Death's Shadow (6 page)

Evil Presence

On Monday morning, August 20, Shane Mosher entered a substance and withdrawal management treatment centre in Simcoe, a town one hour south of Hamilton. Shane’s wife, Shannon, had driven him there from their home in Brantford for the first time a week earlier. She loved Shane and felt he was worth saving, along with their marriage. Shane was determined to kick his crack addiction, and never again put life with Shannon, and their little girl, Riley, in jeopardy. And now he was checking in for a second week of treatment. Shane had attended discussion groups, was doing well in rehab, and enjoyed the staff, the chats. He connected easily with people; he just had that way about him.

In a group discussion on Monday, August 20, Shane met someone who had checked in very early that morning. Young guy, red hair; he wasn’t saying much in the group; kept to himself. He said his name was Carl. At first Carl didn’t talk to anybody, and when he did talk, it nearly led to a couple of fights. But as the week wore on, he did talk to Shane. They seemed to have things in common. Both had grown up in the Maritimes. They talked sports. Carl wasn’t much into athletics growing up, but he did box as a kid. Carl told Shane that the gym out east where he had trained always smelled of sweat mixed with the orange slices consumed by the boxers. To this day whenever he smelled oranges it took him back to that gym, he said. During breaks Shane and Carl threw a baseball around outside.

“Carl,” Shane said, “why don’t you get the bat from the shed, tap a few grounders out there?”

But Carl would not go to the shed, would barely look at it. Seemed odd. Shane had started observing Carl. It was something he did; he liked to take people’s measure, figure out what made them tick. He could tell Carl was a hard guy, had rage inside, and seemed like the type who could snap at any moment. But still Shane chatted with him. Maybe he could help the guy.

They had rooms on the same floor of the house, and Shane noticed that Carl kept socks wedged in the spring-loaded door of the bedroom, all night, as though he was afraid to let it close. They continued to hang out together, and by Thursday Carl had started confiding in Shane, talked about hating his father, and told Shane his full name: Carl Hall. He said he was on the run after having robbed a bank in Hamilton.

That night, after the 11:00 p.m. curfew, it was silent in the house, and Shane heard a knock on his door. It was Carl. Shane invited him in. Carl wore green cargo pants and a T-shirt. He entered, shut the door, and sat on the end of Shane’s bed. He held a pillow in his hands, and as he spoke, Shane watched him squeeze it tighter. He had a sense that Carl was about to tell him something very dark.

“Shane, I’m not on the run for robbing banks.”

Carl Hall sat on the end of Shane Mosher’s bed, rocking back and forth, white-knuckling the pillow clutched in his hands.

“I did something horrible,” he said.

Carl told Shane a story. He had a girlfriend in Hamilton, he said, and they had a daughter. And Carl knew a guy; he did some drug deals with him. But then this guy harassed Carl’s girlfriend, and his young daughter was there when it happened. There had to be payback. Shane, who lay on the bed, felt a shiver; goosebumps popped on his arms.

Carl continued. He told Shane that he went to this guy’s apartment and noticed a white van outside the building. He walked up the stairs, had a baseball bat. A fridge blocked the door from the inside, but he was able to get it open. Inside, he saw this guy on his knees, beside a table. Carl hit him in the head with the bat. And again. He heard gurgling sounds. Carl knew it was serious. And then another person came in the room. A woman. Carl’s voice grew sharper telling the story, almost angry.

“She wasn’t supposed to be there, Shane,” he said, his body shaking. “I knew what I had to do.”

Shane Mosher outside the rehab centre where he met Carl Hall.
Ron Albertson, Hamilton Spectator.

Carl asked Shane not to tell his story to anyone. And he said that he was scared. Not of the police, but that karma would get him. That’s why he kept his door propped open at night in the Holmes House rehab centre, he said: because he was scared of what might happen to him behind closed doors.

