Mr. Big (28 page)

Jennifer continued on with her testimony, describing the moment she saw Krista in the water. She even managed to show them on a map where the body was. But with each question, it was getting more and more difficult to keep from bursting into tears.

When the questions began about being with Krista at the Janeway, she couldn't hold back anymore.

“I'm going to have to take a break,” she said.

After the break, the questioning turned to Nelson and his seizures. The court wanted to know whether Nelson had taken his seizure medication on the day the girls drowned. She said he had because she had given it to him.

Then there were questions about her brother-in-law Mervin and the day she and the social worker called him to see if they could stay there. They had been in the car with the girls and nowhere to live. Jennifer remembered it well.

“I needed a room over the girls' heads. I couldn't have them on the street,” she said.

“How did Nelson feel about going to Mervin's?”

“He didn't want me and the girls to go,” she replied.

Then came the endless probe into the details of Mr. Big. The court wanted to know everything about her involvement, and she tried her best to remember the details.

“Pat and Carol were going to be married,” Jennifer explained. “And where me and Nelson only got married here in the court, we were going to have a double wedding. Nelson was going to get rings for me with diamonds and stuff.”

“Let's get back to August 4,” the Crown asked. “Did he say how Krista ended up in the water?”

“He said he had a seizure. He said that when I got down to Little Harbour. He said he had one of the small ones. Petit mal, not grand mal.”

Mr. Linehan approached her with a document. It was the statement she had given to the police on the day the girls' died.

“In your statement, did you mention anything about a seizure?” he asked.

“No.”

“But in a later statement you mentioned he had a seizure, or that something else happened,” said Mr. Linehan.

“I heard it somewhere along the line that he said that he had a seizure,” she responded.

When questioned, Jennifer couldn't answer where she had first heard Nelson had had a seizure.

“Was it that same day, a day later, or a month later?”

“I wouldn't be able to tell you,” she said.

“Can you give us any idea of when you heard of the seizure for the first time?” he pressed on.

“Well, after I came back from PEI is when I found out he came to the police and told them he had a seizure. That was after the girls' deaths. I came back in December.”

“So he told you that he didn't tell them about the seizure because he'd lose his driver's licence?”

“Yes,” she said.

Jennifer was relieved when one of the jurors was called outside the courtroom. She was happy to get a break from the questioning. There were things she couldn't remember, and she had never felt so confused.

But as soon as the break was over, it was time for the cross-examination by Nelson's lawyer, Derek Hogan.

He went back to December of 2002. Jennifer and Nelson were both being interviewed by the police. Mr. Hogan brought forward Nelson's statement from the interview. “
Remember that day you was in doing your hair, and I stood up by the side, you turned in to the wall. I wanted to tell you I got sick. You know, out there. And I said if I tells her she will probably go hysterical.”

This was the first time he had told Jennifer about the seizure.

“I can recall somewhere along the line that he told me he got sick,” said Jennifer.

Jennifer struggled to answer the question until, finally, Mr. Hogan excused her from the stand.

She went back to her seat next to Nelson's mother. She was glad to have it over with, but she couldn't figure out how any of those questions had anything to do with whether or not her husband had killed her two daughters. She hoped she hadn't said anything that was going to make Nelson's mother mad. She was exhausted and in no mood for an argument.

“Yes, My Lord, the next witness for the Crown is Pearl Hart.”

“Do you have any children?” asked Mr. Linehan.

“I've got three sons: Nelson Hart, Mervin Hart, and Stephen Hart. Nelson is the oldest, Stephen the youngest.”

The Crown went on to ask Nelson's mother about her relationship with Nelson after he and Jennifer had moved back from PEI, two months prior to the girls' deaths. They went from talking every day to no contact at all, and the Crown wanted to know why.

“He came back empty-handed,” Pearl explained. “When he arrived he came to me. He was trying to get accommodations for him, Jennifer, and the children.”

“And how did that conversation go?” asked Mr. Linehan.

“Well, because of a past incident, I was told that Nelson (I'm sharing a place with a common-law husband) was not to come. I told Nelson that Eric wasn't in favour of him coming,” she explained.

“How did he take that news?”

“He responded by being very disappointed,” Pearl continued. “He said he was stuck. And I said to him at that time I had a fear, too, as well as Eric. It was because of the problem I've had before with getting help for Nelson from social services. I was afraid that, if I took him and his wife and children, that social services would deny him an apartment in the future. And I couldn't accommodate four people.”

“How did Nelson react?”

“Nelson was upset,” she said. “He said, ‘Mom, I can't believe it. Your own son, you won't take him in.' I tried to explain my fear, and he reminded me that when he did get things straightened out not to come and see the girls, I wouldn't see them because he wouldn't let me in. Which was exactly what he did do.”

Pearl went on to tell everyone in the courtroom that for a couple of days she was driving around looking for them. She was concerned for the children, so she contacted social services.

“I contacted them to see why Nelson was denied an apartment,” she said. “They said if Nelson doesn't have anywhere to go, the kids will be taken from them. I told them those kids will never go out into a foster home.”

Jennifer watched as Pearl continued on. Linehan suggested that she take a break.

“Those kids weren't going out in a foster home. I loved them too much for that,” she explained. “And because I was working, and couldn't take them, I contacted my son Mervin. He was well able to provide for them.”

