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WARNING

Jo-Anne Dickson, 35, was strangled, bludgeoned and dismembered on July 19th, 1995.

Donald William Smart, 26, was charged with first-degree murder and offering an indignity to a dead body.

Smart was found guilty of second-degree murder and offering an indignity to a dead body. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with parole eligibility set at 20 years. He was set to be eligible for day passes in January 2013.

verdict | trial | sentencing

In the summer of 1995, Jo-Anne Dickson had just left her common-law husband in Calgary and moved back to Edmonton with her two children – Michael, 13, and Ashley, 3.

On July 18th, Dickson and two friends ended up at the Commercial Hotel on Whyte Avenue to join a few people they knew.

As the evening wound down, the group scattered and Dickson closed the place with a guy thought to be named Rob or Bob.

No one saw the two leave. Dickson never made the 15-minute walk home along well-lit Whyte Avenue – she had simply disappeared.

On July 20th, friends reported Dickson missing to police.

That same day, firefighters on a jet boat training exercise came across a suitcase on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River near the Groat Bridge.

Inside, they found a black plastic garbage bag containing a woman's torso wrapped in a sheet. An extensive search at the time failed to turn up the missing arms, legs and head.

In January 1996, 26-year-old Donald William Smart was charged with first-degree murder and offering an indignity to a dead body. Police said they made the arrest after acting on a tip.

Friends described Smart as an avid Star Trek fan. The previous Halloween, he had won first place dressed as Klingon Lt.-Cmdr. Worf at a contest held at a south-side nightclub. The friends also said Smart had a history of suicide attempts and self-abuse.

In February 1996, police found a head and right leg. Dental X-rays later proved they were those of Jo-Anne Dickson.

A month later, after five weeks of psychiatric assessment at Alberta Hospital, Smart was found fit to stand trial. A preliminary hearing was set for July.

Keillor Road in 2011. A brief history of the roadway can be read here »

In April 1996, officers armed with shovels and rakes came across some bones in the bush near the top of Keillor Road. Det. Keith Kilshaw, the prime investigator on the case, said the three to four bones found were likely Dickson's.

The July 1996 preliminary hearing determined there was enough evidence against Smart to mount a trial. It would be nearly a year before the accused killer would learn his fate.

Trial

On June 2nd, 1997, prosecutor Arnold Piragoff stood before Queen's Bench Justice Cecilia Johnstone and outlined the Crown's case against Donald William Smart.

It was a confession made by Smart on New Year’s Day 1996 to a friend that put the man on police radar. It took nearly a month for the friend to build up the resolve to turn Smart in through a call to Crime Stoppers.

Smart said he and Dickson went to his apartment after meeting at the Commercial Hotel. They talked and had sex. He then strangled her, broke her neck, cut up her body and disposed of the parts.

Although police had Smart's fingerprints on file, the single right thumb print found on the plastic bag wrapped around Dickson's torso didn't match because of a software glitch. That was soon rectified an a positive match was made.

"Sexual acts were performed upon her body on several occasions, even whilst her body was partially dismembered," Piragoff told the court. Semen samples taken from Dickson's vagina and rectum matched Smart's DNA profile.

DNA evidence was new to the legal system in the mid-1990s and still subject to the test of reasonable doubt. Courts of day felt more comfortable when odds were presented.

The certainty that the semen belonged to Smart was pegged at 8.2 billon to one.

With police in tow, Smart again took a tour of Edmonton's river valley. He showed officers where he dropped Dickson's head into a 12-metre-deep pipe embedded in a concrete Quesnell Bridge support pillar. They used a steam-pipe truck with a long, powerful vacuum hose to retrieve it, a constable later testified.

At another site, police recovered Dickson's legs. Her arms were never found.

When police searched Smart's apartment, they found a copy of Gray's Anatomy. The spine of the book was so worn it naturally fell open to a page that dealt specifically with the dissection of the hip joint.

Dr. Bernhard Bannach, assistant chief medical examiner of Alberta, was asked if the text might have helped with dismemberment.

"It would certainly give you some indication as to where muscles and the ligaments and joints are," Bannach said.

Dickson's death was first ruled as the result of homicidal violence. When her head was recovered six months later, Bannach found several fractures in the attached vertebrae. From that, he determined that death most likely resulted from violent impact to the back of the neck.

Piragoff asked Bannach if a barbell that police seized from Smart's apartment could have caused the injuries and Dickson's death.

"It could, yes," Bannach replied.

Bannach also testified he found a tear and some bruising in Dickson's genital area which he said may have been caused by a blow or by forced or rough intercourse.

Other traumas to Dickson's body occurred after death, Bannach said. Within eight to 12 hours, a sharp, single blade with a pointed tip was used to cut off her arms, legs and head.

"The dismemberment through the shoulder and hip joints was fairly neatly done. There was no evidence of any knife marks on the bones around these joints (indicating practice cuts). The limbs were cut. They weren't chopped or torn," Bannach said.

