The
Murder of Jennifer Teague
by Deirdre
Bradley
Barrhaven is a subdivision
in the southwest corner of Ottawa, Ontario. It is the type of
neighborhood where people feel safe raising their children. It is
known by the nick names Farrhaven, Baby-haven and Barbecue Haven.
Like many suburbs it has a mix of town houses, single family homes,
strip malls and big box stores. Home to many families Barrhaven has a
nursing home, a city run Sportsplex and numerous schools . Jan
Harder, has been it's representative on City Council for 21 years.
While part of the city of
Ottawa, Barrhaven is set apart from the main urban centre by a wide
swath of undeveloped land, farm land and forests known collectively
as the greenbelt. The greenbelt offers hiking trails, an off-leash
dog park and an opportunity for people to experience nature only a
short distance from their homes. Most greenbelt facilities are
considered day-use and only the main roads have even minimal
lighting.
Barrhaven Town Centre has
the requisite grocery store, Shoppers Drug Mart and Bed Bath and
Beyond. Wendy's is one of the fast food chains in that mall.
Jennifer Teague worked there part-time.
Jennifer Teague was born
to Ed and Jean Teague on June 30, 1987. She had two older brothers,
Kevin and Carey. Her parents had moved to Ottawa the year before
when Ed was posted there by the military.
Ed
and Jean divorced. Jean, a civil servant, and their three children
moved into a home she purchased a short walk from Barrhaven Town
Centre. Ed remarried and lived nearby. Ed Teague remained close to
his three children.
“The
kids squabbled among themselves like all kids,” Mrs. Teague told
The
Citizen
in 2005, “but if someone did anything to any of them, the other two
were right there for protection, including Jenny.”
Jennifer attended the
Elizabeth Wyn Wood Alternative high school. She liked the smaller
classes and flexible approach to education. There she joined an
environmental group called “Earthcare” and travelled to local
elementary schools to talk about conservation. The group later won a
prize from the David Suzuki Foundation.
Jennifer held a series of
part-time jobs. Like many teenagers she loved to shop and play video
games. Her mother said they often would pick the same pair of shoes
to try on at the local Winners then laugh about it. She played
baseball and soccer and was working at the local Wendy’s, planning
to use her next cheque to pay for shots for her kitten, Michael.
On September 7, 2005,
Jennifer worked the late shift at Wendy's. She left shortly after
midnight. One of her co-workers, Mark, walked her part-way home,
then she met a friend, Alicia Blais, at the local Mac's Milk. At
around 1:00 am, Alicia and Jennifer parted ways. Jennifer began the
10 minute walk home. Somewhere along the way, she vanished.
When Ottawa Police
Detective Greg Brown took the call about Jennifer's disappearance, he
had a bad feeling right from the start. Her cell phone had been
turned off and there was no banking activity. The Ottawa Police
service launched a massive search. A command post was set up in the
parking lot of a local church and 120 officers plus volunteers
conducted a grid to grid search over the three kilometre area near
the disappearance. A nearby baseball diamond was used as a helicopter
pad. Friends and family distributed missing person posters around
the neighbourhood, Police divers scanned the Jock River and ditches
were searched.
Residents were gripped
with fear. Barrhaven had not experienced major criminal activity.
Nothing like this had happened in the community
The police had two
suspects. The first was her co-worker, Mark, who had walked Jennifer
part-way home from Wendy's. They had been told that he had a “thing”
for Jennifer. He also had scratches on his face.
Mark was read his rights
and interrogated. He took and passed a polygraph. He was
embarrassed by the scratches on his face which he said were due to a
faulty razor, which he supplied to the police. After passing his
polygraph, he was eliminated as a suspect.
The second suspect, Boris,
was a young man who had driven past Jennifer and her friend while
they were sitting outside the Mac's Milk parking lot. Jennifer had
given him the finger and the police were wondering if he had
retaliated. He was a boy from her high school who did not have a
good reputation. They interviewed him and found out his ex girlfriend
had a restraining order against him and that there was a broken
window in his car. He took a polygraph and was also eliminated as a
suspect.
Jennifer's family were
also questioned and cleared of any involvement.
After six days the search
was scaled back to seven officers. They had come to the end of their
resources with no forensic evidence or sign of Jennifer.
The Lime Kiln trail is one
of the many trails in the greenbelt maintained by
the National Capital
Commission. It’s path leads to one of the few remaining examples
of a 19th century
Lime Kiln. It was restored in 1999 and has since become a popular
hiking trail with 4 kilometres available for walkers and nature
lovers. It is 8.4 kilometres from where Jennifer disappeared.