“What was Nelson's reaction?”

“Well, he wasn't happy about it,” said Pearl.

The attorney went on to ask her about Nelson's new job and his reluctance to talk about his work.

“He said he got it on the Internet,” she said. “I found that hard to believe, because Nelson hardly knows what a computer looks like.” Though he didn't talk about his work, Pearl noticed he was dressing better and looking good.

Next it was Derek Hogan's turn. Jennifer looked on anxiously.

Nelson had been diagnosed with epilepsy when he was nine months old.

“Would it be accurate to say that you became over-protective of him?”

“Yes, I did,” said Pearl. “Nelson . . . it was a fight from day one. Financially. To get help for him. Any time I ever contacted social services for help, I was told that we made too much money. I was encouraged to quit work. Then they would look out to him a hundred per cent. I didn't want to go on welfare, I was looking for help for my child. There were months Nelson cost us a thousand dollars.

Pearl continued to explain the expensive trips to St. John's he required for doctors' appointments. And though they were never hungry, there were sacrifices because of his seizures. There were times he didn't even get a birthday gift.

“Were there times when you thought Nelson shouldn't be alone with the children?” asked Mr. Hogan.

“I was always uneasy of him being alone with the kids, because of his epilepsy,” Pearl explained.

She went on to describe the various seizures Nelson had. There were three types varying in severity.

“Did he tell you that he had a seizure on August 4, 2002?” the lawyer asked.

“He told me he didn't have one.”

“Sometime later did he tell you?”

“Yes. I don't know, exactly. I think it was about a month and a half or something,” Pearl answered. “He sat down in the kitchen one day and started to cry. It wasn't surprising to me, because I had seen him do that a couple of times. He said, ‘Mom, I got something to tell ya.' He said he had a seizure down there that day.”

Pearl told the courtroom she had thought Nelson might have had a seizure when the girls drowned, but she didn't want to press him. She was the one who phoned the police, and Nelson explained that he wanted to change his story. She said Nelson had always tried to hide his seizures.

“What grade did Nelson go to in school?”

“Five. He did grade five. For three years.”

100

The next person to take the stand was an RCMP officer, Cpl. Phil Matthews.

Jennifer thought she could feel Nelson's mother tense up as they listened to him explain the sting operation that would lead to Nelson's arrest.

“The first phase of the traditional investigation had been conducted in the summer of 2004,” he said. “For the lack of a better term, it had bottomed out.”

That's when the talk of an undercover operation began. Cst. Dave Chubbs had transferred to Gander in the spring of 2004, and he had previously worked in an undercover homicide unit in British Columbia. With Chubbs being available, it was the opportune time to start.

In the fall, they began the process of submitting an operation plan in order to get authorization.

“We anticipated we would need ninety days to run the plan, and we sought $173,575,” said Cpl. Matthews.

By late November they had their approval. But things wouldn't go as planned.

Instead of taking ninety days, the operation was going to take longer. In mid-April, they requested an additional $148,837.

Cpl. Matthews said that in April, after playing out thirty-three scenarios, they expected they would need another twenty-seven scenarios in order to obtain a confession from Nelson. Specifically because Nelson was paranoid.

“We didn't realize that we were going to have to move the operation from Newfoundland to the Montreal and Halifax area,” he told the court. “It was getting too problematic to continue running the program in Newfoundland, because it is so small and there are so many policemen.”

The operation ended up costing $413,268.

101

For an entire week, Jennifer sat in shock. She listened to both Pat and Steph recall the months they had spent with Nelson.

Nelson had thought they were his friends. He thought he had a good job. Instead, the police had lured him in. As she looked between Nelson and his former friends, she felt sad for her husband.

She was stunned as she listened to the details. Nelson was travelling all over the mainland. And then there was the money. While he was hiding $20 bills around the house, he was getting paid thousands.

But through her anger, Nelson's mother was there to reassure her. Nelson had been tricked. It was all a lie. A lie with a goal of obtaining a false confession, in her view.

But Jennifer trembled with fear on this Thursday morning. A videotape had been loaded into the machine at the front of the courtroom, and Jennifer was worried about what she was preparing to watch.

A man named Sgt. Haslett was on the stand, and he described what they saw on the screen.

“That's the picture of the hotel room that we were in. It's obviously a smaller couch and one chair there. The drapes are closed,” he stated.

The man who was on the stand was also on the screen. He's walking back and forth and speaking on the phone. Steph is sitting on the couch. Nelson comes into the frame.

Jennifer struggled to hear the conversation on the tape. She listened as Nelson told the man in the other chair that he hadn't hurt his daughters. But his words rang in her ears when he admitted to killing them.

She couldn't take any more. All she wanted to do was run to the front of the court, grab Nelson, and haul him to the floor. She ran from the courtroom as quickly as she could. As she bolted through the courtroom doors, she was aware of someone following her.

She felt an arm around her shoulder, and she recognized the woman from victim services who had been sitting in the courtroom.

She led her down the hallway into a small office. Jennifer couldn't stop crying. The woman handed her a box of tissues.

“Jennifer, are you sure you don't want to do a victim impact statement, so you can tell the court how you feel about everything that's happened?” she asked.

Jennifer had no idea what she was talking about, and she didn't care. She wasn't giving the court anything.