Uncover - S23 E9: Six More Months | "The Pit"

Episode Date: December 25, 2023

A last minute decision puts the trial on hold for another six months. Sheree's family is shocked, and Greg is still in jail. Why would Greg's lawyers want their client in jail longer, and why couldn't this case go ahead when others have? Meanwhile someone close to Sheree finally speaks up.

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. The first-degree murder trial of Gregory Furtuck is being postponed until September because of COVID-19 concerns. Furtuck is charged with first-degree murder in the disappearance of his wife Sherry. For months, Sherry Furtuck's family had been preparing themselves for the trial of her accused killer and for the emotion of hearing the details in court. Lawyers on both sides had been getting ready too, and Greg Furtuck, after more than a year in jail, was ready to fight the charges.

Then, just three days before it was supposed to start, it was all put on hold for another six months. The five-week trial was supposed to start today, but it was postponed at the last minute on Friday. Justice Richard Daniluk ruled that the risk to the public health outweighed the need to go ahead right now. Daniluk said a dozen or more witnesses would have had to travel from Regina. This at a time, of course, when he said the number of coronavirus variant cases are spiking.

Sherry's sister, Tika White, was preparing herself for some of the hardest weeks of her life when she got the news. For me, it was like a big sinking feeling in my stomach. Yes, it's, oh, here we go again. Another delay. Yeah, we were just hoping to get this moving forward, to get some answers, to start getting some closure. But now we don't get that, right?

The judge didn't give us that. It's hanging there, right? Now we all have to wait another six months. So very, very unfair to the victim, everybody that's involved with Sherry. Greg Furtuck, who denies killing Sherry, had also been waiting to fight the charges in court. He's been in jail for more than two years now. The reason for the judge's delay might seem simple. That it was unsafe to go ahead.

But other major trials were being held by video. So why wouldn't that work for this case specifically? And what had happened to make Greg's lawyers want a delay? More broadly, what does COVID-19 mean for the right to a fair trial in Canada? Now we have answers to some of these questions. I'm Alicia Bridges, and this is Episode 9 of The Pit. The judge had suggested that the police could go to the Regina airport and get tested, you know, the rapid test. And after that, the Crown said that the police did not want to. No disrespect to the circumstances here, but we have what is, as an onlooker,

one of the most interesting cases I've ever seen from the outside. I would say that this is one of those, you know, trials of the decade. The point is there were still a lot of arguments about money right up to the very end, and that little check, that little incident over $75 was kind of... I don't know if Greg snapped over that. Hi, is this Reg? Yes, it is. Would you be okay if I asked you a couple of questions

and we could do a little interview right now? This is Kendall Latimer. She's speaking to Greg Furtack's brother, Reg. Tell me how you felt when you heard that Greg would have to spend six more months in jail and they postponed the trial. You might have to listen carefully to hear him, because the phone connection is a bit shaky, and it can be hard to understand. Why and for what reason? Why and for what reason would they want to give him an extended sentence, six months more?

Reg can't understand why his brother is still in jail. We first spoke to him in June of 2019, just after Greg was arrested. You've got nothing to say about this. No, nothing at all. He's innocent. of 2019, just after Greg was arrested. Back then, I was still in Saskatoon, and nobody could have dreamed how much the world was about to change. Now I'm working on the story from Australia. I had to come back because of the pandemic. My colleague, Kendall, is working on the ground in Saskatoon. When the trial was postponed,

she wanted to see how it was affecting Greg's family, as well as Sherry's, so she gave Reg a call. After the interview, Kendall played part of the tape back to me. Reg was speaking back to me. I'm rolling and I will roll the tape for you. Are you ready to go? Yeah, I'm ready to go. Reg was speaking freely to Kendall. But the whole time, there's a voice yelling in the background. It's Elmer, Reg and Greg's mum. She lives with Reg and she's yelling at him to get off the phone. Get away from me, mother.

