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Two men who were wrongfully convicted of crimes and later acquitted were denied compensation Wednesday by the Ontario government despite ordeals their lawyer said "completely wrecked" their lives.

Attorney General Chris Bentley said financial compensation only applied to "rare, unusual cases" and wasn't appropriate in the cases of Robert Baltovich and Anthony Hanemaayer.

"They have both been found not guilty as a result of the steps that the justice system has taken," Bentley said. "I actually think that speaks to one of the strengths of the justice system in the province of Ontario and in Canada generally."

Baltovich won an acquittal in 2008 for the murder of his girlfriend Elizabeth Bain, a crime for which he served eight years behind bars, while Hanemaayer served two years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of sexual assault in 1987.

Lawyer James Lockyer sought compensation in both cases as well as an inquiry into why it took the province's top court so long to quash Baltovich's conviction. Calls for a public inquiry were also denied.

"The attorney general's decision today just demonstrates an indifference to the plight of these two men wrongfully convicted," Lockyer said. "It just seems to me to be an extraordinarily indifferent decision, as bad as anything, as unconscionable as anything I've run into for a while."

Civil suits possible

Neither Baltovich nor Hanemaayer were surprised with the decision given they way they've been treated by the justice system, Lockyer added.

"Their lives were completely wrecked by what happened to them, the amount of time they spent in jail," said Lockyer, who is also a founding director of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted.

"Rob Baltovich was in for eight years. He went into jail with a recently acquired university degree and has come out unable to secure employment.

"Anthony Hanemaayer is without employment because he can only work seasonally at roofing."

Lockyer has advised them both to pursue a civil lawsuit to try to get financial compensation, and expects them to be successful.

When he initially asked the government to consider compensation in 2008, Lockyer said Baltovich could launch a civil suit against the police for negligence, against the Crown for breach of his Charter rights, and certain individuals in the case. But Lockyer added he didn't want to engage in yet another adversarial court process unless it was "absolutely necessary."

Baltovich was handed a life sentence in 1992 after he was found guilty of killing Bain, who disappeared in 1990, and served eight years before he was given a chance to appeal his case. He was released on bail in 2000. Five years later, Ontario's highest court quashed his conviction, ordering a new trial.

Baltovich was acquitted minutes into that second trial when the Crown said it had no evidence to support a conviction.

Lockyer has alleged the crime was committed by infamous serial rapist and schoolgirl killer Paul Bernardo - a claim Bernardo has denied.

Hanemaayer pleaded guilty part way through his 1989 trial for the assault of a 15-year-old Toronto girl, opting for a sentence of two years less a day instead of the stiffer six- to 10-year term he faced - a fact Bentley said figured into his decision.

The London, Ont., roofer was linked to the crime on the strength of eyewitness testimony by the victim's mother.

Hanemaayer had his record wiped clean in 2008 after the Ontario Court of Appeal heard the Crown believed Bernardo committed the offence - Bernardo had confessed to the crime in a jailhouse interview with police two years earlier.

NDP slams government

NDP critic Peter Kormos said the government's move to deny the men compensation shows a "shameful disregard" for people who were let down by the criminal justice system.

"It's important that they be compensated, and if anything it sends a clear message to the players in the system - police, Crowns and courts - that there will be a price to be paid when the system fails innocent people," said Kormos.

Nearly 20 Canadian men and women have had wrongful convictions acknowledged over the last decade.

Steven Truscott was 14 when he was sentenced to hang when he was convicted of the 1959 murder of schoolmate Lynn Harper. He spent months on death row until his sentence was commuted to life in prison and was paroled in 1969.

The Ontario Court of Appeal declared Truscott a victim of a miscarriage of justice and acquitted him of the crime, but stopped short of declaring him innocent due to a lack of physical evidence.

Truscott received a $6.5-million compensation package from the Province of Ontario - a package Bentley described as an "extremely unusual, once-in-a-lifetime situation."

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No cash for wrongfully convicted men: Ontario | CBC News

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Two men who were wrongfully convicted of crimes and later acquitted were denied compensation Wednesday by the Ontario government despite ordeals their lawyer said "completely wrecked" their lives. Attorney General Chris Bentley said financial compensation only applied to "rare, unusual cases" and wasn't appropriate in the cases of Robert Baltovich and Anthony Hanemaayer.