Ginger Brown, Smart's former landlord, said even mattresses piled against the doorway couldn't stem the putrid stench reeking from Smart's apartment. She compared it to the odor of rotting animal flesh.

"A sweet, dirty stench," she said. "I can't even describe it. I'll never forget that smell.

"I thought he was just dirty. His carpet was giving off bad smells. I couldn't live with it any more. I tried to do all I could to keep it from coming into our suite. It was making me really sick."

Brown said Smart was a quiet tenant with a job who paid his rent on time. She didn't want him to move out so she asked him to move to another apartment in the building.

She offered to clean up the suite for him. The smell was most potent near a large, sticky stain on the living-room carpet next to the doorway between his suite and hers. Water in the steam-cleaner turned reddish-brown when she went over the stain, Brown said.

Brown also told of a burgundy suitcase she'd left in Smart's suite before he moved in. She identified it as the one in which Dickson's torso was found.

Defence lawyer Richard Stroppel had another theory about the source of the smell, but Brown insisted the stink had nothing to do with the hydroponic marijuana her boyfriend, the caretaker, was growing between the walls of Smart's suite and her own.

Smart had confessed the murder, dismemberment and necrophilia to friend Gary Swanson.

"He told me he'd done something bad," Swanson testified.

"I asked him if he'd robbed a store or attacked somebody, and he answered no' to both. I asked him if he raped somebody, and he didn't answer. Then I went so far as to ask if he killed somebody. And I just got a strange look from him .... he asked me if the name Jo-Anne Dickson rang a bell."

Swanson said it took an hour and a half for Smart to tell him what had happened in July 1995.

Smart told him he first saw Dickson at the Purple Onion nightclub, then again at the Commercial. When the bar closed, they left together and took a cab to his apartment.

"The way he explained it, it seemed like she was playing hard to get," Swanson testified. "He told me he basically found himself strangling her. After that, she stopped moving."

Swanson said Smart pulled Dickson's body off the bed and dropped a barbell with some weights on the back of her neck a few times "just to make sure she was dead."

Then he dragged her body to the bathtub, poured chlorine bleach over it and began cutting it up with a knife.

Smart also admitted to having sex with the corpse – up to eight times, including once when it was partially dismembered, Swanson testified.

Smart then disposed of the various parts of Dickson’s body over the course of a week. He grabbed his bike and took a torso-laden suitcase to the river near the Groat Bridge.

Smart carried Dickson's head and an arm in his backpack and dumped them at the Quesnell Bridge. The remaining parts he buried elsewhere in the river valley.

"He told me that it wasn't very hard and he could probably do it again if he had to," Swanson testified.

"He told me I was the only one who knew. At first, what he told me scared me and we'd been friends so long, I didn't think I could turn him in. But in the end, I realized I had to. I honestly believe he came to me because he thought I would step forward and say something."

While Swanson was on the stand, Smart was quietly tearing at his wrist and hands with his fingernails. A 15-minute break in proceedings was stretched to a half hour. When the trial resumed, Smart re-entered the courtroom sporting bandages and double the usual number of guards at his side.

Homicide detectives had arrested Smart at his apartment on January 29th, 1996.

"I had the impression he wasn't surprised," Det. Daniel Phillips testified. "It was almost like he was expecting us to show up."

During an interview recorded at police headquarters, Smart said he and Dickson had kissed and fondled for three hours but Dickson wouldn't agree to have sex.

"That type of thing is what makes people snap, right?" Det. Keith Kilshaw asked Smart. "I mean, you're 26, you want a girlfriend, you want to have sex, this woman's teasing you, and you snap, right?"

"Hmm, sort of, yeah," Smart replied.

"I can stand up to a person tormenting me to a certain point, then usually I just walk away," Smart said. "But it was bugging me too much."

Smart also told the detective he recalled little about the night of Dickson's death.

"That whole week was a blur for me," he said.

"You told Gary [Swanson] you strangled her. Is that right?" Kilshaw asked.

"From what I vaguely remember, I must have."

To make sure she was dead, Smart said he dropped a barbell with about 35 kg of weights on her neck before dragging her body to the bathtub and pouring bleach over it.

Smart told Kilshaw he was interested in anatomy and had done some reading about it. He said that may have helped when he took a razor-sharp ceremonial Japanese knife and cut off Dickson's head, arms and legs.

When he was arrested, Smart worked for at Rosie's Bar and Grill, three blocks from the Commercial Hotel. It was likely there he developed a fascination for exotic knives.

Smart said he had sex with Dickson's body "maybe three or four" times. He then related to Kilshaw how he disposed of her body parts in the river valley.

"How do you feel about getting it off your chest?" Kilshaw asked at the end of the interview. "Worse, better? Be honest with me."

"Probably worse ... I know I'm going to lose a lot of friends."

When the trial moved to the defence phase, lawyer Richard Stroppel decided not to present any evidence or produce any witnesses. Instead, he chose to offer arguments to reduce the charge against Smart.