Get away from me, mother. And then the call ended abruptly. Mother, don't you dare hit me with that. But what just happened? Did they hang out? Yes. The whole conversation was a bit surprising in that it was just chaotic in the background. I could constantly hear Elma yelling at Reg and trying to get him off the phone. Meanwhile, he was insisting that he wanted to talk to me.

And so it was just this conflict happening. It sounds like he just wanted to communicate like how upset and frustrated he was. Yeah, exactly. By the delay. The delay was devastating for them. Reg is worried the six-month court delay could stop his brother Greg from ever seeing their mum again.

We also spoke with Elmer in 2019. He murdered her. Reg says Elmer's health has gotten worse since then. She's 86, dying, extended her whole name. I've been real hard on him because he's been close to her all his life and he's done anything and everything for her. Can the RCMP from Regina have that much power? What really troubles Reg is that he doesn't know what the evidence is against his brother.

The RCMP say Greg killed Sherry, so they say he should stay in jail until he goes to court. But none of their evidence will be made public until the trial. They might have forensic evidence, like DNA, cell phone records or witnesses. Or they might not. Reg doesn't know.

He has to watch as his brother waits in jail for two years when he doesn't know the details of why. That's a tough thing for a family to accept, even if that's just how the system works. The decision to delay the trial happened on Friday the 26th of March, three days before it was supposed to start. We had just released our latest episode of the podcast about the trial that we thought would be starting on Monday. It was night time in Australia and I was asleep when the podcast was released. But just hours after it came out, while I was sleeping, a meeting was being held in Saskatoon to decide if the trial could go ahead.

There was a conference call with the Crown prosecutors, Greg's lawyers, the judge and Greg Furtuck. Nobody but those people knew it was happening. By the time I woke up, everything had changed. Kendall was trying to contact me to let me know about the delay. Our producer called it a predictably unpredictable turn of events. So, yeah, big, big disappointment. Sherry's sister, Tika White, found out about the delay after the hearing, when it was all over, and she wasn't impressed.

They've created all kinds of bubbles around the world for other non-important events such as all the sporting events. People can be in a bubble for that but they couldn't come up with a solution to get people who need to testify at a trial which is an important event, I guess if you want to call it an event, in my life and many people's lives. So another big fail for our justice system. And, yeah, not very pleased with the judge's decision at all. I believe it's a delay tactic.

Court has to happen within a certain amount of time. If it doesn't, I don't know what happens. If it gets thrown out, that won't be a good thing. Tika says she understands the public health risk, but she thinks more should have been done to run the trial on schedule. Greg's lawyer, Morris Bodner, says the trial could have gone ahead earlier if it wasn't for the RCMP. The judge had suggested that the police could go to the Regina airport and get tested, you know, the rapid test. And after that, the Crown said that the police did not want to.

And that's not good. That's what scuttled, I think, everything. We would have been running the trial now had it not been for that. But we couldn't take the chance because it was just rampant in Regina, and police have contact with a lot of people. So we picked a date that was convenient for everyone, the quickest date, and that's September 7th. And this time we set aside two months. It became clear at the hearing that police were not keen on having further restrictions put upon them. The police officers

were willing to do some things. They would travel to Saskatoon on their own, stay in their own hotel rooms. They were okay with wearing masks. They just wouldn't do the rapid testing that the judge had suggested. Justice Daniluk said he was nonplussed by the police argument against it, but ultimately he did not push the idea any further. We asked the RCMP why they wouldn't agree to the COVID testing, but they declined to comment. Even though Morris says the testing would have made the trial happen faster,

the defense didn't push for it at the hearing either. With rapid testing out of the question, Greg's lawyers did want the trial to be delayed. Morris spoke to Kendall about why. Because we want the police present in court so the judge can observe them. Because we want the police present in court so the judge can observe them. Because this is not a simple case of Mr. Big. This is one where the judge is going to have to make some decision as to police behavior. So he'll be observing not just what they say, but watching how they say it, what they look like, how they're presenting it? I assume so, but we want that open. There are rules in Canada around how long someone can wait in jail before their trial starts. In