Shane kept his expression calm, but inside he was terrified. A killer, a double murderer — and maybe he had killed more than two people, he thought — was sitting on his bed, and had confided in him. What was he supposed to do? Carl left his room and walked back down the hall. Shane did not sleep all night. He made a decision.

The next morning, Friday, August 24, he packed his suitcase, waited for Shannon to pick him up to go home for the weekend. He was scheduled to resume rehab at the centre on Monday. Shane stood at the front door. Carl walked up to him, looked at the suitcase.

“Are you coming back?” he asked.

“Sure, Carl. I’ll see you Sunday night,” Shane said, trying to keep his voice friendly. Then Shane looked down at his own suitcase and saw it, right there on the tag:
SHANE MOSHER
. Along with his name, there was also his phone number, his family address in Brantford. Right there for Carl to see.

Shannon’s car pulled up and Shane moved outside with his bag. She walked up the sidewalk to greet him, along with Riley. They were bathed in sunshine, yet there was a chill in the air.

Shane could feel himself shivering with fear, blood draining from his face. He looked back over his shoulder. There was Carl, on the veranda, looking down at his wife and child, this evil presence having now entered his family’s life. And Shane had let it in. He was very quiet in the car as Shannon drove back to Brantford. Shannon, who had been heartened by her husband’s progress in rehab for his crack addiction, knew something was up. Shane looked like he hadn’t slept, was very pale.

Finally, he spoke. “I’m not going back,” he said.

Hate Machine

Detective Don Forgan had no fresh leads in the double homicide and it was getting to him. The killer had been living free for 16 months. While the case remained ongoing, it was no longer on the front burner for the Major Crime Unit. He was ordered to move the Clark/Del Sordo file boxes out of the homicide office project room and into a storage area. Forgan met with Charlisa’s father, Al Clark, who had been shattered by his daughter’s death. It was a courtesy call, Forgan had no news to pass along. He continued receiving calls from the mothers, Ruth Del Sordo and Sue Ross, both seeking updates and offering suggestions for the investigation. Were police looking in the right places, they asked? Had they looked hard enough at Charlisa’s ex as the suspect?

Forgan had planned to arrange a new polygraph for the ex, and he was still pushing for Pat’s father, Flavio, to take the test as well. He even wondered about having Eugene sit with a hypnotist to see what other details he could remember from the night of the murders. There seemed no other avenues to pursue. He was getting tapped by his senior officers to work other cases, including revisiting the Sheryl Sheppard cold case, the first of his career in homicide, which still remained cold.

At that same time, Detective Dave Place was revisiting key witnesses in the Jackie McLean investigation. On October 25 Place interviewed a woman who had worked as a waitress at Big Lisa’s bar on King East. Two months had passed since the murder, but she had good recall on details from Jackie’s last night alive. She remembered Barry Lane, the guy with the teardrop tattoos, who had sat with Jackie in the bar. And, she said, there was another. He was about 25 years old, around five foot nine, strawberry red hair, trimmed goatee, lots of freckles. He wore a white, ribbed shirt and a grey coat. He had introduced himself as Carl. So far in the investigation Place had heard no mention of anyone named Carl. She said that Carl sat with Jackie at the bar, asked if he could buy her a beer, but she had said no. Later, she had seen Jackie with both Carl and Barry. It looked like the men were trying to convince her to get them some crack.

Back at the station, Place logged on to the Hamilton police mug shot retrieval system. He typed in the name Carl and the physical description. Up popped a name: Carl Ernest Hall. His last known address in Hamilton had been on Ferguson Avenue North. He was 27, sometimes known by the nickname “Reds.” He had several prior convictions, and an outstanding charge for an assault in 2000 in Hamilton against a girlfriend named Crystal.

Lately, Carl had been causing trouble in Brantford, as well. On September 12 he was convicted in that city for uttering threats against a police officer and obstructing police. Place contacted the jail in Brantford. Carl was still incarcerated, but only for a couple more weeks on the Brantford charge. He had had one visitor: a woman named Lise, who wrote “friend” on the register.

