Editor’s note: The following story contains graphic descriptions heard in court that may not be suitable for some readers.
BARRIE - Tense and heated cross-examinations dominated much of the testimony Monday as a witness described being inside Katherine Janeiro’s Barrie apartment shortly after she was found stabbed to death.
Today marked the sixth day of the ongoing trial into a three-decade-old homicide that left a young mother dead in her Dunlop Street West home.
Robert MacQueen, who is now 61 and is also known as Bruce Ellis, is on trial for second-degree murder in Janeiro's death. None of the allegations against him have been proven in court.
MacQueen's defence team went on the offensive Monday, suggesting a witness who was testifying was instead the one involved in the crime with another man who was in the apartment on Oct. 10, 1994.
Monday's testimony started with a new witness in 58-year-old Kim Brady, who was an exotic dancer in Barrie in 1994 at the time of Janeiro’s murder. Brady's cousin, Cindy Youden, testified as a witness last week.
Court heard Brady and her cousin went to Janeiro’s apartment to buy cocaine around 2 a.m. on Oct 10, several hours prior to the 20-year-old woman being found dead.
“She was fine, she was happy,” Brady said of Janeiro's demeanour when they visited her.
Like her cousin, Brady testified that she saw a man named John sitting quietly on the couch in the apartment who didn’t say anything to them. She said he seemed “very anxious.”
Brady said she left her cousin in the kitchen and went into Janeiro’s bedroom to “get the dope I wanted.”
She said she bought a half-ounce of cocaine for $50. She wanted more, but said Janeiro didn’t have any more to sell. Janeiro was to call her in a few hours if more cocaine became available.
Just before 4 a.m. that same morning, Brady testified she got a call from Janeiro, but missed it because she was in the shower at her aunt’s home. Her aunt answered the phone and told her it was Janerio who tried to call her.
Brady said she never had contact with Janeiro again after that.
Questioning then turned to her knowledge of the man nicknamed Woody. She testified she knew he was a biker in the Para Dice Riders gang, but was only an acquaintance of his.
Brady testified she saw 10 or 15 large bulk bottles of pills lined up in a space on top of the kitchen cupboards, similar to the kind pharmacies would have on a shelf behind the counter to dispense from. She said she could see the labels, which read Percodan, Demerol and morphine.
Brady also said she saw Janeiro wearing a fanny pack with close to $4,000 inside it. The zipper wouldn’t close due to it being “neatly stuffed” full, she testified. Janeiro told her how much cash she had on her.
With the Crown and defence attorneys finished with their cross-examination of Brady, they then moved on to 56-year-old Paul Daigle, a tall, slender man with thinning hair, glasses and tattoos on his arms. He limped with a plastic cast on one leg.
Daigle lived in Newmarket at the time of Janeiro's murder and was a fairly new acquaintance of Woody in 1994, having known him for about six months.
According to Daigle, Woody “had many girlfriends, but one that lived with him."
He said Woody lived in Innisfil and had a biker club emblem consisting of a pair of dice embedded in his paved driveway made of copper or brass. He also owned flashy vehicles and had a boat with flames painted on the side.
Daigle testified he had spent the Thanksgiving Monday with Woody and his girlfriend, enjoying dinner along with his friend, Patty.
He testified the three had been drinking, but he didn't drink, so Woody asked him to drive him around to run errands, such as picking up cash from two houses belonging to “friends," then go to Janeiro’s to pick up cough syrup, which contained codeine to get high on, as well as cannabis, which was at Janeiro’s apartment.
They arrived at the apartment about 7 or 8 p.m., he testified. Woody had his own key and let himself in, court heard.
“We both thought she wasn’t home,” Daigle testified.
In the apartment, he said Woody went through kitchen cupboards in search of the codeine, but didn’t find any. Woody then went to the bedroom and discovered Janeiro’s body.
Daigle testified he saw Woody standing in the hall “white as a ghost." Woody told him, “I think she’s dead.”
