Uncover - S23 E14: Grievances | "The Pit"

Episode Date: December 25, 2023

Greg explains why he thinks he’s the victim. As witnesses are questioned again, Greg appears in court on another matter. The judge gives a stern lesson in courtroom etiquette.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Sherry Furtuck vanished from the gravel pit on a cold day in December 2015. Now it's nearly the end of summer in 2023, and her estranged husband Greg is still on trial for murder. I probably sound like a broken record when I say the trial has been held up again. It can't move forward, not until the judge says whether Greg's confession is in or out as evidence. We told you that decision could come soon. That was more than six months ago, and we're still waiting. This 40-year ruling is a really big deal for this case,

and the judge was actually ready to share it a long time ago but Greg is still acting as his own lawyer and he continues to cause delays. So I'm here now with an update on what Greg's been trying to do and why there's still no conclusion to this case. Furtuck wants to quiz the Crown's ballistic expert, and he has questions for his former girlfriend. I don't want to say that I dread opening my mailbox and seeing notices from the court, but I did. My first thought was, oh my God, Greg Furtuck has made an application. But I began the conversation by saying,

hey Doris, remember me, long time, and I'm still a victim. All the stuff that's been going on in this trial, it's going to be a real head shaker once I get up and get up and start talking. I'm Kendall Latimer, and this is episode 14 of The Pit. Voidears don't usually drag on this long. They're hardly ever reopened. But that's happened multiple times in Greg's case. We'll talk about the latest delay in a little bit. But first,

we should talk about where we left off in the last episode. Well, actually, yeah, if you could come down here and arrange an interview, that would be perfect. Greg asked us to come speak with him at the jail. We want to interview him in person, so we made a plan to go down there. But like so many things in this story, that plan fell apart. The provincial government won't let us in. A spokesperson says they only allow journalists to bring recorders into jail for exceptional circumstances, and this doesn't meet their bar. If Greg wants to speak with us, it has to be by phone.

So even though they've let us interview him there before, and even though he's now representing himself, we still can't talk to him face-to-face. So I wrote to Greg again to let him know what happened. He called back, saying he wants to keep talking. Greg calls me often. The calls come without warning, like when I'm making brunch or out for a walk. So I have to scramble to record our interviews on my phone.

It's not ideal, but I have a lot of questions. The calls are capped at 20 minutes. I try to cover as much ground as possible. I ask him about Sherry. He still insists he had nothing to do with her disappearance. I try to cover as much ground as possible. I ask him about Sherry. He still insists he had nothing to do with her disappearance. We talk about the rifle, the one that Dean and Courtney Williams found under that shed west of Saskatoon. The Crown says this is the murder weapon.

Gregg says he's not worried about it. Another thing, too, that bullshit gun that they found, I even told my lawyer, Mike Nolan, there, to ask an expert witness if they checked another Bruger 1022, you know, because that one matched the shells there. And he wouldn't. I asked the expert witness, does he realize that every Bruger 10-22 in North America will match those shells of the gravel pit?

You know, or are you just making that up? So you think that the gun that they found has no bearing on the case? Absolutely no bearing. The only way you're going to find out if that guy had any bearing that they found is to find the body and extract the lead or whatever, or whatever happened to it. Who knows?

Maybe that wasn't even shot. Maybe somebody choked or stabbed or I don't know, you know, got rid of it that way. But if you need the lead lead that goes through the barrel. The lead is like a fingerprint. In our conversations, Greg shows disdain and contempt for Crown Prosecutor Corey Bliss, and he accuses the RCMP of planting evidence against him.

All the stuff that's been going on in this trial, it's going to be a real head-shaker once I get up and start talking. Yeah. against him. days for nothing. You know, like, I've owned dogs my whole life, and I would never, ever do that to my own dog. Never. It would be more humane for them to just take me out and shoot me than what they did to me. Just a reminder, Greg's accusations of corruption and conspiracy are allegations. He has not provided evidence to back up these claims. I ask Greg if he plans to testify at the trial. He dances around the question and says what he really wants is to hear from Doris, his former girlfriend. He also asks me to speak with her. Yeah, you should actually go interview Doris LaRock.

