deadmonton - thomas george svekla - trial - 6

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On February 19th, 2008 Thomas George Svekla went on trial in an Edmonton Court of Queen's Bench courtroom to face two charges of second-degree murder in connection with the deaths of Theresa Merrie Innes and Rachel Liz Quinney.


This page is Part Six of coverage by this site.




April 7th, 2008


The eighth week of the trial of Thomas Svekla began with more witnesses from the High Level area.


Donald Bolton, a taxi driver, testified he once had Svekla and Theresa Innes in his cab when the pair had a dispute.


Innes hopped out of the cab and Bolton said Svekla was angry at her, accusing her of ripping him off over some drugs.


"I'm going to kill that bitch," quoted Bolton to the court.


The taxi driver, whose wife had previously taken the stand, did not take Svekla's threat seriously.


Facing cross examination, Bolton admitted Svekla's threat was not in his original police statement and was not part of his testimony at the January 2007 preliminary hearing.


Boulton also acknowledged he told police Svekla was not referring to any one individual when he made the threat to kill, but that he was including a number of women who he thought had ripped him off.


The cab driver also admitted that he didn't like Svekla because he said derogatory things about women in general.


Stardust Motel - High Level

Another High Level witness, Ryan Bredesen, testified that he saw Svekla and Innes together at a crack party at his home, an old rented trailer behind the Stardust Motel in an area locals referred to as Lysol Creek.


"He was dating Theresa at the time, and he was always complaining that he never saw her because she was always working," Bredesen testified.


Svekla also confided in Bredesen that Innes "was good" – referring to her skills in bed.


Innes moved in with Bredesen for a time, and the man said he saw the woman with Svekla on the town's streets.


Answering to Svekla's defence lawyer, Bredesen admitted that details of his recollection were "fuzzy" because he was a heavy crack user at the time. At the party referred to, Bredesen said he was more focused on the pile of drugs on the table than his guests.


Rounding out the day's witness list was James Cochrane who met Innes after asking a cab driver where he could find a female companion.


Cochrane said he and Innes then spent five days together in a motel room.


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April 9th, 2008


The trial heard from a man who ran a High Level liquor store. Gamal Elgharably said Thomas Svekla was a regular customer who became his friend.


Elgharably told the court that on at least two occasions in December 2005 Svekla showed him cuts, scratches and severe bites on his chest area – the result of sexual encounters according to Svekla.


Testifying next was a former girlfriend of the accused.


A small aboriginal woman in her twenties, with shaggy and short black hair, Diane Kipling took the stand looking it was the last place she ever wanted to be.


While Svekla gazed directly at her, sometimes smiling, Kipling hardly acknowledged the man.


Kipling testified she met Svekla in High Level and stayed with him for a month at his apartment. Court heard that at one time she was four months pregnant with Svekla's child.


Often speaking barely above a whisper, Kipling said she helped Svekla move before he went to jail in Peace River and later stayed with him for two nights in a High Level motel after he was released from prison in May 2006.


Kipling noted that Svekla had several bags with him including a large hockey bag. She never looked inside it, never saw him move it and never moved it herself.


On the day Svekla left High Level for Fort Saskatchewan, he wanted Kipling to go with him.


"He was begging me to go with him," she testified.


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April 16th - 17th, 2008


With media interest flagging, details of developments in the trial of Thomas Svekla were sketchy.


The court heard from Sgt. Dean Hamm of the Peace River RCMP detachment who was called to High Level shortly after Svekla was arrested.


Hamm testified he examined Svekla's truck, the man's former apartment and several High Level hotel rooms.


The officer said a seat in Svekla's truck had some sort of stain on it. Part of the seat was cut out and sent for analysis.


Edmonton Journal court reporter Chris Purdy interviewed Svekla following his arrest in 2006.


Purdy was subpoenaed to testify at Svekla's January 2007 preliminary hearing but the Journal fought the order. Judge Douglas Rae later decided that the paper's argument of a "chill effect" on journalists having to testify wasn't valid.


The reporter related to the trial his account of the interviews that formed the basis of an article published by the Journal on January 3rd, 2007.


