Jury begins hearing evidence at Dartmouth murder trial

The Crown began calling evidence Wednesday at a former Truro man’s murder trial in Dartmouth after making its opening statement to the jury.

Richard George Willis, 65, of no fixed address is charged in the slaying of Eleanor Noreen Harding, 84, who was found dead inside her home at 3 Lynwood Dr. in Dartmouth on July 11, 2020.

The elderly woman, whose body was in the hallway, had been strangled with a pair of jeans that were still wrapped around her neck.

The Crown alleges Willis broke into Harding’s house and killed her the day before.

Willis was arrested almost three weeks later, on July 30, and charged with murder.

Prosecutor Scott Morrison told the jury the case is a “very sad story.”

Harding was a widow who lived alone, Morrison said. She raised her children in that house and kept it “as neat as a pin.”

“Everything was in its place, and everything was organized in that home,” the Crown attorney said. 

He said Harding lived a simple life and enjoyed visits by her son Mark Harding.

On the afternoon of July 9, 2020, Eleanor Harding purchased groceries at the Superstore on Braemar Drive in Dartmouth. There is video of her leaving the store pushing a shopping cart at 4:31 p.m.

“The next time Eleanor was seen was the morning of Saturday, July 11,” Morrison said. “That day, her son … knocked on the front door and nobody answered. He entered the home and he located his mom facedown in the main hallway of the house. It was obvious to him that she was dead.

“Based on some of the things that he saw there,” Mark Harding called 911, the prosecutor said.

The response to the call included forensic police officers and a medical examiner.

“(The) evidence that they gathered in that house tells us what happened to Eleanor Harding, and it also tells us who is responsible,” Morrison said.

He said the medical examiner determined Eleanor Harding had been strangled with the jeans.

‘Important’ evidence

Forensic officers found “important pieces of evidence” at the scene, Morrison said.

“In the two main-floor bedrooms, police investigators located numerous dresser drawers that had been pulled out … and their items scattered,” he said. “They found a flashlight in one of the bedrooms that was in the on position.”

Police discovered a screen on a window in the basement had been cut. Below the window, Morrison said, they located a “distinctive” hat – a black fedora with a white band – and a cellphone.

Willis’s DNA was allegedly found on the fedora, the prosecutor said, and analysis of the contents of the cellphone linked it to Willis.

The Crown also alleges that Willis’s DNA was present on the jeans that were used to kill Harding and in clippings of her fingernails.
Items that belonged to Harding were discarded in woods across the street and along nearby Waverley Road.

Police canvassed the neighbourhood, looking for video surveillance footage from July 10.

Prosecutors have video clips of a man walking along Prince Albert Road at about 2:30 a.m. wearing a beige or grey suit and a fedora and carrying a flashlight. The same man is shown walking along Waverley Road about 40 minutes later.

There are more clips of what appears to be the same man walking farther out Waverley Road at about 5:35 a.m. and then exiting the passenger door of an SUV and continuing along the road at about 6 a.m. The man in those videos was bald and was not wearing a hat or carrying a flashlight.

“When you have seen and heard all of that evidence, we are confident that you are going to conclude that Richard Willis is the man who was walking north on Waverley Road in the early morning of Friday, July 10, 2020,” Morrison said.

“And based on those clips and the forensic evidence, you should conclude that he entered Eleanor Harding’s home through that basement window with the cut screen … and that he went upstairs to the main floor of the home and he strangled (her) to death. And he left taking some of Eleanor Harding’s possessions with him, some of which he scattered on … Waverley Road.

“When we consider all of this evidence, we say there is only one way to see this puzzle. That puzzle essentially adds up to the fact that Mr. Willis is guilty. We are confident that by the conclusion of this trial, we will be asking you to convict him of second-degree murder.”

First witness

The Crown’s first witness was Mark Harding, who said he visited his mother once a week, every Saturday morning.

He said he arrived at her house July 11 at about 11 a.m. and grabbed a copy of The Chronicle Herald that was sticking out of a newspaper tube out front.

There was no answer when he knocked on the front door, which was unlocked, so he opened it and went inside, thinking his mother was perhaps doing laundry in the basement and hadn’t heard him. He said he put the newspaper on the dining room table.

“A few more steps in, that’s when I saw her laying on the floor in the hallway,” Mark Harding testified, struggling to maintain his composure. “So, I went to her and kneeled down, put my hand on her back, and (could tell) she was gone.

“From where I was kneeling, you could look into (her) bedroom, and you could see that the drawers of the dresser were pulled out and were laying on the floor.”

Mark Harding said the alarm clock on his mom’s bedside table was beeping.

He said he went to the kitchen and called 911 before leaving the house to wait for first responders to arrive.

He said he did not notice any injuries on his mother.

“She was laying on her stomach,” he said in direct examination by Crown attorney Rob Kennedy. “She had no pants on … and her underwear was slightly pulled down.”

He said he got a blanket from the couch in the living room and placed it over the lower part of his mother’s body.

“Her head was facing her bedroom, as if she was heading that way,” he said. “She was laying on her belly and there appeared to be an article of clothing wrapped around her neck.”

Kennedy referred Mark Harding to a photo showing that the Herald he had grabbed from the tube was dated July 11, 2020.
Another police photo showed the previous day’s paper was still in the tube.

“I didn’t see it,” Harding said of the July 10 paper. “Just the one that was sticking out.”

A 14-member jury was selected Tuesday after Willis pleaded not guilty to the charge. Justice James Chipman then gave his opening instructions to jurors.

The trial is set for 20 days at the Mellor Avenue courthouse in Burnside Park.

Willis is represented by Halifax defence lawyers Godfred Chongatera and Laura McCarthy.