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Robert Baltovich sits in a busy Annex cafe, unrecognized, anonymous, at last. He doesn't need to do this. He probably shouldn't do this.

But next month marks 26 years since he was arrested for a murder he didn't commit. As her boyfriend, Baltovich was the immediate suspect when Elizabeth Bain vanished after heading to the Scarborough campus of the University of Toronto on the hot afternoon of June 19, 1990. Her blood-stained Toyota was discovered three days later across from a nearby autobody shop - but despite an exhaustive search, her body has never been found.

While there's an entire generation that doesn't know this story, the disappearance of the 22-year-old, raven-haired beauty remains one of this city's most puzzling murder mysteries. After an appeal and an acquittal, hidden evidence, discredited hypnosis and tunnel vision by Toronto Police, the man once convicted of the crime is demanding the case be reopened and authorities finally admit he is not the one responsible.

"An outside police force should take control of this investigation," insists the 51-year-old Baltovich in an exclusive interview. "They should give Liz the investigation she deserves."

***

They were a fairytale couple.

Their beginning, though, was rocky. They met in a class at U of T's Scarborough College in the fall of 1987. He was smitten; he complains the beauty "strung him along" all term until she eventually told him she was seeing someone else. He remembers being so angry and humiliated. "Yeah, for a very brief half a second, I was mad enough to kill her," Baltovich recalls.

In retrospect, that was an honest admission the naive suspect shouldn't have offered when Toronto homicide detectives came calling years later.

The couple began dating in 1989. By the time of her disappearance, Baltovich had just graduated with a degree in history and psychology and was working that summer at the university. She had two part-time jobs caring for the disabled and was taking summer courses toward her sociology and psych degree, He thought they would marry one day.

She was known as sweet and shy but her diaries revealed a young woman plagued with torment, self-doubt and conflicted feelings about her boyfriend. "I could never stop loving Rob," she wrote a month before her disappearance. "I don't know why sometimes I think I should leave Rob but I really, truly love him."

Her last entry, written three days before she went missing, was far different: "Every morning I rise I try to find a reason not to put a bullet in my head. My temper is swarming, I'm going to murder somebody.

"I have to break free and be alone. I want death to come and end this ... pathetic life that is getting worse by the day ... Last night I wanted to put a bullet in Rob's head, he's such a pest."

***

Who was she going to meet that afternoon?

Bain told her mom she was driving over to the Scarborough College tennis courts in the valley to check the schedule. But there was no posted schedule there; if the courts were busy, you just put your name on the list.

Julita Bain would never see her daughter again.

Tennis instructor Marianne Perz would be the prosecution's star witness. She saw Bain at a picnic table near the courts between 5:40 and 5:45 p.m., sitting between a man and a group of women. Following hypnosis, and after seeing the July 1 Sunday Sun story featuring a photo of Baltovich as a suspect, Perz picked him out of a police photo line-up. He "looked like" the man she'd seen with Bain, but she wasn't sure.

Baltovich insisted he was home with his family at the time and denied seeing his girlfriend at all that day.

But he did go looking for her. Bain had recently been moody and secretive and Baltovich suspected she was seeing someone else. Driving to the campus gym at about 7 p.m., he saw her car near the tennis courts but couldn't find her. He continued on to the weight room where he worked out until shortly before 9 p.m.

A witness confirmed he was there during that time. Another, Kaedmon Nancoo, claimed he was actually there between 5:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m., contradicting Baltovich's alibi that he was home with his family.

***

Ruth Collins was heading home from her health food store to catch "In the Heat of the Night," her favourite TV show airing at 9 p.m. She was walking north on Morrish Rd. just after 8 p.m. when she noticed a small grey Toyota parked in the driveway of the Three R Auto with a "very beautiful girl" in the passenger seat trying several times to get out. She looked just like Elizabeth Bain, at least an hour after the police would theorize that she had already been murdered by Baltovich.

***

After the gym, Baltovich waited for Bain outside her lecture hall. When he spotted another man hanging around, "my suspicion was that she had indeed gone to the (Scarborough) Valley to meet someone," he told police. Now he was labelled "the jealous lover."