Place later learned that Carl was filing a guilty plea on the Hamilton assault charge. He knew the plea offered an opportunity, and called the assistant Crown attorney prosecuting the case. Place wanted the Crown to push hard to have the judge order Carl to give a DNA sample as part of the sentence. The judge granted the request.

The importance of getting Carl’s DNA increased when Place received a call from the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto about a disturbing, and critical, piece of evidence that had been developed from the crime scene. A semen sample taken from Jackie McLean was determined to have been confined to the “high vaginal area.” The substance had not migrated. Place knew what that had to mean. Whoever had intercourse with her had done so on the loft floor of the apartment above the Sandbar, after she had been dragged up the stairs — when she had been either dead, or nearly so. Place believed that the one who deposited that semen had to be the killer.

On October 30 the waitress from Big Lisa’s came to the station to view a photo lineup — a series of portraits that included the suspect, and others. She pointed to the picture of Carl Ernest Hall as the man she saw in the bar with Jackie.

Meanwhile, Place worked to track down Carl’s ex-girlfriend, Crystal. He learned that at one time Crystal had worked at a fast-food place downtown in Hamilton. Place reached her on the phone. She was wary of police, didn’t want to get involved. He told her she was not in any trouble.

“This is a murder investigation,” he said.

“Oh, no, not Carl, no way — this is the one above the Sandbar, right?”

“Yes.”

Place wrote her words in his notebook. An interesting response. With little prompting she had specifically referenced a two-month old homicide, and was definitely not surprised they were looking for Carl.

On November 5 he interviewed Crystal. She told Place that she had dated Carl for a few years, and that when he was high on crack, he would stay awake sometimes for two or three days, wired, paranoid.

“God knows what that man is capable of,” she said.

Their relationship had often been violent, she said. Carl had hit her, choked her; once he had stabbed her in the leg with a steak knife because she burned dinner. Crystal had responded to his attacks as well. She had punched him. Once she bit him on the leg, drawing blood. She said that Carl liked to rip her underwear before having sex. An interesting bit of detail, Place knew, given that the underwear of the victim had been ripped as well.

“The time frame that I’m most interested in,” Place said, “is when you last saw Carl.”

Crystal said that had been very early on August 20 — in the hours following Jackie’s murder — when they met at the Wesley Centre downtown. She could smell crack on him, and a woman’s perfume.

“I said to him, ‘Well you’re obviously rocked up. You’re drunk and you smell.’”

She tried to break up with him. He begged her not to; said he loved her, he could change.

“He said that he did something bad, and I can’t leave him now.

“I asked him, ‘What did you do?’

Police surveillance video of Carl Hall with ex-girlfriend Crystal.
Hamilton Police Service.

“He said he couldn’t talk about it. He said he wanted to hitchhike out of the province. I said I wasn’t going; I told him, ‘You use your thumb and away you go.’”

After she repeatedly refused to leave with him, Carl punched her and spit in her face.

The interview with Place lasted an hour and a half. “Is there anything else that you can tell me, something I’ve forgotten to ask you or anything that’s come to mind?” he asked.

“Whatever happens to him ... I will be there every court date to watch him go down,” she said. “And I will testify against him. I hate Carl Hall with a passion. I hope that he rots in hell.”

Carl was looking good as a suspect in the detective’s book; he would look even better if his DNA matched semen from the crime scene — although Place knew that getting a sample processed through the National DNA Data Bank and then jumping through procedural hurdles to get a DNA warrant for a homicide investigation would take time.

Place had to tighten the case, eliminate other suspects. He knew that he couldn’t be seen to have tunnel vision in the investigation. The murder was a circumstantial case; in court the defence could point to several men who had been with Jackie that night. One of those suspects was Barry Lane. Barry’s footprint in blood had been found in the Sandbar apartment, but Barry had said he had only viewed the body. More importantly his DNA did not match the semen found on the victim. And then there was the man named Ken, who had also been seen arguing with Jackie that night. Place learned that Ken had died two weeks after the murder, of an Oxycodone overdose.

