Jury at Dartmouth murder trial hears from medical examiner

Editor’s note: Some readers may find the contents of this article disturbing.

An elderly Dartmouth woman was strangled to death in July 2020, likely with a pair of jeans that were still around her neck when her body was discovered in her home, the province’s chief medical examiner has testified at her alleged killer’s trial. 

Richard George Willis, 65, of no fixed address is charged with second-degree murder in the killing of Eleanor Harding, 84.

The Crown alleges Willis broke into Harding’s house at 3 Lynwood Dr. through a basement window in the early-morning hours of July 10, 2020.

Mark Harding found his mother dead in a hallway on the main floor of the bungalow on July 11, when he dropped by for his weekly visit.

An autopsy the next day determined the death was a homicide. Willis was arrested almost three weeks later, on July 20, and charged with murder. 

Willis’s jury trial got underway Tuesday in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Dartmouth. 

Dr. Matthew Bowes took the stand Thursday, offering expert evidence on the cause and manner of Harding’s death.

Dr. Marnie Wood performed the autopsy but was unable to testify. Bowes reviewed her findings at the request of the Crown and provided his opinion to the court.

“I agree that the cause of death in this case is ligature strangulation,” Bowes wrote in his report, which was filed as a trial exhibit. 

“The nature of the fatal injury and the nature and number of other injuries make this death a homicide. I agree that the autopsy does not give useful information about the time of death.”

Bowes noted that the autopsy included a detailed examination of Harding’s neck. Her voice box was crushed, her neck scraped and bruised.

There were also blunt-force injuries to her head, torso, arms and legs and she had fractured ribs.

“The findings that are not in her neck do not compose, collectively or individually, a cause of death,” Bowes said.

He said he agreed with his colleague that the jeans were used as the ligature.

Crown attorney Scott Morrison asked how long it takes to strangle someone to death.

“It’s a very variable thing,” Bowes said. “But if a person were to apply a ligature consistently until that other person’s dead, the time frame might be a low number of minutes.”

Question from judge

Justice James Chipman interjected with a question for Bowes.

“We know from Dr. Wood’s report that the deceased weighed less than (110 pounds),” the judge said. “Does that have any bearing on what you just said, that is to say the stature of the deceased?”

“That has sort of a peripheral significance,” the medical examiner replied.

“The course of the assault would be different in (a) scenario where the two people were equally matched in terms of their physical vigour. If that physical vigour of the two people was desperately mismatched, I think you could infer that the assault may have had a very different course, and that it didn’t have to last as long (because) there was less resistance to overcome.”

According to Wood’s autopsy report, Harding was just under five feet tall. At the time of his arrest, Willis was five-foot-six and weighed 159 pounds.

Forensic officers

On Thursday, the 14-member jury also heard from two Halifax Regional Police forensic officers who processed the crime scene.

Det. Const. Randy Wood showed jurors the jeans that were seized from around Harding’s neck, a black fedora with a white band that was found on the floor beneath the basement window where the culprit is believed to have entered the home, and the damaged screen from that window.

In his opening statement Wednesday, Morrison told the jury Willis’s DNA was present on the jeans, on the hat and in clippings of Harding’s fingernails.

Const. Mike Marchand, who was at the scene with Randy Wood for several days, seized a cellphone from behind a table beneath the basement window. Digital analysis of the contents of that phone revealed it had been used by Willis, the jury was told Wednesday.

The two officers also testified about items belonging to Harding that were recovered in woods and a park across the street from her house on the night of July 12.

In cross-examination of the officers, defence lawyer Godfred Chongatera pointed out that Willis’s fingerprints were not found around the basement window, on the cellphone or anywhere else in the house.

Chongatera got the officers to confirm that the front and back doors of the house were unlocked when police arrived, that the locks had not been damaged, and that a bedroom window on the main floor was open.

Wood admitted he could not say when the screen in the basement window was damaged. He also had no explanation for why police didn’t seize several hats from a bedroom closet for examination, including one similar to the fedora found below the basement window. 

The trial will resume Monday at the Mellor Avenue courthouse.