lawyer raises another scenario. No class of people outside the military handle guns more than police officers. Any gun that's been fired has GSR on it. Police do regular firearms training and handle guns constantly. And it was police officers who seized these garments. As long as contact is made between the officer

and the garment, and the officer had gunshot residue on their person, then the possibility of transfer, the possibility that transfer can occur, is true. When seizing items, police are supposed to wear gloves. I couldn't confirm if all did during the search of Chris's home. Some certainly did, but I don't think any of them

had on the full CSI coveralls. As to Chris's Mazda, they did some tape lifts and found nothing. I was surprised at that, since the police believe a fired gun had been brought into the car. The thing is, they didn't test too many areas. To me, the entire search seemed rushed. Now, the most obvious place to look for GSR is a person's hands, as explained in the GSR video. One of the main uses of gunshot residue is to help reveal if someone fired a gun by detecting

residue left on their hand from the bullet's primer, the small explosive that sets off the main powder charge, which in turn accelerates the bullet out of the barrel. The primer leaves a telltale trace of spherical particles of around one or two microns in size, mainly composed of heavy metals such as lead, barium and antimony, catching a shooter red-handed. We'll be right back. Using a kit, police did tape lifts on Awet's hand at the station after his arrest. By this time, it was more than 11 hours after the shooting, three hours more than the standard for hand testing.

This protocol is based on the belief that particles don't stay on skin very long, and a person most likely would have showered or at least washed his hands. The test on Awet's hand was negative. Police also did a GSR sample on Chris's hands, but Dr. Lindsay's team wouldn't even test it because it was done even later than the tape lifts on Awet. I think it's fair to say the GSR evidence was shaky at best. Now let's turn to what else the police had in the early days.

Both men agreed to be interviewed, with no lawyers present. Here's Detective Doug Sansom. And we interviewed both of them, and of course they deny any involvement, but they do give us some additional information we weren't aware of, in that they said they were out, well, when I say they, not the young kid, the older kid who was a hardcore gang member and a long criminal record, he gave up the fact that they were out the night before, they met two girls and they took them back to a hotel and spent the night with them. Detective Sansom is referring to a wet when he says hardcore gang member. He did have a criminal record for drug trafficking, but it wasn't extensive.

Sansom decided better track down those two women. So the following week, I think I was in court and my partner just started going, took some copies and went door to door, yeah, door to door down around the airport, hotel, and they found them. And then they weren't able to identify the girls because one of the girls paid for the hotel room with her credit card.

And we got her address. Actually, she didn't pay for the room, but she did give her information to the front desk because the guy paying didn't have proper ID. Sansom's partner, Andrew Eklund, was the one who tracked the two women down. Before he tries to speak to them, he seizes video from the apartment building where one of them lived and from the hotel. So then we go there and we can put them there because the girls get out of that car

and they go right past the camera and then we interview the girls. They say, yeah, that's us. Yeah, these are the guys that we're with. So we can put them, I think it was like six minutes away from the shooting, which is pretty decent evidence. Detective Sansom and his partner constructed a timeline. They figured out that Kim Gollop was shot six minutes

after the two women were dropped off. They also got a clue. One of the women tells police that before they're dropped off, she hears Awet say something to Chris. He says he, meaning Awet, needs to stop somewhere. Detectives decided that somewhere was a planned shooting on Mount Olive Drive. The theory was that our deceased was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. One final bit of evidence.

Police seized the cell phones of both men. They didn't find any messages that indicated they were making a plan. But on Awet's phone, they did find a highly suspicious text chain just eight days before the shooting. Someone from the neighborhood asked Awet for, and I'm going to quote it

as written in the text, teeth for the tang. Police say that's street talk for bullets for a gun. Awet texts back, don't have it. At trial, Awet acknowledged that this texter was asking him for bullets. He said he sometimes held things like bullets for people, kept them for a few days until the person felt it was safe to take them back. But he said those bullets had nothing to do with Kim Gollib's murder, couldn't even remember what they were for. The text message comes from someone named Tony Mill, but Awet said he

couldn't remember who that was. Now, police don't seem to have checked this story out, or tracked down Tony Mill, which may not even have been his real name. I think that at a certain point in this case, police just stopped asking questions. As for Chris, Detective Sansom was convinced he was knowingly involved in the Kim Gollib shooting even though there was no proof. He was the driver just like he says he was. He was the driver. You park here, ask for help, gets out, jumps in the car and drives away. Unfortunately, that's party to the offense and that's first degree conviction.

You know, unfortunately for Sharif. And that's why I kind of felt for him because he was so young and that drags him right into a first degree conviction. You've now heard the extent of the evidence police had gathered in the early days. After hearing this, a judge granted Chris bail. And guys charged with first-degree murder rarely get bail. Even the judge said, I have to give him bail because your evidence, there's no evidence here. That's Marjorie's evidence, there's no evidence here.

That's Marjorie Sheriff, Chris's mom. She was pretty happy that day. She said the bail judge was tough on the homicide cops and the prosecutor. And the judge said, no, as far as what you guys have, you guys have nothing, so have to get Mr. Sheriff's bail. Awet never got bail. I don't think he even tried. There's no mention of his family

in any of the court filings, nobody to stand up for him. For Chris, the bail condition required him to stay with his parents on house arrest. Marjorie and Lloyd put up a surety of $250,000, which they would lose if he ran. Homicide detectives dropped by one day. They told Chris's parents their real target was a wet.

