Defence calls no evidence after Crown closes case at Dartmouth murder trial

The jury at Richard George Willis’s murder trial in Dartmouth has finished hearing evidence.

Willis, 65, of no fixed address, is charged with second-degree murder in the strangulation death of Eleanor Harding, 84, whose body was found in her home at 3 Lynwood Dr. in Dartmouth on July 11, 2020.

The trial got underway Jan. 9 in Nova Scotia Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, Crown attorneys Rob Kennedy and Scott Morrison called evidence from three witnesses before closing their case.

Defence lawyers Laura McCarthy and Godfred Chongatera then announced they would not be offering any evidence.

The Crown alleges Willis broke into Harding’s house through a basement window in the early morning hours of July 10, 2020, murdered the elderly woman and ransacked her bedroom before leaving with some of her possessions.

Mark Harding, one of Harding’s sons, discovered her dead on the hallway floor after going to the house July 11 at about 11 a.m. for his weekly visit.

A medical examiner concluded Eleanor Harding was strangled with a ligature, likely a pair of jeans that were still around her neck when her body was found.

The Crown called evidence from a dozen people at trial, starting with Mark Harding.

An RCMP forensic specialist testified that Willis’s DNA was on the jeans, in fingernail clippings from both of Eleanor Harding’s hands, and on the inside headband of a black fedora that was located beneath the basement window.

An LG cellphone also found below the window contained three user accounts in the name of Willis, an RCMP digital forensic analyst told the court.

Papers, banking cards and other items belonging to Harding, including her iPhone, were recovered from bushes across the street from her house or along nearby Waverley Road.

The jury was shown video clips of a Black man, wearing a black fedora and a grey suit and carrying a flashlight, walking past Mic Mac Amateur Aquatic Club on Prince Albert Road in Dartmouth on July 10 at 2:33 a.m. and past a Tim Hortons shop on Waverley Road at 3:14 a.m.

The jury also saw videos of what appears to be the same man walking outbound on Waverley Road on July 10 at 5:34 a.m. — near where some of Harding’s items were strewn — and getting out of a vehicle farther out Waverley Road at about 6 a.m. The man in those videos was bald and was not wearing a hat or carrying a flashlight.

A flashlight in the “on” position was on the floor in Harding’s bedroom when police arrived at the crime scene.

Tuesday testimony

On Tuesday, a man named Chris Conrad testified that he picked up a hitchhiker on Waverley Road near the Highway 107 overpass July 10 at about 6 a.m. and dropped him off at the intersection with Rocky Lake Drive. He said the man was Black, between 55 and 65 years of age, was wearing a dishevelled suit and was in his vehicle for about seven minutes.

Conrad said the man told him he was on his way to a bus stop in Fall River. The man said he had been at a funeral and had gotten into a fight at a party, Conrad said, and that the fight had been over money from an estate.

The jury also heard from Diane Dodge, an ex-girlfriend of Willis. The Stewiacke woman said she gave Willis a drive from his home in Truro to North Preston on July 4, 2020, so he could be with his family because his brother was dying.

She said Willis called her July 7 to inform her his brother had passed away.

Dodge said she got another call from Willis on July 10 at about 2:30 a.m. She said he was upset and wanted her to come to Dartmouth to give him a drive home to Truro, but she refused. 

Later that day, at about noon, Dodge said Willis called her from the bus terminal in Truro, where he was catching a bus to the city so he could go to his brother’s funeral. She said she suggested he take the bus as far as Stewiacke, where she picked him up and drove him to North Preston.

Dodge said Willis told her he had lost his cellphone.

The final witness was Jenna Morrison, who lived on Lynwood Drive until 2019. Morrison said Willis used to live on that street with a girlfriend, and she recalled a conversation with him in 2013 in which he said he knew Eleanor Harding.

The trial will resume Monday with closing arguments by lawyers, followed by Justice James Chipman’s final instructions to the jury. 

Juror discharged

The jury consisted of 14 members until Wednesday, when one juror was discharged. The reason for the man’s dismissal cannot be reported because of a publication ban.

“Many of you heard things said about Richard Willis outside the courtroom yesterday,” Chipman said in a mid-trial instruction to the remaining jurors. “Whatever you heard in this area must be completely disregarded.

“You must not consider anything you heard about Mr. Willis’s past to be true or part of the evidence you must consider in deciding this case. Mr. Willis is presumed innocent and comes to this trial with a clean slate.”