Testimony also came from a woman at the centre of Svekla's 2005 assault charge.


High Level Family Motel

Marcia Chambeaud said she was drinking beer with her sister and friends at the Family Motel in High Level when Svekla joined them. An argument broke out and Chambeaud claimed that Svekla attacked her.


"He threw three punches at my head," she said. "It gave me two really big bumps on my head."


Chambeaud testified she immediately went to police and pressed charges against Svekla.


As has been his habit throughout the trial, Svekla looked on from the prisoner's box with disinterest.


Joanne Sellwood, an assistant programmer with the Family Community Support Services in High Level, told the court a woman with severe bruises on her neck came in to see her in the fall of 2005.


Sellwood said the woman claimed it was Svekla who had inflicted the injuries.


Bobby Waspcolin said he saw Svekla driving in a truck with Theresa Innes. Once while in jail at the same time as Svekla, Waspcolin overheard two fellow inmates at the Peace River Correctional Centre ask Svekla, "What does if feel like to kill a human being?"


Waspcolin told the court Svekla responded, "You should try it yourself."


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April 21st, 2008


The Crown's case continued with testimony from a witness who described Svekla's penchant for choking.


Shawna Gordon told the court of several incidents that took place in various homes in Edmonton's southeast during crack parties.


Gordon said that in 2004 she saw Svekla corner a woman with his hands around her neck.


Svekla continued choking her until Gordon was "pretty sure she blacked out and went to the floor."


Gordon said Svekla also liked to be choked.


"He always liked to choke himself. He'd say, 'Choke me. Choke me,' " Gordon testified. "He said it a lot."


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April 22nd, 2008


Proceedings in the Thomas Svekla double-murder trial continued in a voir dire, a hearing within hearing. Prosecutors called on several witnesses who knew and dated Svekla in his teens and twenties.


For the first time during the trial, Svekla appeared dressed in a suit.


Justice Sterling Sanderman was expected to rule later on the admissibilty of testimony from several women whose names were protected under a publication ban.


The first woman to testify met Svekla through her brother when she was 14.


"He was a good friend," she said. "He was not mean or anything." On the stand she referred to the man as Tommy.


In 1985 the woman's brother, Svekla and some friends met up at the family farm near Fort Saskatchewan for a few drinks before heading out to a bar.


Everyone had left but a few minutes later Svekla returned by himself, bleeding from cuts on his hand. Speaking through a locked door, Svekla told the woman he had hurt himself punching a window. Although alone in the house, she unlocked the door and let him in.


She testified she washed Svekla's cuts in the bathroom sink and went to the kitchen to get some bandages. When she returned she found Svekla overcome with rage.


"He started getting really mad at me and really angry and telling me this was all my fault. He was just yelling at me. It was almost like an out-of-control anger."


Svekla then chased her around the kitchen table, catching up to her in a hallway. There he pinned her down, her back to the carpet and her hands behind her.


"He was sitting on top of me, with his hands around my neck and I remember his thumbs on the centre of my throat," she said.


"He was telling me to shut up, to be still. He was pushing on my throat and telling me that all it would take was for him to push harder and I'd be dead. Tommy said that he could kill me right then and there if he wanted to."


The woman stopped struggling and let Svekla take her to her bedroom.


"He had put me down on the bed and told me to keep quiet and he was trying to pull my jeans down. I was squeezing to try and keep them from getting past my waist," the woman testified.


Svekla gave up and she was soon able to calm him down. He told her he would kill her if she ever told anyone about the incident.


Svekla left the house and the woman hid under a granary, fearing he would return. Her brother found her still hiding when he returned to the house.


Svekla later apologised, she said. They renewed their friendship and dated briefly a few years afterward. The relationship was marked by the pair having sex in the back of Svekla’s Camaro.


As the woman testified, she stole smiling looks in the direction of the prisoner's box.


A similar story was told by Sylvia Krause – but this time the setting was a bar.


Krause, who had a four-year off-and-on relationship with Svekla in the late 1980s, told the court about a time when the couple were out for drinks.