Daigle said he had urinated in the bathroom while they were there, and noted the presence of blood all over the bathroom, water in the bathtub, with it stained red “like Kool-Aid." Coagulated blood was blocking the drain, he told the court.
He described it as “like walking into a Halloween scene.”
While in the apartment, a girl entered the apartment, he said, looking for a phone to use. She quickly left after seeing Janeiro’s body.
Both men then left and locked the door behind them, but not before wiping door handles and other areas they touched, because they were afraid of being implicated in Janeiro’s death, Daigle testified.
They went to bars after that, with Woody later calling his lawyer. The two men then turned themselves in to police for questioning, where they supplied their clothing and samples of bodily fluids.
When defence attorney Mary Cremer took over with her questioning of the witness, Daigle became standoffish when asked about his testimony.
Daigle agreed when Cremer suggested he wanted to be friends with Woody because he was the president of a motorcycle club and he said he was a “nobody” to Woody at the time.
Daigle said he hoped to be someone who Woody could trust and get to know him better. He testified he didn’t want to join the gang, but just wanted to hang out with Woody.
Daigle also didn’t want to sell drugs for Woody, adding that he didn’t think Woody didn’t sell on his own, because “I don’t think the president of a bike gang does those things.” He testified he didn’t know Woody was in charge of a drug operation.
At this point in Daigle’s testimony, he began to lose patience with the defence attorney’s questioning and became fidgety with his hand on his head, often snapping at her. He became argumentative and at one point said he couldn’t remember a certain point.
“It was 30 years ago, sweetheart," he testified.
In one instance, the judge stopped the questioning to discipline Daigle on the way he was answering questions.
Daigle said he had never met Janeiro before and didn’t know who she was.
When questioning revisited the bloody bathroom in Janeiro’s apartment, Daigle was shown police evidence photos of the room, which showed clothing in the bathtub. He suddenly blurted out “that stuff in the bathtub wasn’t there when I was there!”
He then exclaimed that “Woody didn’t do it!” and “I’ve got nothin’ to worry about!”
Cremer suggested Daigle was really there to “clean up the bathtub for Woody" and that Daigle was the one who pulled the drain plug and let the bloody water run out of the tub.
Daigle flatly said “nope” to this line of questioning each time he was asked about having taken part in the homicide.
Cremer also suggested both he and Woody moved Janeiro’s body from the bathroom to the bedroom where she was eventually found.
Daigle again replied with a simple “nope."
“You dumped the body there,” Cremer insisted.
“I don’t think so,” Daigle answered.
Daigle testified Janeiro's body was half on the bed and half off it when he saw her.
Evidence photos show her laying face down on the floor beside the bed.
He said Janeiro’s apartment was a “stash house” where drugs were kept, so Woody didn’t risk having any at his own residence.
Questioning ended for the day on a tense note, with defence questioning of Daigle to resume again Tuesday morning at the Barrie courthouse.
The trial is expected to last seven weeks.
At the time of Janeiro's death, police said she had suffered multiple stab wounds. Her two-year-old daughter had been visiting family members at the time of the homicide.
Court heard the last time Janeiro had contact with anyone was around 4 a.m. on Oct. 10, 1994. Her body was discovered by a friend around 7 p.m. that night.
Court previously heard from the Crown that MacQueen had been in a relationship with Janeiro while he was married and living nearby on Dunlop Street.
MacQueen was initially charged with first-degree murder in January 2021, more than 26 years after Janeiro’s body was discovered in her apartment. The charge was reduced to second-degree murder following a preliminary hearing in December 2022. He was granted bail in July 2023.
According to news reports published by the former Barrie Examiner, Janeiro’s body was found lying on the floor, covered in blood with scratches on her face. She’d been at a pair of downtown bars most of Sunday night and early Monday morning prior to her body being discovered.
Janeiro left home at age 16 and moved to Barrie. A year later, she gave birth to a girl. About 10 months prior to her death, Janeiro had moved into the Dunlop Street apartment with her toddler.