Baltovich admits going to the balcony to spy on whether his girlfriend was meeting another man. Bain never exited the class; the man was there for someone else.

Later, police would accuse Baltovich of lying and insist he had no alibi for that time. Only years later did he discover that they knew that wasn't true: the waiting stranger had told investigators he'd spotted Baltovich on the balcony that night.

Leaving campus, he drove by the valley and saw Bain's car was now gone. He headed to her home on Scarboro Ave. She wasn't there either. He then returned to the rec centre.

At 6:30 a.m. the following morning, her worried mom called Baltovich and asked if her daughter was with him. Bain had never come home.

***

At 2:30 p.m. on Friday June 22, following more than two days of desperate appeals and searches, her Toyota was found by her brother Paul across from Three R Auto on Morrish Rd. There was fresh blood in the footwell of the back seat. Bain's blood.

Only 30 minutes later - and more than 48 hours before he'd even meet him - Homicide Det. Sgt. Steve Reesor asked for surveillance on her boyfriend, saying: "It is believed Elizabeth Bain was murdered by the suspect: Robert James Baltovich."

"Reesor had already tried and convicted me," Baltovich says.

To this day, he wonders why Reesor and partner Det. Sgt. Brian Raybold hated him from the start. "It was as if they decided, 'We're going to show this hotshot university kid he's not as smart as he thinks he is.'"

Their theory was that Baltovich murdered Bain in a fit of jealous rage between the hours of 5:40 p.m. and 7:00 p.m., hid her body in busy Colonel Danforth Park on a bright June evening and moved her car to Morrish Rd.

Three days later, their theory continued, Baltovich used Bain's car to move her remains from the woods to the Lake Scugog area. He then returned her car to the exact same Morrish Rd. spot where it had been seen by witnesses since the morning she was reported missing

The police "love boyfriends as suspects," Baltovich says. and they will twist and bend the facts to make them fit their theory. The testimony of David Dibben, another key Crown witness, would be a searing example.

John Elliott said he was "80% sure" he saw Bain's car Wednesday morning June 20 in the parking lot of his Lake Scugog-area restaurant. If correct that clears Baltovich, as the appeal court would later note, "it is a virtual certainty that (Baltovich) was home in bed at the time."

But there was another sighting that better suited their case against the boyfriend.

Dibben reported seeing a blond man with a moustache and receding hair line driving a car matching Bain's near Port Perry at about 6 a.m. Friday, June 22. "Based on accepted information already received that her car was opposite 3 R Auto on 90/06/20, this sighting would be impossible," police concluded.

But now with Baltovich's whereabouts accounted for on the Wednesday morning, a Friday morning drive to Lake Scugog would work. In November, they went to interview Dibben, who conveniently had changed his description of the driver to a dark-haired man who resembled their No. 1 suspect.

A few days later, Baltovich was under arrest for murder.

***

Without a body or any forensic evidence linking him to the car, the case against him was entirely circumstantial. It didn't help that his defence team had never argued a murder case before or that they alienated the jury by not even conceding Bain was dead. To their credit, though, they did offer a viable alternative suspect that the police had simply ignored - witnesses had seen Bain with an unidentified blond man before she disappeared and that man could have been the Scarborough Rapist terrorizing the area at the time.

Shockingly, Toronto Police had never even considered the possibility. Paul Bernardo was known to police at the time and on the very day after Baltovich's arrest, he was asked to give a DNA sample in their hunt for the Scarborough Rapist.

Crown attorney John McMahon, now a Superior Court judge, dismissed the defence's choice of alternative suspect. After all, the Scarborough Rapist had never killed his victims. We would only later learn the error in that belief when Bernardo was arrested in February, 1993.

The jury was told Baltovich killed Bain when she tried to break up with him and then coldly proceeded to lie and concoct false alibis. As just one example, they were told he stole pages of her diary and destroyed a "Dear John" letter that showed he had a motive.

In fact, he had volunteered to police that Bain had recently given him a page from her diary written before they'd started dating where she professed her love for him. He also gave the entry to her father. "By the trial," Baltovich says, "Mr. Bain denies ever receiving it and my friend who never even saw it or spoke to me about it testified that it was a 'Dear John' letter indicating Liz wanted to break up with me."