She'll tell you what they did to her, how I got stuck in here. I should note that we did ask Doris for an interview long before she testified against Greg. At the time, she told us she didn't want to talk. She said she might speak with us once the trial was over. But that was years ago, and the judge's decision is still far away. Greg tells me he thinks the police pressured Doris into signing a no-contact order, and that's why he didn't get out on bail. I used to walk the dog every day. Me and him would go for, you know, an hour or so or something like that. And we used to go, depending on the time of the year,

we used to go down to Pike Lake, you know, walk the dog through the bushes. But Greg's bail hearing didn't go ahead, and Doris ended up testifying against him. I asked Greg why he thinks the police would try to prevent him from getting bail. Well, do you know why? Because they don't have any more evidence right now than they did in 2017. Mr. Bigg spent $640,000. $640,000. They're protecting their own jobs right now. That's what they're doing. Justice Richard Daniluk was supposed to make his ruling on the voir dire evidence earlier this year. That was set for April.

But two weeks before that hearing, we got a notification from the court saying the decision was called off. The wording was clear. This delay was not the judge's fault. accused killer greg furtuck wants to recall witnesses at his saskatoon murder trial so he can cross-examine them personally he wants to ask questions he says his former lawyers didn't ask furtuck wants to quiz the crown's ballistic expert and he has questions for his former girlfriend justice richard daniluk reserved his decision on the application until next month. Once it became clear what Greg was up to, I gave Alicia a call.

She's been busy, still working across the globe in Australia, but she continues to follow this case from afar. So I'm really curious to know more about why the four-year decision was called off again. So I show up to court on the day that we were supposed to get the ruling, right? We learn that Greg actually wants to call back two of the Crown witnesses, which would require reopening the voir dire. Who are the witnesses that Greg wants to call back?

The person that the Crown called as their expert on the gun, Kenneth Chan. He's the one that said in his expert opinion that that rifle, which was found under the shed, was the rifle that was fired at the gravel pit. Greg says he wants to question the gun expert because he says his former lawyers missed certain questions that would show the shell casings found in the gravel pit where Sherry disappeared did not come from one of his guns. He actually said in court he could prove the shells were, quote, not mine. But he doesn't have to prove that. That's not up to him, is it? Right. He doesn't have to say or prove anything.

It's up to the Crown to prove the elements of first-degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt. The problem here for the judge when it comes to considering Greg's request here to reopen the voir dire comes from those assertions from Greg that his lawyers ultimately didn't ask the questions that Greg, who was their client at the time, wanted asked. And so Greg is alleging that they missed elements or were incompetent during the cross-examination. So if they didn't do what he wanted, is Greg having a fair trial in the eyes of the court? And you said he also wants to bring Doris back. I mean, that really struck me because that could be really difficult for her or intimidating. Obviously, Doris was his common law partner. She testified even then that she suspected she may have some sort of early dementia or memory loss issues. Why does he want her to testify again?

Greg says the questions he's going to ask Doris will show that her testimony was basically a lie and that what she said doesn't corroborate anything. In 2021, when she testified, that's when she says Greg came home in 2015, just hours after Sherry disappeared. And she says Greg was super drunk and that he said that he had shot Sherry and buried her at the gravel pit. Right. But she didn't tell the police this until later. She didn't tell them until 2020, even though she was interviewed multiple times about Greg and Sherry and the disappearance. During a phone call with Greg, I asked him what he thought about what Doris said. you know what, you can't dig a hole in a gravel pit in December. So how the hell was I going to bury her in a gravel pit? It was a totally made-up story.