Greg's case, it's 30 months. Moving the trial to September brings it within three months of that 30-month limit. Usually, if a case exceeds that timeline, the trial could be dismissed. It's provided for in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. A person has a right to be tried within a reasonable time. But something interesting happened the day the trial was delayed. Greg waived any claim to object the delay at a later date. Kendall asked Morris if this could lead to a mistrial down the road. He says no, because Greg's trial hasn't yet exceeded the 30-month deadline.

But even if it does, he doesn't think there could be a mistrial for that reason. Judges don't throw cases like this out, a murder case. The Charter of Rights, in my opinion, from the years, because I was here when it came into force, the Charter of Rights doesn't apply to major trials. It generally applies to minor matters. On a murder charge, no. On a shoplifting, yes. Now, I have a client that's not happy. Can you tell me more about, was he pissed when he found out it would be six months of a delay? Well, as he said, I've been in jail almost two

years already. So he's not happy now. He wants out now. And he wants a bail hearing because he is 67 years old. He gets it, he's dead. He means COVID-19. No ands, ifs, or buts. 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. Kendall asked Morris if we could speak with Greg again while he waits in jail. No.

How come? Because I'm telling him not to. Why is that? Because I don't think that he was... What good there was for him from your previous podcast, which I haven't heard, I heard about, that he denied that he did anything, etc. I don't think there's anything more that he can say. What's he going to say?

That he continues to deny? Of course he continues to deny. If he gets upset or angry or something, I don't want him coming across like that. You know, it's not a great life in jail, and not when you're in your late 60s. And when he's got physical disabilities now creeping up on him, and he had that head injury of his,

which he talked to you about. That's the head injury from when Greg slipped on ice, about six months before he was arrested. I don't remember nothing, not far back. He says he has memory loss from the fall and that he can't remember what happened at the time of Sherry's disappearance. Well, when I fell, I guess I had a ruptured blood vessel in my brain.

It was partially the cause of my amnesia, or whatever you want to call it. We're unlikely to hear directly from Greg in jail again, but ultimately we did find out how he felt about the six-month delay. Because he told the lawyers and the judge at the hearing back in March, it was a conference call the media didn't know about, so we couldn't attend on the day. But Kendall and I managed to get a copy of the transcript, and we went through it together. All right, so let's go through this and maybe just run through what stands out right away. Yeah, so right off the top, are you noticing anything

that might be familiar? Yeah, so they're just getting their tech sorted here, it looks like. There's a lot of sort of, can you turn it up a bit? Are you there? Sounds very familiar from the pandemic era. Video calls. You can see around page six is where Justice Staniluk starts to say that he's not taking the COVID-19 risk lightly, but he does actually think that running the trial could be manageable if it's done with some caution.

Yeah, so the group overall with the defense, the prosecution, the judge, they're all considering different ways that they could try to run this safely. They're talking about quarantine options for the Mr. Big officers from Regina. They're talking about video link. Despite all of that musing about what could be done, they start to conclude that it's just not possible and they'll have to reschedule pushing it back to September. Yeah, and look here, Greg speaks up.

So he says, if I'm going to be here till September, I'll be dead. So it doesn't matter. And then he says, we might'm going to be here till September, I'll be dead. So it doesn't matter. And then he says, we might as well do it now, get it over with. Because if I'm here till September, I'm going to be dead. And then the justice says that he appreciates this risk in a remand facility. But then they just keep talking about dates. Greg interrupts again and he says if you don't believe me you can talk to the doctor that examined me here. He goes on to say that the doctor says that Greg won't last

very long. You can ask the doctor in here and you'll know I'm not making this up. Then Greg's other lawyer Mike Nolan tries to stop him from interrupting and he says that they'll talk about this later. Yeah and Justice Daniluk is urging him he's telling him to stop speaking as well. Justice Daniluk is is telling Greg to let his lawyer speak for him. He tells him that you know you might accidentally say something that works against you but Greg just interrupts again. Here he says look if I'm saying anything it's not going to be something that's not true. He keeps saying things like, I don't want to put this off any longer than we have now. It's almost two years already.