Carl had got into trouble in Brantford in the days following his release from rehab in Simcoe. He had met a girl in rehab; they had hooked up for a while — all good, he reflected — but then he went and shot off his mouth to the local cops in Brantford. Not very smart, he reflected later. Got 45 days dead time on that one.

After getting transferred from Brantford to Hamilton to be sentenced on the assault charge against Crystal, he was moved to a prison in Penetanguishene, an hour north of Barrie, to serve a five-month sentence. He figured: just do the time and get out. And as for other skeletons in his closet, Carl figured he was okay. The cops had shown no indication they had anything on him for the murders. In Penetang he told a couple of inmates that he was trying to lie low, avoid getting tagged for “a high-profile break and enter in Hamilton.”

In jail he ripped off a thousand push-ups a day. At five foot eight, he bulked up to 225 pounds; bragged that his arms were 18 inches in diameter. He grew one fingernail very long and sharp, just in case he needed to eye-gouge. He imagined that he was building himself into a “hate machine.”

On his ever-expanding chest, he had a tattoo of a shining cross, just like his dad had back east. His dad had always been tatted up. Young Carl once watched the old man carve an image of a snake on his own thigh using cork and a needle.

No one was tough enough to fight him one-on-one in prison. In the Penetang jail, he knocked a guy out in a fight, got disciplined for it. One time six guys jumped him, packing cups — Styrofoam cups, stuffed with wet toilet paper until they are hard and heavy — that had been stuffed into a sock, which was swung like a club. But it wasn’t all bad. Carl got together with a couple of guys for parties. They drank homebrew: liquor made from crushed oranges, apples, bits of pineapple, and about 50 packets of sugar — all left to ferment in a garbage bag for a week. It was like pure alcohol. Carl got pretty wasted on it. Fruit schnapps with a kick, he called it.

A new name appeared on Don Forgan’s radar in January, 2002: Carl Hall. The information had come through a circuitous route. An informant had passed the tip about Hall on to the RCMP. An RCMP officer out of their London, Ontario, branch had then contacted Warren Korol, Forgan’s old partner in homicide. Korol demanded more: What was the name of the informant? He pressed the RCMP to reveal the identity so that they could interview the person. It could assist the investigation. But the RCMP was treating the source as a confidential informant and would not divulge the name.

Forgan had never heard the name Carl Hall in relation to the Clark/Del Sordo case. The name was now forwarded to ident officer Hank Thorne. He had been sending palm prints from the crime scene to Dave Sibley at the OPP lab to check against the palm print found on the rubber grip of the murder weapon: the baseball bat. Now Thorne checked Hamilton’s palm print manual card file, containing such things as all break-and-enters in the city, for Carl’s name. He found a card on file for Hall, Carl Ernest. Thorne called Sibley and told him he was sending a new palm print for comparison.

Sibley had other work on the go, and after trying without success to match more than 25 palm prints already in the Clark-Del Sordo case over more than a year and a half, he was in no hurry to get to the latest.

On Thursday morning, February 25, Don Forgan arrived at Central Station to start his day shift. Guys were talking in the homicide office, joking around; it was loud that morning. His phone rang.

“Forgan, Major Crime Unit,” he answered.

“It’s Dave Sibley. I’ve identified your print.”

“Just a minute, Dave,” Forgan said.

Over the racket of detectives in the homicide office, he could barely hear Sibley tell him the news. He held the receiver to his shoulder. Forgan was not one to curse. This time was an exception.

“Shut up!” he yelled, but with added emphasis. And then: “Go ahead.”

“It’s Carl Hall.”

“It’s Carl Hall!” Forgan shouted.

Finally, 20 months after Charlisa and Pat’s murders, Forgan knew who held the baseball bat that night. He had told Eugene he would catch the bad man. Looked like they had him — and that the mystery informant had been bang on.

Detective Mike Thomas walked over to Forgan. “Hall?” he said. “We’re about to charge him on Jackie McLean.”