When I was arrested one day for the murder of Sherry and then let me go the next day because I didn't do nothing. They had no evidence. This really foreshadows for me what we're going to hear when he actually gets back in court. Is Justice Daniluk going to allow this? Yeah. So actually, when Greg first made the request, he was super adamant that he wanted to question Doris in person. You'll remember when Doris testified a couple of years ago, she testified from a separate room at the courthouse by video. But this time around, Greg really wanted to question her face-to-face.

The judge didn't allow that request, and the judge also made a point to note that Greg and Doris had been in a personal relationship, so Greg really needs to keep his questions relevant. How much of this is about writing what he feels are wrongs against him personally versus his actual attempt to represent himself? When Greg was like, call Doris, call Doris,

he was even like, if you interview Doris, I won't have to call her to court. Explain to her, if she gives you an interview, I won't have to call her to court for a witness. And I said what the media does has no bearing on what happens in court. Yeah. Does it feel to you like these variables are just stacking up? You know, there's Greg's head injury. You know, then there's all the delays through the COVID process. Then there's this complaints against Mike Nolan and Morris Bodnar. It just feels like all of these kind of wildcard elements that you would not expect or

would not play out in a normal case seem to just be piling up here. It's just interesting to think about how this quest for a fair trial puts Sherry's family further away from any sort of, I guess, closure. And I imagine the fear would be that something could go wrong and it could lead to a mistrial. After all of this time and emotional energy that Sherry's family has had to put into watching this trial unfold, that something could go wrong the longer that it drags on.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. As Greg's murder trial trudges along at the Court of King's Bench, his legal matters take another turn at a different courthouse. The provincial court typically handles less serious criminal offenses, and Greg's name appears on the docket seemingly out of the blue. We told you earlier that Greg is not allowed to contact Doris. As it turns out, he's accused of speaking with her when he wasn't supposed to. Greg believes Doris was pressured to turn against him. He blames two people for this, prosecutor Corey Bliss and an RCMP officer named Keith Hill. They wanted a no-contact order against me and Doris, so I wouldn't have a place to go back to.

Corey Bliss and RCMP officer Keith Hill planted that bullshit on me, so I would have to stay in here. Even if Greg's allegations were true, and we haven't seen evidence that they are, the trial is not a debate about how the conditions came to be. It's about whether the no contact order existed. And if it did exist, did Greg break it? And it's up to a new judge, Justice Bruce Bauer, to deal with this. Well, I was very interested because this would be the second judge who Mr. Furtack had appeared in front of, and Judge Bruce Bauer in provincial court. That's Dan Zekreski. You might remember him from earlier episodes. He's

been covering crime in Saskatoon for decades, and he's helping report on Greg Furtack's case, including the second trial. So we got together to sort out what happened. So Kendall, I'm really curious here, you know, we've both seen Greg Furtuck at Court of King's Bench, but there's been sort of this side story going on, if I could call it that, where he was facing a breach charge and actually went through a provincial court trial where he represented himself. You were in court for that. What was it like to see Greg alone at the bench? So there's Greg. He's got his, still wearing his orange prison shirt. And then he's beside Corey, who's looking sharp in a suit. They're in the courtroom, basically sitting as equals,

even though Greg is also the accused in this situation. Things get pretty interesting when Corey Bliss decides to call Keith Hill to testify. Keith Hill is the RCMP officer that Greg is a little bit obsessed with. I'm quite curious as to why Corey Bliss would have called Keith Hill, because you're quite right, that's a name that Mr. Furtuck has asphyxiated on from the start. How did he play into this provincial court trial? He was basically called so he could identify that it was Greg speaking with Doris on those recordings because he's been part of this investigation into Sherry's disappearance and subsequently Greg Furtuck

since the get-go. So he's listened to hours of tapes of Greg. He knows his voice. He's also spoken with Doris directly. And what was really interesting, Dan, was that Greg got a chance to question Keith Hill. And instead of questioning him about how he identified their voices or how he could know for sure that it was actually them, Greg went on and on, as he sometimes does, about what he believed Keith Hill did to Doris, saying that Keith Hill threatened to arrest Doris if she didn't sign this no-contact order. Keith Hill obviously said to Greg that he would never say that, he would never threaten her into this.