It's so interesting because at the same time that Greg is protesting the delay, you know, multiple times, his lawyers are requesting it. Like the Crown Prosecutor says that he's starting to have concerns. So it looks like they actually stopped the meeting and take a break, agreed to come back later in the afternoon. It looks like that break gave Greg's lawyers a chance to talk with him. And when they come back, they basically say that everything's good. Let's carry on. After we went through the transcript, Kendall called Morris to ask why they pushed forward despite Greg's protests. We work in the best interest of the clients.

We wanted the RCMP witnesses there in person. We don't want them by video. It was in his best interest to have them there. And I don't think Greg opposed the matter as you're indicating. I believe that Greg was maybe surprised that there was that request, but when we talked to him, he agreed to it. So it was not us against him.

He just needed a little explanation and everything went well. After talking with Morris, we still had questions about this delay and about how COVID has affected the justice system. So Kendall decided to meet up with Brian Pfeffeli. Is my audio okay there? We've talked to Brian before.

It's Brian Pfefferle. We're in my criminal law office in downtown Saskatoon. Brian is a lawyer. He's really interested in this case. He sees the impact of COVID-19 on the justice process every day, especially for his clients that are in jail waiting to go to court. He's been impressed by how the justice system has kept its wheels turning in the circumstances.

But there are hiccups, because finding the right balance between public safety and inmate rights is a challenging and imperfect process. We have massive delays, particularly for in-custody people, and the face-to-face, day-to-day court operations have almost screeched to a halt. A big chunk of the jail population in Saskatoon hasn't yet been convicted of a crime. Saskatchewan has a remand problem. The number of people in jail awaiting trial, people who are still presumed innocent, far outweighs the number of people who have been convicted of crimes.

Plus, the jail isn't immune to COVID-19 outbreaks. More than 200 inmates have tested positive at the Saskatoon facility since the pandemic started. That's in a jail with around 500 inmates. Brian says that's made life behind bars even more complicated. The stress for these inmates has been incredible and there's been a lot of arguments made in court about the impact of custody now and it's definitely being taken into account by the court. Brian wasn't surprised the trial for Greg Fershak got adjourned due to those COVID-19 issues. It happens all the time now, he says. He's lost count of the number of cases that

have been delayed, but he thinks these delays are necessary to stop the virus spreading. The response that many people would have was, yeah, everybody's rights are infringed. Their rights and freedoms are not absolute. And the same goes for an accused person. A right to be found not guilty, a right to be presumed innocent, a right to a trial within a reasonable period of time, these are all rights that we have. They're always subject to realities of the world. If I say I have a right to a trial without delay, do I get a trial tomorrow? I never did. This just adds another wrinkle into that. It's unfair to the clerks of the court. It's unfair to the participants to force everybody into a room unless it's absolutely safe to do so. No one wanted that case adjourned, I'm sure. I'm sure of it. Those police

officers, memories fade as time goes on. It's not ideal. But Brian says he respects Justice Daniluk's decision to delay. Justice Daniluk has sat a ton during the pandemic, including on cases of mine. I would know it would be with significant reluctance that he would adjourn something like this. Brian says he also understands why the defense didn't want to go ahead if the police witnesses weren't there in person. He's worked as the defense on trials that were carried out over video link because of COVID-19. And he says in those cases, it worked well. But this case is different. When you think of a Mr. Big case, you think of the obvious interactions between people. Body language is more than just the way someone moves.