After she went outside to look at her friend’s new car, Svekla attacked – enraged that she had left him alone.


"He pinned me against the wall and used his forearm to choke me across my throat and under my chin," Krause said. "I felt helpless. I had difficulty breathing."


The woman also recalled a second choking incident when Svekla choked her with his hand around her throat.


The trial then heard from a second woman testifying under a publication ban.


In 2003, the woman agreed to have sex with Svekla in exchange for $40 worth of cocaine. However, she got scared and started yelling when Svekla became aggressive, calling her a "slut" and a "whore."


"He wanted to try something new. I don't know if he was all drugged up and freaky but he told me to trust him," the woman told the court in a low voice, tears running down her cheek.


"He said he wouldn't hurt me," she said. "He had a lot of anger in him and I just thought he was taking it out on me."


Svekla then tied her hands and wrapped a silky floral scarf around her throat while she was face down on a bed. He choked her as they had intercourse.


"He tied me up and he strangled me. He tied me up, my arms and my hands, and then he started choking me.


"I knew it wasn't right. I was telling him to stop. I lost consciousness," she said.


Svekla eventually stopped choking the woman and laughed. She responded by saying that she would send gang members to shoot him if he didn't let her go.


The woman ran outside without her shoes on despite the fact it was the middle of winter.


When asked if she had given Svekla permission to choke her, the woman replied: "Who wants to be choked?"


The woman's mother, whose name was also protected under the publication ban, testified she and Svekla did crack numerous times.


On one occasion Svekla asked her to choke him as they were getting high. He then showed her how to do it.


"I put my hands on his neck. I pressed my thumbs in until he started going bluish and then he fell," she testified.


The woman could tell it made Svekla happy because he had a smile on his face. "He liked the way it felt," she said.


The voir dire was expected to continue for a week.


When the Crown successfully argued that Svekla should be tried for the murders of Innes and Quinney at the same time, legal spectators surmised it was because the case against him was largely circumstantial and that prosecutors would rely on "similar fact evidence."


"If the Crown can show that two crimes were likely committed by the same person, and they can link the accused to Crime One – then not only is that evidence that the accused committed Crime One, it's also evidence he committed Crime Two," explained University of Alberta law professor Sanjeev Anand.


The testimony of the day indicated Svekla exhibited choking behaviour throughout his life and had threatened to kill using that same method. Although medical examiners testified they could not determine Innes and Quinney's cause of death, asphyxiation was not ruled out. If accepted, the voir dire evidence would greatly support the Crown's case.


However, defence lawyer Robert Shaigec was expected to argue the current testimony had no bearing on present allegations of murder against his client.


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April 23rd, 2008


Voir dire testimony came next from a woman who described her one-hour prison visit with Thomas Svekla soon after he was arrested for the second-degree murder of Theresa Innes in May 2006.


Rebecca Kroetsch was best friends with Svekla when they grew up together in the same neighbourhood in Fort Saskatchewan in the early 1980s. She described their friendship as “really close.”


She went to visit him at the Edmonton Remand Centre after hearing the “shocking” news that “this huge person in my life” had been charged with murder. She wanted to see her old friend and find out if the allegations against him were true.


On the stand Kroetsch described the meeting as "bone-chilling."


"It was all in the eyes," she said. "I felt this very cold, scary presence right through the glass. It was very frightening to me."


Kroetsch said Svekla asked her to take a message to a friend – one he had sexually assaulted two decades before. A metamorphasis took place before the woman's eyes as Svekla went from being very emotional to very cold.


"He leaned in close and said, 'I need you to tell her she was the first one. She was the first one I ever hurt. She was the first one to see the bogey man. Thank God I didn't hurt her more,' " Kroetsch testified.


Court heard testimony from that victim the day before. She said Svekla had pinned her on the floor and threatened to choke her to death. He then took her to a bedroom and tried to pull her pants off. The woman, then 14 or 15, was able to talk him out of the assault.


In the cramped quarters that make up the visitor booths in the remand centre, Svekla told Kroetsch about writing a book because "everyone is interested in serial killers" and that the profits would go to his son.