Years later, it was located in the prosecutors' own files. "When it was found in 2004 it turns out it was exactly what I described it to be and showed that I had told the truth about giving it to Mr. Bain."

The woman who saw Bain struggling with a man in her car on Morrish Rd. after 8 p.m. was painted as unreliable by prosecutors because her recollection was inconvenient - Baltovich had an alibi for that time.

Also working against him was his decision not to take the stand. "I was so naively optimistic," he says, shaking his head. "I thought I would be acquitted and get on with my life."

Instead, after a charge to the jury by Justice John O'Driscoll that was later found by the appeal court to have "unduly promoted the case for the Crown and effectively ignored and denigrated the case for the defence," Baltovich was sent to a new trial where he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. He would spend another eight years behind bars before he was released on bail in 2000 pending his long-delayed appeal.

While in prison, his mother was diagnosed with lung cancer and died unexpectedly after surgery in 1997. "It was the worst day of my life by far," Baltovich would later recall. "You're in prison and that's when you realize so much has been taken away from you."

***

Just tell us where her body is and you'll only have to serve another day in prison.

That was the offer made to Baltovich on the eve of his scheduled 2008 retrial that had been ordered by the Court of Appeal four years earlier. But he couldn't tell them what he didn't know. He didn't kill the woman he loved.

Following years of dogged effort by his new lawyers James Lockyer and Joanne McLean of the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (now Innocence Canada) as well as Brian Greenspan, the prosecution's case against him had collapsed; evidence from key witnesses that had been enhanced by hypnosis was no longer admissible following a 2007 Supreme Court decision. Other witnesses had been completely discredited: Kaedmon Nancoo, the man who claimed to have seen Bain's boyfriend at the gym between 5:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. - and not between 7 and 9 p.m. as Baltovich said - suddenly told the Crown 18 years later that he now remembered Baltovich had threatened to kill Bain if she left him.

"It is likely that Mr. Nancoo's new 'recollection' is false," ruled Justice David McCombs in excluding him as a witness from Baltovich's second trial.

With their case now in tatters, assistant Crown attorney Philip Kotanen shocked the courtroom by announcing at the start of the retrial there was "no longer any reasonable prospect" of conviction and they would be calling no evidence. He advised the jury to return a verdict of not guilty.

For the first time in almost two decades, Baltovich was a free man.

He could have walked away and put it all behind him. And he almost did. But the more he has learned about the myopic investigation and suppressed evidence, the more he needs to know: Who really killed Elizabeth Bain?

*****
In Monday's Sun Part 2 - A call to reopen the case and a father convinced they had the right man.

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Robert Baltovich wants police to reopen the Elizabeth Bain case

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Robert Baltovich sits in a busy Annex cafe, unrecognized, anonymous, at last. He doesn't need to do this. He probably shouldn't do this. But next month marks 26 years since he was arrested for a murder he didn't commit.

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ARTICLES

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Robert Baltovich, who was convicted, imprisoned, released and acquitted for the murder of his girlfriend Elizabeth Bain more than 20 years ago, claims to have proof that police and prosecutors withheld key evidence that would have helped exonerate him sooner.

In documents filed at Ontario Superior Court in November last year, Baltovich's lawyers outline how a key record of a police interview with forensics experts "was never disclosed to Baltovich or his trial counsel or his appellate counsel."

Baltovich's lawyers also contend that a copy of the police investigator's notebook provided to them was altered to erase evidence of the meeting.

The new evidence was submitted as part of Baltovich's $13 million lawsuit against the Attorney General, the two homicide detectives assigned to his case, the Toronto Police Services Board and his original defence lawyers.

Baltovich, who spent almost nine years behind bars and nearly nine more on probation preparing his appeal, was found not guilty at his second trial in 2008 because the Crown decided to present no evidence.

After his acquittal, the province refused to compensate Baltovich for the wrongful conviction.

Twenty-two-year-old Bain disappeared on her way to an evening class at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus in June 1990. Her body was never found and the investigation and prosecution of her boyfriend, Baltovich, occupied the front pages for years.