But like I said, it was just chaotic and off track, and the judge had to basically keep reminding Greg that that's not the point of this trial. You know, that's very typical, I think, of what we've seen. And certainly the admonishments from the bench that we've heard from Justice Daniluk, they all turn on trying to get it into his head, if I could describe it like that, that your questions are not evidence. And I think Greg's failing in these scenarios is he either doesn't understand that or he's unwilling to accept it. And so you were actually, you went back to court to pick up the

decision about whether or not Greg was convicted or not of this breach charge. So when you went back to court that day, what was that like for you? It was fascinating to watch because, I mean, I've seen Judge Bauer, first of all, as a crown prosecutor and then as a judge. And he's a very steady force in the courtroom. He was very polite to Mr. Furtuck, but he also clearly didn't get dragged into what Greg was trying to do. He delivered the decision that, and it was in some respects a no-brainer. When Judge Bauer found him guilty, then they wanted to move on to the sentencing phase. And the first thing that Corey Bliss asked Greg Furtuck was whether he admitted his criminal record. Standard procedure, right?

Very standard. Absolutely. It's the first thing you want to do. And Greg immediately launches into a speech about Keith Hill and the RCMP. And Judge Bauer just goes, are you admitting the criminal record? And Greg speeches and he sort of cuts him off very politely and then says, we're going to have to order it from Regina and we'll set a date for the next hearing. You know, Judge Bauer's dealt with a lot of combative people in the box over the years. So he just wasn't going to have anything with it. What do you make of how politely this judge and others have handled accused people that are behaving like Greg Furtuck who aren't necessarily following courtroom protocol

or etiquette or courtesy and have a tendency to veer off course or interrupt or frankly just extremely difficult to deal with. You know, the other judge, King's bench judge that I saw it with most frequently was Justice Gerald Albright. You know, the stuff that he took from people out of politeness and out of an abundance of caution was astonishing. I would have, you know, lost my temper and been screaming at people several appearances early, but he was always steady and even. And I think the misunderstanding or the mistake a lot of the people make, the accused make when they're treated with almost deference. They're treated as an equal in that courtroom. You know, Greg Furtuck is self-representing himself. So he's treated like that.

I think they mistake kindness for weakness. And it always comes around and bites them in the end at some point. And this is tied intimately, and the judges always talk about this, to the presumption of innocence. This person comes into the courtroom like you or I. Nothing has been established. But once it is established, if they are found guilty, they are going to see the other side of the judge and the justice system. And we've seen glimpses of this with Richard Daniluk was presiding over, actually another domestic homicide. That decision he made in the end, people were just captured by how strongly worded it was and how he handled that matter. The particular case you're referencing was a man named Ranbir Dool.

And in its own way, it presented challenges similar to Greg Furtuck in the sense that it was a complicated case. There was very much circumstantial evidence. You know, Greg Furtuck had had a head injury, so there were issues of comprehension. Here it was language. You know, did we need a translator in court? So Justice Daniluk, all through the trial, was, again, almost deferential to the accused. You know, do you have a notebook? Do you have a pen?

If you don't understand anything, stop the process. And it was like that through the entire trial. And then he found him guilty. He found this man guilty of killing his ex-wife's niece. And it was during the sentencing that we got a glimpse of everything, certainly from my perspective of what the judge had sort of just kept in check. And I should be very clear, this is my interpretation of what I saw. But he had been reasonable and polite to the entire trial. And then when it got down to the sentencing, he spoke to the victim, the young woman's aunt, who was clearly concerned that she had somehow had some responsibility.

