Michael Kelly says life with his common-law spouse was good before she disappeared 12 years ago.
The jury selected for the first-degree murder case of Kelly watched a three hour interview Wednesday between the accused and OPP Det. Const. Jane Conway from 2004. The interview was conducted months after 57-year-old Judie Thibault’s body was found wrapped in a carpet near Wolf’s Lake.
Kelly’s first-degree murder charge is in connection with Thibault’s death and disappearance.
Kelly said during the interview that when the couple first met in 1995, things were a bit rocky. But he explained that those rocky times included only little spats between them
“We had a good relationship,” he said. “After the first year it was all smooth sailing.”
The couple discussed retirement plans in the months leading up to Thibault’s disappearance.
Kelly’s interview paints a different picture than testimony from friends and family last week when it was said the relationship was getting physical and that Thibault was ready to give Kelly an ultimatum about the relationship.
Longtime friend and co-worker Toni Simmons testified last Thursday that Thibault told her during a phone conversation that she was planning to break things off with Kelly after the holidays and that they had been fighting. Simmons told the court that this conversation took place about one-to-two weeks before Thibault went missing.
When Kelly’s lawyer Gil Labine asked Simmons if Thibault had specified the fighting as being verbal, Simmons said she understood it to be physical from bruises she had seen on Thibault.
Thibault’s cousin Susan Verrill also testified last Thursday that Thibault told her during a party around Oct. 21, 2000 that Kelly was becoming rough with her and that she was going to give him an ultimatum that either he was to start working or she was leaving.
From the 2004 interview that the court heard on Wednesday, Kelly admitted that he left his first wife in New Brunswick before coming to Thunder Bay in 1993 because things became physical.
He ended another relationship once in the city, which also became physical.
Kelly admitted that those relationships became physical because he was drinking heavily at the time.
Kelly’s former employer, Harold Kanpherm, also took the stand during Wednesday’s proceedings.
The court heard how Kanpherm had hired Kelly in the summer of 2000 to trap live bait in the Dorion Area near where Thibault’s body was found.
But during an earlier police interview, Kelly had said he was not familiar with that area.
Two forensic scientists also testified Wednesday. The scientists had compared carpet samples found wrapped around Thibault with samples found in an Alcoholics Anonymous building on Brown Street.
Forensic scientists Beth Howe and Johanne Almer both concluded that the samples were indistinguishable from one another.
Both expert witnesses could not exclude the samples coming from the same carpet roll, they couldn’t say that the samples were the same.
At the end of the day, Superior Court Judge John Wright questioned the relevance of some of the Crown’s evidence.
“Any rug salesman could have told you the same thing,” Wright told the Crown.
The Crown, which has five more witnesses to call and 13 hours of video from a 2009 police sting operation to present, expects its case to wrap up Monday.