Police contended that Baltovich killed Bain and hid her body for several days in Colonel Danforth Park before putting it into her car and driving up to the Lake Scugog area, where he disposed of it.

When Bain's car was discovered three days after she went missing, it contained a significant amount of blood. Homicide investigators were called in and quickly turned their attention to Baltovich.

Last spring, one of Baltovich's lawyers discovered a one-page handwritten note in the 13,000 pages of evidence gathered by police.

The note was written by Det.-Sgt. Brian Raybould and recorded a discussion he had with two forensics experts two days after Baltovich was arrested.

The forensics experts told Raybould that there was too much blood in the car for a body that had been left outside for days, the note allegedly states. If a body had been put into the car two to three days after death, it would have left a strong odour and blood stains would have been darker in colour, not bright red as the police found them.

"As a result of the advice he received (from the forensics experts), Raybould knew or ought to have known that the Police Theory was flawed and untenable," the claim states.

Defence lawyers weren't given access to the document and the Crown continued to deny its existence, even after repeated requests, the claim states.

In a responding motion, the Attorney General claims the defence could have found that note at any time. During the original 1992 trial, the Crown had an "open box" policy of allowing the defence to access all evidence, the government response says.

Crown council John Corelli wrote a letter in 2004 that says Baltovich "(for the past 12 years) has had an open invitation to look at the police investigative file. It was not until last week that the defence chose to look at the investigative file."

"A diligent review in 2004 of the police investigative file ... would have found the same 'Raybould note,'" the government claim states.

Baltovich's claim also says handwritten notes from Raybould's notebooks were missing several pages. In September last year, lawyers for the police produced the missing pages that detailed the meeting with the forensics experts.

In the original copy of the notebook provided to Baltovich's lawyers in 1999, Raybould wrote a date on the first page after the omitted pages "to make it appear that it was in sequence," the claim states. The new copy has no date on that page.

The claim states that Raybould concealed the meeting with the forensics experts before during and after Baltovich's original trial.

Baltovich's claim also points to several other pieces of evidence that weren't disclosed to his defence team including an entry in Bain's dairy that refutes Crown claims that she had broken up with Baltovich in the days before she was murdered.

Attorney General spokesperson Brendan Crawley and Baltovich's lawyer David Robins declined to comment because of the ongoing litigation.

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Elizabeth Bain murder: Robert Baltovich says police hid key evidence | The Star

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Robert Baltovich, who was convicted, imprisoned, released and acquitted for the murder of his girlfriend Elizabeth Bain more than 20 years ago, claims to have proof that police and prosecutors withheld key evidence that would have helped exonerate him sooner.

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Serial Killer Gerard John Schaefer Interview

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Robert Baltovich was acquitted today of second-degree murder after Crown prosecutors declined to offer evidence at his second trial. So the mystery of who killed Elizabeth Bain 18 years ago still remains. Her body was never discovered. Visit thestar.com for the latest News headlines, Sports, Entertainment and more from the voice of the GTA.

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VIDEOS

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A lawsuit launched in 2010 has uncovered new evidence in the Elizabeth Bain murder case.

Court documents reveal a handwritten note by retired homicide investigator Brian Raybould could challenge the police timeline of the case.

Bain's boyfriend Robert Baltovich was found guilty of second-degree murder in 1992. He spent eight years in jail and eight on bail before he was acquitted in 2008 during a retrial.

Baltovich's lawyers have asked the courts to look at a note written three days after his arrest in November 1990.

The note, written by Raybould, details a meeting with forensic experts regarding blood that was found in Bain's car.

It challenges the police theory that Baltovich had allegedly transported Bain's body to its final resting place three days after she was murdered.

The note was discovered by Baltovich's lawyers in 2013.

Bain was 22 at the time she went missing in June 1990. Her body was never found.

With a report from CTV Toronto's Tamara Cherry

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New evidence uncovered in Elizabeth Bain murder case

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A lawsuit launched in 2010 has uncovered new evidence in the Elizabeth Bain murder case. Court documents reveal a handwritten note by retired homicide investigator Brian Raybould could challenge the police timeline of the case. Bain's boyfriend Robert Baltovich was found guilty of second-degree murder in 1992.

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https://www.aidwyc.org/cases/historical/robert-baltovich/