When she asked him about the charges, Svekla denied being guilty. The rest of his answer startled his childhood friend.


"He said, 'Rebecca, this is what I will tell you for now, just for now. I transported a body.' Then he started laughing. 'Just for now.' "


Kroetsch told the court she left the meeting "an emotional wreck" and felt "very conflicted." She wrote five pages of notes about the meeting which she later turned over to police.


Under cross-examination, Kroetsch admitted the words "serial killer" never appeared in her handwritten documentation of the jailhouse visit.


Throughout her testimony, Kroetsch not once acknowledged Svekla's presence in the prisoner's box.


Hannibal Lecter

Speaking to reporters outside court, Rebecca Kroetsch said visiting her old friend was like encountering the Hannibal Lecter character from the film and book Silence of the Lambs. She asked that her face not be photographed.


CTV Edmonton image CTV Edmonton image

"When I watched that years ago ... that's what I felt like at that moment," she said of her meeting with Svekla.


"I felt like Clarisse ... I saw in him something that horrified me.


“I feel horrified that the person that was so good to me in our teenage years has, I believe in my heart after meeting with him, turned into a monster."


"To hear that someone I was that close to was arrested for something like that was shocking. In my heart I needed to know if he was guilty of what he was charged with."


CTV Edmonton image

"He'd been a really close friend to me and was my best friend for many years. He was such a good friend to me I had asked for him to be a groomsman at my wedding.


"When I went to visit him he disclosed to me that a mutual friend of ours, that he had attacked years previous, was the first lady that he had attacked and that she was the first person to see the bogey man."


Kroetsch spoke of the book Svekla planned to write.


CTV Edmonton image

"He just said to me 'You know, Rebecca, the world is interested in serial killers.'


"The world is interested in his story. 'The world is interested in me and I should write a book about myself and I'll get a lot of money,' " she quoted Svekla as saying.


Kroetsch was asked what she thought Svekla meant by "bogey man."


"Well ... I wouldn't venture guess what that means. I think that we can imagine what we all perceive the bogey man to be ... and I think that was the context he was using it in."


CTV Edmonton image

Kroetsch finished her encounter with media by saying she never wanted to see Thomas Svekla or talk to him ever again. She added she was now “praying for Tom's soul” and that her appearance in court "was all about closure."


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April 24th, 2008


Thomas Svekla found himself celebrating his fortieth birthday in court listening to another former acquaintance testify in the continuing voir dire hearing. And again it was another witness describing a violent attack.


On the stand was a woman who said she met Svekla on August 4th, 2005 in the town of High Level. When she spotted him he was riding his bike and carrying a six-pack of beer. For her part the woman, whose identity was protected by way of a publication ban, was toting a bottle of liquor.


Svekla invited the soft-spoken native woman to his basement bachelor suite.


"He took me down in the basement ... he had me there for a while," she said.


After Svekla cleared off his bed he sat down beside the woman on a love seat where she was drinking a beer.


"He kept on sitting next to me ... I knew there was something wrong," she said. "I said, 'I got to go,' and he attacked me from behind.


“He grabbed my throat with his left hand and he covered my mouth with his right hand,” she said. “He had me down and was trying to kiss me on the mouth.”


Visibly nervous, the woman recounted her harrowing experience. She said she couldn't breathe, she couldn't scream for help. She fell to her knees and started to see stars.


The woman testified she “fought and fought” against the attack.


“That's when he said he was going to twist my neck and break it and hide my body somewhere nobody would ever find it.


“That's when I played dead. And as soon as he turned his back, I ran out and he was chasing me from behind.”


The woman told court she was able to call a cab, after bumming 35 cents from some kids, and took it to the High Level RCMP detachment. Police photographed the bruises on her face, chest and back and began a sexual assault investigation.


As a result, Svekla was charged with sexual assault and uttering threats. The matter was slated to go to trial in High Level at some point in the fall of 2008.


Crown prosecutors told Justice Sanderman they expected to finish their presentation of evidence by May 8th, 2008. The defence would then mount its case.


The trial continued April 28th, 2008.



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