'I knew it was Charlotte'
Mother at murder trial recalls desperate search for daughter morning she was found dead
Evan Kiyoshi French
Northern News Services
Monday, February 1, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
The mother of woman beaten so badly police were reluctant to show her the body told court at a murder trial last week that she nonetheless knew it was her daughter the moment she saw the body lying under the white sheet.
Louisa Lafferty had been searching for her daughter, 23-year-old Charlotte Lafferty, after learning that the unidentified body of a woman had been found near the elder's complex in Fort Good Hope on the morning of March 22, 2014.
The first-degree murder trial in Yellowknife's NWT Supreme Court of the man accused of killing her daughter began March 25.
He cannot be named as he was 17 when he was charged with the crime.
Lafferty, the first of more than 30 witnesses the Crown prosecution is expected to call, testified Jan. 27 of a panicked search that began after awaking at around 7 a.m. that morning and being told by her spouse that a girl had frozen to death overnight near the elder's centre and that he had allowed Charlotte to go out the previous night. She then went to the woman's bedroom but found only her daughter's two-year-old twins sleeping inside.
Lafferty then headed to the crime scene where she saw the body lying under the sheet behind police caution tape.
The mother told the court she became upset because she recognized the shape and size of the body as similar to her daughter's.
"I seen that sheet on that lady," she said, adding she later relayed her fears to her spouse. "That's the size of our daughter."
Lafferty said she then called around to friends and family asking if anyone had seen Charlotte. She said she was told the accused was the last person to have been seen with her.
She went to the home of the accused where she met the man's mother who told her he was still asleep.
Lafferty said the man's mother tried to rouse him but he wouldn't get up.
She said she asked for the accused to call her when he did.
He later called that day, she said, and told her they had gone separate ways after a night of drinking. The young man told her the pair had been drinking but then he felt he was "getting too high" and decided to go home, said Lafferty.
She then contacted the RCMP detachment commander - Sgt. Kent Pike - begging him to tell her whether the naked body found by the elder's complex was her daughter's but he said he didn't recognize the woman.
"He said, 'I've been here how many years and I don't even know who that is,'" Lafferty testified.
Pike, who was next to appear on the witness stand, said he knew everyone in the community of about 550 people but could not identify the woman because of the extensive injuries to her face, which he described as "horrific."
He told the court he had been informed by two other officers about the dead woman at around 7:40 a.m. He initially thought the body belonged to that of another woman but when he learned that person was alive and well, he was "back to the drawing board" in terms of identifying the dead woman, said Pike.
He told court he presented Lafferty with photographs of the woman's possessions found at the crime scene - a pair of black and white sneakers and a necklace - as a means of identification.
Lafferty said she knew for certain her daughter was dead when she saw the photographs.
"I know that was her runners," Lafferty told the court, before breaking down in tears.
She also recognized the necklace as one she had given to her daughter as a gift.
"Right there, I knew it was Charlotte," the mother said.
Prosecutor Jeannie Scott also called RCMP Const. Shaun Brown - a forensic expert assigned to the case - who reviewed a book of 89 photographs he took at the crime scene, including photos of Lafferty's stripped and beaten body.
Others showed an unsealed 375-ml bottle of Smirnoff vodka, about three-quarters full, and a three-foot-long 2x2 wooden board found near the body that was splattered with what Brown described as "reddish-brown staining consistent with blood staining."
"There was quite a bit of blood on her and in the surrounding area," he said.
The trial is expected to last three weeks.