They go, you know how long we've been after him? What did you get? Where did your son friend like, how did he become a friend of your son? Where did your son know him from? We didn't know. They said to us, and then they started talking, oh, the most you'll get is a couple years. Nothing came of that.

Chris insisted he was innocent, and his parents believed him. There would be no guilty plea for a reduced sentence. The next step was for prosecutors to present their case to a judge in what is called a preliminary hearing. That's a different judge than the bail hearing judge and a different judge than the one who would preside over the trial, if there was one. The job of the preliminary hearing judge is to determine if there's enough evidence to

proceed to trial on the charges, in this case, first degree murder. The hearing took place over three weeks in late 2010, just over a year after Kim Gollib's murder. The judge heard everything I have laid out so far. The witness reports, the proximity to the shooting of Bet and Chris, and the forensic and GSR results. No motive was provided.

No evidence it was a suspected gang shooting. And as to identification of Chris or Awet, none of the witnesses were able to make a positive ID when shown a photo lineup. And then there was this complication, a good one for the defense. Some of the barbecue guests testified they'd noticed somebody else on the street just before the shooting. And they told the judge that apparently at the preliminary, one of the witness from the house said there was a guy standing at the corner at the corner of Mont Olive

smoking What looked like to be marijuana? That's Marjorie, Chris's mom, giving her recollection of the testimony. A mysterious man was hanging around, smoking a joint just steps away from the shooting. I'm using Marjorie's recollection because I haven't been able to get the court audio or a transcript of the preliminary hearing. None of the many lawyers on the case have it. The court office has recently found the audio tapes, but they won't release them to me

because of a technicality. The handwritten logs used to verify the recordings are missing. I'm still trying to get them. For now, I've got Marjorie's recollection backed up by my interviews and witness testimony at the eventual trial. It's important because this raises the possibility that the man smoking pot was the real shooter. The case files do reveal that a crime scene officer picked up the remains of a joint and sent it for testing, but they never found a match in the federal DNA data bank. As far as I can tell, police never went looking for this guy. Two witnesses said the man had braids in his hair. Another witness said the

shooter had braids. Awet and Chris didn't have braids. He was there for about 15 minutes and that's a description of the guy they say walked down. The preliminary hearing judge was Justice Paul French of the Ontario Court of Justice. He was a former defense lawyer known for advocating for marginalized youth caught up in the justice system. He since passed away. Having considered everything, Justice French made his ruling. Marjorie remembers that day in court well.

She has an almost computer-like memory of all of the dates in her son's case. No, the preliminary hearing, it took place in October and November 2010. 2010, yeah, 2010. We did not get the result back until March 2011. She was nervous. That's when the judge drew and said, as far as they reduce his second degree murder, and my son went to after the fact.

Just as French said the case was weak, he reduced the charges. Awet went from first degree murder to second degree, and Chris down to accessory after the fact, a significantly lower charge. The judge found no evidence that Chris was part of any plot. He simply drove away someone who may or may not have been the shooter. For Christopher Hicks, Chris's defense lawyer, this was a second big win.

A judge had agreed with what his client had said all along. He said, no, I'm not. I'm saying I didn't do it. I don't know what anybody else did. I said, I was in the car. I don't know who shot this guy. I asked Chris about this, the ruling coming in, the prospect of, well, maybe at this point, he could have made a deal and pleaded to this lower charge. So when he gave me that ruling,

I felt like it was a relief, but I told him, I still had a accessory. Like, I remember even talking to my mom, like, I'm not going to play out to this. I'm not going to play out because I don't have nothing to do with it. I could have asked my lawyer, hey, OK, this is the charger. Now let me play out to this.

And I could have got time served. I could have got a couple more months in jail. I said no. The police were angry, the prosecutors too. They felt confident that they had enough to convince a jury that Owette was the shooter. But Chris Sheriff, what about him? Surely he wasn't an innocent bystander

giving a pal a ride. Prosecutors appealed Justice French's ruling and started looking for more information. Just who was Chris Sharer? Two different portraits would emerge. Next time on Murder on Mount Olive. He was really good. He got a lot of attention.

He was known to be very fast. That was why we called him Speedy. Because he was so fast. My stepfather called him hitter because he used to hit the ball really hard. He was really good. We got a cross in from the right side. And this little kid went up between two big defenders. Outjumped them and scored a header to give us a run of the league.

We ended up losing the top 2-1, but that was a moment that really stood out for me with this game. Not only did it show his athletic ability in terms of the physicality of the jump. But the mental capacity to take on two big guys and not flinch one head or a screw is absolutely amazing. Murder on Mount Olive was written and narrated by me, Kevin Donovan. It was produced by Angeline Francis and Sean Pattendon. Our executive producer is JP Fozo. It was produced by Angeline Francis and Sean Patten. Our executive producer is JP Fozo.

Additional production by Kelsey Wilson, Matt Hearn, and Tanya Pereira. Sound and theme music by Sean Patten.