It's their physical presence. It's their size. Those are the sorts of things that could get lost in a video. Are we talking about an officer who's 5'8"? Or are we talking about an officer who's 6'3", 280 pounds? Or an officer who's got tattoos all over their hands and up their arms? Mr. Big idea is built on this premise that people are posing as certain characters. There's the Mr. Big element, the fact that Sherry's body hasn't been found, Greg's memory loss, and soon a court proceeding that could last nearly two months,

all with the uncertainty of how COVID-19 will affect it. No disrespect to the circumstances here, but we have what is, as an onlooker, one of the most interesting cases I've ever seen. I would say that this is one of those, you know, trials of the decade type thing. This is like an American television show. This is like something you'd see on Netflix. No disrespect. These are real people's lives. But when we talk about truth being stranger than fiction, we talk about the police and the way in which they conduct themselves in Mr. Big

investigations, they're incredibly interesting cases. You see the underbelly of our society at the same time. You see that underbelly arguably exploited. For all the reasons that make it so interesting, this case could lead to change and new rules for the Mr Big technique. You see it on TV, people go missing and there's, you know, documentaries on 60 minutes or 48 hours or whatever it is and, you know, they tell these stories but when it actually happens in your family,

it's quite unbelievable. Blenda Starotsky is Sherry's sister. We've never spoken with her before, but she says she knew Sherry best. Sherry and I were always together. We were the closest in school. We were on the same sports teams together. Sherry and I spent a lot of time working from a very young age. We had to always go out and do chores every night after school and clean the barn on the weekends with Mom because neither of us were old enough or tall enough to drive the tractor. Glenda moved to the United States a few decades ago in 1993,

but she has vivid memories of what it was like being on the farm. She remembers the culture of it, growing up in the prairies. There's one of my favorite pictures, the men sitting around the table in our old house on the farm. We're just young. I was probably three and Sherry's five. In our pajamas, ready for bed and a couple of beer glasses on the table. And she's sitting there and I'm on my uncle's knee and I've got a cigarette in my mouth. It's how we were raised. We grew up with the men, with the guys running the businesses. We stayed close because when I was going back to Saskatchewan every spring and fall for seeding and harvest, the two of us each owned some farmland and we

were farming together with our dads. Being in the U.S. gave her some distance from the media interest in her sister's disappearance. She says she was actually hoping we wouldn't call. from the media interest in her sister's disappearance. She says she was actually hoping we wouldn't call. Everybody's scared. What if he gets off? What if he gets out of jail? Everybody's just scared to say anything, and I don't blame them. I don't blame them.

You know, I have the protection of a border. Like Sherry's other sisters and her mum, Glenda is pragmatic. No nonsense. She was happy to stay out of the public eye. But when she does talk to us, she's candid and open about her memories of Sherry and of Greg. Glenda was there when he and Sherry got married in Mexico in 1991. I stood up for Greg and I was his best man because they left on pretty short notice and you know you had to have

two witnesses for each and so Tika and I each stood up for them. I knew him and he was you know had a good job and never missed work and he'd show up on time and he'd help at the farm. After Glenda left Saskatchewan and went to the U.S. she and Sherry would talk on the phone. Glenda says Sherry and Greg's relationship was better earlier on, when they were raising their children. Greg was a good father, who took his son fishing and kept a yard in Saskatoon. He provided for the family through his job at the railroad, but not everything was perfect. She would talk to me about those sorts of things when she didn't want to talk to mom, or she certainly didn't talk to Michelle or Tika about that either.