"I don't anticipate the court will have any difficulty in finding the accused did commit this act," Stroppel said.

"The court can assume that the major issue here is the classification of this crime as either first-degree or second-degree murder."

Closing arguments in the trial came down to the issue of motive and how it spoke to the level of charge. What Smart had done with Dickson and her body wasn't the point – it was why.

In the prisoner's box, Smart seemed paler than usual. Two large bruises on his forehead grew darker as the day went on.

Crown prosecutor Arnold Piragoff said the murder was the result of a scheme to have sex, which made the death first-degree murder.

Criminal Code of Canada - Section 231

"Clearly the motive in the killing here is the furtherance of pursuing sexual pleasure because she has refused his advances," Piragoff argued. "What else could it be but for the teasing? There's no other explanation on the evidence."

Piragoff linked the killing to the rape and the bruising found on Dickson's vagina was the proof. It suggested there was forced intercourse before her death.

"There is no other rational explanation for him going to the next step ... which was the strangulation ... except that he was being rejected in his sexual advances, " he said. "What occurs after the strangulation and the barbell incident is the culmination of the initial sexual activity in further sexual activity."

Defence lawyer Richard Stroppel countered, saying the bruising wasn't conclusive. He referenced the medical examiner's testimony in which he admitted when or how the bruising occurred couldn't be determined.

Stroppel noted the bruising could have resulted from an accidental blow or "overexuberant" sex. If there was no sexual assault, he argued, Smart could only be convicted of second-degree murder.

The sex was consensual, Stroppel said. Both Smart and Dickson were drunk and she had been looking for someone to go home with that night, he suggested.

Afterwards, Smart "snapped," Stroppel contended, but "the ensuing homicide had no apparent sexual motive or purpose."

He conceded that Smart had sex with Dickson's body but the evidence didn't clearly show how soon after death it took place.

"The act of strangling a person and dropping a barbell onto her neck would have no apparent sexual purpose," Stroppel said. "The accused apparently interferes with the remains in a sexual way, but it's not known if it was one hour or two hours or three hours afterward. There is no clear evidence it was a continuous act.

"Effectively what happened here is murder followed by sexual activity with a corpse. That is a deplorable thing but it doesn't constitute murder in the first degree," Stroppel said.

Verdict

On June 18th, 1997, Court of Queen's Bench Justice Cecilia Johnstone found Donald Smart guilty of second-degree murder.

"I must act as a representative of the community in denouncing this murder most vile," Johnstone declared.

The Star Trek fanatic who once won a prize for best Klingon costume simply stared into space when he heard the decision.

Johnstone said she couldn't find Smart guilty of first-degree murder because there was reasonable doubt he killed Dickson in the course of a sexual assault.

Smart was also convicted of offering an indignity to a body.

Second-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence, but it was up to Justice Johnstone to decide how long it would be before Smart could apply for parole. The minimum is 10 years; the maximum is 25.

Factors that determine a parole date include society's condemnation of the type of crime committed by the accused, other crimes committed at the same time as the murder, the character and background of the accused, and interests surrounding protection of the public.

During victim statements presented prior to sentencing, court heard Dickson's children suffered taunting at school. Son Michael, now 15, had often been called the "suitcase kid" by classmates.

"We feel violated, our hearts are broken," Dickson's mother, Alison Parker, said.

Sentencing

On June 21st, Justice Johnstone ruled that Donald Smart must serve 20 years before becoming eligible for parole.

Smart underwent counselling at the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon and served his sentence at a federal jail outside Alberta.

He had earlier expressed fear for his own safety if he were sent to the maximum security Edmonton Institution. The location of his eventual incarceration was never revealed.

Donald Smart is eligible for day passes in January 2013.

Justice Johnstone dies

In April 2006, Queen's Bench Justice Cecilia Johnstone, the judge that presided over the Dickson-Smart case, died at the age of 54 of cervical cancer.

Johnstone had been appointed to the bench in 1996 with little experience as a trial lawyer. She had previously specialised in wills and estates.

Court of Queen's Bench Chief Justice Allan Wachowich said the Smart case ended up with Johnstone because more experienced judges were too busy.

"People were a little skeptical about what kind of judge she would be," he said.

"She devoted herself completely to her profession, worked very hard and became a highly respected, capable judge, and took on some very difficult cases early in her career and did an outstanding job."

Johnstone left behind her husband, John Day, an Edmonton lawyer and a land developer most noted for restoration of the Garneau Theatre and the Kelly-Ramsey Block downtown.

More about the Garneau Theatre can be read here. More about the Kelly-Ramsey Block can be read here and here.

All the information presented on this page has been compiled primarily from published media reports and should not be interpreted as having legal bearing or other prejudice against the individuals named on this web site.
The Last Link on the Left practices fair presentation and the disclosure of relevant interests.
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deadmonton 1995 - jo-anne dickson