She blamed herself. Yes, in her niece had getting killed. And Justice Daniluk just spoke directly to her and said, look, this is not your fault. I have always remember the line, I have grown weary of this, the domestic violence. And he just laid it out so explicitly. Men in Saskatchewan solve their problems with women by hitting them. And that is wrong. And looking at Duosir, you're a killer.

The presumption of innocence is no longer there. I think there's going to be an accounting in this Vertoc trial at the end, either way. I'm so curious about what Justice Richard Daniluk will have to say when everything is said and done. Whatever way it comes down, what do you expect? I think this trial that has just dragged on interminably with more delays than anyone has ever seen. I think things are going to wrap up fairly quickly. I think what everyone is hoping for, I'm certainly hoping for, is a clean conclusion.

The evidence that was presented in the voir dire will be accepted. He will accept the Mr. Big Sting, and that will be applied to the trial, in which case it will end fairly quickly because everybody's testified. And if he accepts the voir dire evidence, he's accepting that Greg Furtuck admitted to killing Sherry and acted it out. By the same token, if he does not accept that evidence or does not accept key portions of it, like the admission, then we're going to see Mr. Big Stings thrown on the barbecue. Because those are controversial as it stands. The Supreme Court has already weighed in on them.

The whole concept of the burden of evidence, it's now on the Crown to prove that it should be admitted. So the stakes are really high. It's near the end of June when Greg's murder trial picks up again. It's back on so he can recall the Crown witnesses, the gun expert, and Doris. As the court date approaches, I think about how strange it is that Greg was convicted of a criminal offense because he spoke with Doris, and yet he's allowed to force her back to the courtroom so he can question her. Greg Furtuck is on trial for first-degree murder. But yesterday, he shifted his position in the courtroom

from the prisoner's box to the defense lawyer's chair. He cross-examined his former girlfriend and a gun expert yesterday to personally question them about their testimony. On the day of questioning, Dan and I are both out of town. But our colleague Pratush Dayal was there in the courtroom. I give him a call to see how it went. Hey, are you still there?

Yes, I am. Okay, perfect. How are you doing? How did it go for you? The biggest takeaway today was very surprising with, you know, Doris saying that Furtick never told her that he killed Sherry. And we all were like, oh, my God, wow. Did she expand more on that, or how did that come about? Did she say she made that story up, or she was confused? She just said, no, Furtick never told me.

And the judge also tried to probe her on that. And she said, no, I don't remember Ferta telling me ever this. And today, like Ferta, while cross-examining, asked quite a few questions, and to the most of them, she just replied, no, I don't remember that. No, I don't recall that. Did the prosecutors ask Doris any questions? No, they did not. They did on two occasions, you know, redirect him because Berta began the conversation by saying, hey, Doris, remember me a long time and I'm still a victim. And the judge immediately jumped on that saying, you cannot be saying all this. And so the judge jumped in, did doris acknowledge greg or like remember

the relationship or did she have a chance to learn what did she say yeah that's again again you know where the uh perhaps the memory loss could be coming in because uh in the very second or third question uh for her cause that do you remember dorisis, that we were living together for six to seven years? To which Doris replies, no, it was just one year. I have memory loss, but I'm sure it was one year. And so was there anything else that stood out to you from the interactions with Greg and Doris? It did seem he was trying to maybe get this feeling out of Doris that our CMP co-hosts are into giving that statement. To which again, Doris replies, no, I did not think that way. I never felt that way. So Doris says she never felt pressured by the police.