So a lot of it, you know, too, was centered around, you know, finances and investments and stuff like that. And a lot of it was centered around her fear and concerns as well. She says the problems between Sherry and Greg got worse when he retired from his job on the railroad. That's when the drinking escalated and that's when, you know, the violence began or escalated, I guess. It just became progressively worse. He was carrying a loaded handgun with him in his vehicle. He'd come into the house with it. And Sherry told me there were times where she could hear him.

house with it. And Sherry told me there was times where she could hear him, you know, before he went to bed, he'd cock the gun and he had it loaded at his bedside and ready, ready to use. The root cause of a lot of their issues were money. Issues arose with Greg wanting to spend that money on really his bad habits, drinking and gambling. And it was tied up and it required both of their approvals. Jerry really continued to want to stick with the family plan of building on those investments for their retirement, for their children's education. And Greg started going down a different path. He was very angry that she would not agree to make lump sum withdrawals out of the retirement money. The last time Glenda spoke to Sherry was in

the fall of 2015, not long before she went missing. And she says it was a long talk. We had a good conversation. But again, it always circled back to that underlying strain between her and Greg over him wanting to get at those investments. And Sherry became protective of the situation and did not really feel comfortable in disclosing everything and talking about everything because that makes us feel vulnerable. We grew up where you don't talk about personal issues and you don't air your dirty laundry. You don't go to counseling. You don't open up. You keep it all inside. We can handle it.

We can deal with this on our own. We can, you know, we can shoulder all this burden. She's a very strong person, and she tried her best to handle that all on her own without any help. After Sherry disappeared, their mom, Julianne, told Glenda more about the days leading up to Sherry's disappearance. Glenda says her mom told her that Greg had been working for Sherry, helping with the gravel business. Leading up to her disappearance, he had

been out there for I think two and a half days. Friday, the temperature warmed up such that the job site was starting to get a little soft, and they weren't able to haul. They called it for the weekend, and she was to contact him on Monday whether or not he was to come out on Tuesday and continue on with his job. Sherry took one of the trucks to get, I guess, an annual inspection, and Greg brought his truck back to the truck that he was driving back to the yard. And my mom, because it was her business, wrote a check to him for working for the previous two and a half days. Later in that day, Sherry and my mom got together

and, you know, how much did you pay him? Well, incidentally, it worked out that my mom overpaid him by $75. Not a large amount, but it was such that Jerry called Greg and said, you know, you were overpaid. And, you know, and he said, well, it's too late. I already cashed the check. She said, well, I'm going to put a stop payment on it and we'll get you the right amount. But the point is there were still a lot of arguments about money right up to the very end. And that little check, that little incident over $75 was kind of, I don't know if Greg snapped over that. You know, they had further conversation. Sherry did in, well, I'd say my mom,

one of them called the bank, asked them to put a stop payment on. But then you actually physically have to go in and sign. That would have been done the following week, except that Sherry was no longer there to sign the stop payment. We all look back and is there something we could have done to help, to prevent, to protect. Glenda's hope for the trial is that it can help Sherry's children find a more normal life. She wants some kind of closure. It's not going to make it better. It's not going to change the outcome, but we are looking for something for those three kids.

They're all doing a tremendous, tremendous job of taking care of themselves, but it never goes away. It's always in the background of what clouds over their lives. And is it going to affect them, you know, into adulthood? Yes. On the surface, they're doing well enough, but that never goes away. So hopefully, with a conviction, they can put it somewhat to rest and try and live a normal life. And that's what we hope for. That's what I hope for.

Our next episode will coincide with the trial when it happens. There are many things we haven't been able to tell you, but once they become public at the trial, we'll be able to talk about them. So many questions remain, including whether Greg will testify. None of the allegations against Greg have been proven in court. He still denies any involvement in Sherry's alleged murder, and he has a right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. This is a story about Sherry.

It always has been. But with the trial looming, the focus is about to turn to Greg, at least for a while. Its one stop on a road we hope will lead to answers about what happened to Sherry. But where the trial will take us, and whether it provides any of those answers, we'll have to wait to find out. The Pit is a CBC investigative podcast. This episode was co-written and produced by Kendall Latimer and me, Alicia Bridges. Kendall also did the sound mix. Our senior producer is Corrine Larson.

Editorial guidance came from Paul Dornstader and David Hutton. If you've been enjoying the podcast, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or just tell your friends. And please follow The Pit to get alerts when new episodes are released. You can also contact us directly by emailing thepit at cbc.ca.