A 911 call, a bloodied bar and wiretaps were the focus today of more riveting testimony in the Jagtar Gill murder trial. On the stand was a detective with the Ottawa Police Major Crimes Section, a wiretaps expert, who talked about techniques police used to gauge reaction of the two on trial for the murder.
Major crime investigators believed that Bhupinderpal Gill and his alleged lover Gurpreet Ronald were somehow connected to the bludgeoning death of the Barrhaven mother. Proving it though would take some interesting police work.
It was a vicious brutal murder that shocked the neighborhood and apparently rocked the man who was married to the victim.
“She’s all cut up, sir,” Gill is heard telling the 911 operator, “She is not moving at all.”
In a shaky voice Bhupinderpal Gill tells the operator how he and his 15-year-old daughter discovered Jagtar Gill bloodied and motionless on the floor of their family room on January 29, 2014.
"There’s been somebody in my home, sir. All the stuff is all over the place."
The operator tells Gill to turn his wife on her back and start CPR.
"I need help before I faint on myself,” he says, unable to turn his wife, “I can't see."
A few days after the murder, police find a bloodied weight lifting bar in the basement of the Gill home and a plan is struck over a replica bar and a hidden camera.
Detective Chris Benson is a wiretaps expert with the Ottawa Police on the witness stand today. He had set up the camera that appeared to capture Bhupinderpal Gill first checking on the bar on February 6th, then trying to stuff the bar in his jacket on February 8th and finally, sticking it down his pants February 9th and leaving the home to later toss it into the woods off Cedarview Road.
A second investigative prompt was aimed at Gurpreet Ronald and involved a note saying “Killer” placed on her windshield at work.
The trial took a weird turn at one point with the Crown entering into evidence a story from CTV Ottawa’s Joanne Schnurr.
The April 11, 2014 story, two and a half months after Jagtar Gill's murder, focused on the discovery by police of a bloodied bar in the woods off Cedarview road. Police made no connection at that point to Jagtar Gill's murder. The story, run by all the media outlets, was what police called an investigative prompt. This one aimed at Jagtar’s husband Bhupinderpal.
Gurpreet Ronald was already behind bars at this point charged with murder. Detective Benson told court that they released the story about the bloodied bar to see how Gill would react, knowing full well he had chucked what he believed to be the original bar in the woods two months earlier.
In videotaped testimony from April 13th, Gill admits to Detective Benson that he picked up the bloodied bar and washed off the bloody knives.
"From every angle" he says "it looks like I'm guilty. From my situation, sir, I'm screwed.
The interview that Detective Benson did with Gill lasts some five hours. That will take most of tomorrow. After that, court will hear from the first witness for the defence: Gill himself.