But she also now says that Greg did not drunkenly admit to killing Sherry. After Greg questioned Doris, he also questioned the gun expert. The expert did not change his testimony. He still says the gun is linked to the shell casings the police found at the gravel pit. With the cross-examination over, the voir dire is closed again, and then Greg gets a chance to speak to the judge. He's given the opportunity to make his case for why the judge should reject the crime boss confession, along with other evidence gathered in the sting operation. The prosecutors already submitted their arguments to the judge. So did the amicus curiae, the friend of the court. When Greg gets his turn,

he pretty much says what he's been telling us all along, that he's the victim here. In his oral submission around admissibility of the evidence, Furtuk said he did not kill Sherry and that all the information he shared with the undercover officers was not true. The King's bench justice adjourned the case until September 22nd, when the judge will give his decision on the trial within the trial. But less than a month before that decision, we got another notice from the court saying there was another application from the defense. I don't want to say that I dread opening my mailbox and seeing notices from the court, but I did. dread opening my mailbox and seeing notices from the court, but I did. Because my first thought was,

oh my God, Greg Furtick has made an application. That's Dan again. Dan attended the court hearing that was held for Greg's new application. Given what you and I know about the trial, I couldn't figure out what the heck is he applying for? Like, what's going on? There was nothing left. There was nothing left. I thought. We catch up after it's over. And at this point, it really feels like Greg is throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks. The amicus curiae, the friend of the court, I felt bad for him because he stood up and basically told Justice Daniluk that, you know, I'm not 100% sure what Mr. Furtuck is applying for here. I've walked through the material with him. I don't

fully understand the point he's trying to make here. So have at it, Mr. Furtuck. You're the lawyer now. So Justice Daniluk, you know, very patiently, again, Mr. Furtuck, what do you want to do? And what it turned out being, the first part was he wanted sections of his provincial court trial transcripts taken and applied to the voir dire. From the breach issue? Correct. Okay. And the other was he wanted, and I don't fully understand this myself, he was trying to make some argument about Doris Theroux's banking records. She had, may or may not have given, and I'm not trying to be cute here, the Crown and the judge never really understood the point he was trying to make, but it had

something to do with whether Doris had given up her power of attorney over her banking records. And Greg is, I mean, in his defense, in as much as I can make a defense, all he has is time on his hands to think about this stuff. That's right. And I was sitting close enough to him that I could see that he had at least five or six sheets of full scap, handwritten, single spaced, like he had a... He had a laundry list of arguments to make, and just none of it made sense. The court transcripts, what he wanted from the transcripts, again, were how Keith Hill,

the RCMP officer, was lying. You know, look, if you look at my provincial court trial transcripts, Keith Hill says that Doris said this. But when she was recalled to the stand, she actually changed her story. So Keith Hill is a liar. And Justice Daniluk very gently said, perhaps you should consider that the change in the testimony says more about Doris than it does about the RCMP. And Justice Daniluk went on to try to explain a little bit about the process. And Greg

made the fatal mistake of interrupting the judge. I mean, again, this is my perspective. But he went from zero to salty Daniluk in about five seconds. And he said, you're not in a bar, sir. I have shown you the courtesy of listening to you. Now you will listen to me. And he laid it out. He reiterated the stuff about, it says more about Doris than it does about the RCMP, the banking stuff. He has no idea. And then he sort of took a step back and gave Mr. Furtuck the eagle-eye view, saying, look, you, even though you are now representing yourself, you do not bring a pile of sticks and put them on the courthouse steps and ask us to make you a fire.

He said the material you've brought forward here is irrelevant, and nothing that you are trying to establish today is going to help me decide whether you killed your wife and got rid of her body. And to my memory, that's the first time Justice Daniluk has ever sort of addressed it that straightforward. Got down to the brass tacks. We're here to decide whether you killed your wife. Yeah. Let's get back to why we're here and why I'm talking to you. The trial, well, the voir dire part of it, is so close to being over. That big decision is just days away. It will be a pivotal moment for everyone involved in this matter,

and it's been a long time coming. Once we learn those details, we'll meet you back here for another episode. And then we can finally take a closer look at what that decision means for this case and the people closest to it. The Pit is a CBC investigative podcast. This episode was put together by me, Kendall Latimer, with help from our senior producer, Corrine Larson. Editorial guidance For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.