On September 18, 2005, ten
days after Jennifer's disappearance, off duty police officer Kevin
Wilcox, was jogging on the trail at Lime Kiln. He smelled something
distinct – a human body decaying. He found Jennifer buried in the
brush. The only piece of forensic evidence found was a silver
earring she had been wearing the night she disappeared. Lead
detective Brown was contacted. When he saw the body, he wept.
A forensics tent was set
up but not near the exact location. Detective Brown did not want the
media to report the exact location of the body.
Ed Teague wanted to
identify his daughter but he was informed that she was so badly
decomposed that her identity could not be confirmed visually. Her
body was sent to the coroner in Toronto, Ontario.
On September 29,
Jennifer's body was released from the crime lab after extensive
testing. Time and cause of death could not be determined. On
October 1, the funeral was held at Cedarview Alliance Church. Five
hundred mourners attended.
The pressure from the
community and the media was relentless. The police canvassed the sex
offender’s registry and were in touch with police departments
across Canada and the United States.
Police were concerned that
there may be a serial killer at work as Jennifer resembled another
young woman who had disappeared in Orleans, a subdivision in the east
end of Ottawa, two years earlier.
On August 6, 2003, 27 year
old Ardeth Wood, a graduate student at the University of Waterloo,
was visiting her parents in Orleans, a subdivision in the east end of
Ottawa. Shortly after noon she told her mother she was going biking
and would be home in a few hours. After failing to return her mother
reported her missing. A massive search operation was mounted by the
Ottawa Police Service and what would later lead to a Canada-wide two
year man hunt.
Witness information lead
to the Green Creek near the mouth of the Ottawa River where Ardeth
had last been seen. On August 10, 2003, her submerged bicycle was
found. On August 11, her body was found near the shoreline metres
from where the bicycle was located. Her cause of death was drowning.
Police were informed there
had been a male on the bike path between June and the time of
Ardeth's murder who was approaching women.
Chris Myers was arrested
on October 20, 2005 for her murder. Detective Brown's hopes were
raised then dashed when it was discovered that he had been in North
Bay, 356 kilometres away at the time of Jennifer's disappearance and
was eliminated as a suspect. The Ottawa Police were back at square
one with no suspect, forensics or witness to the abduction.
The Wendy's where Jennifer
had worked offered a $50,000 award for any information on her
disappearance. On April 10, 2006, the police doubled that amount.
On May 24, 2006, video
images from the Mac's Milk surveillance camera from the night
Jennifer disappeared were released. Police were doing every thing
they could to keep the case in the forefront of peoples' minds, and,
most of all, the killers who they assumed would be following the
case.
Police conducted what is
called a consent search to keep the story in the news. Officers went
door to door to homes in Barrhaven to speak with residents and
inspect their homes.
On June 9, 2006, days
after the surveillance photos were published, 24 year old Kevin Davis
stripped naked and ran onto Fallowfield Road, one of Barrhaven's
major arterials, yelling that he had killed Jennifer Teague. Davis
had consumed 10 grams of psilocybin – magic mushrooms. Detective
Brown was anxious to speak with him but Davis was being treated for
an overdose in an Ottawa hospital under the mental health act. A
week later he recanted the confession claiming the constant
information on the case and the drugs had caused him to make a false
statement. He said the night Jennifer disappeared he was playing
video games with a friend, Nick. This alibi could not be proven
because Nick had recently been in a car accident and claimed amnesia
from a head injury. Davis' mother said he was home when she went to
bed the night of the disappearance and was home when she woke up the
next morning.
The police kept up the
pressure because Kevin's home was near Jennifer's and she would have
walked past it on that fateful night.
On June 26, 2006 Davis
left his Orr street home in Barrhaven and confessed to the murder a
second time to an off duty police officer. “What if I told you
something that could make you famous?”.
This time he was not
hallucinating. He was taken to the police station where he was read
his rights. He waived his right to see a lawyer saying he needed to
get it off of his chest.
Detective Brown wanted to
make the confession iron clad for court and asked Davis for proof.
They did a re-enactment of the night of the crime, driving to the
location where Davis had abducted Jennifer. He chose her because the
street was poorly lit. He forced her into his car with a hunting
knife then took her home. Davis said he had been looking for a girl
to abduct for weeks. He felt that girls had hurt him in the past and
he wanted to hurt one back.
Davis blindfolded
Jennifer and tied her hands behind her back. Jennifer said she had
to leave because her mother would be worried. Davis strangled her
while his mother slept in the next room. She had sleep apnea and
took sleeping medication. He wrapped her in his grandmother's quilt,
put her in the trunk of his mother’s cars and drove to the Lime
Kiln Trail.
Davis was able to identify
exactly where the body had been discovered. He also knew the
position she had been found in – face down. This was crucial as it
had been information held back from the public because only the
killer would know it. Detective Brown had his confession. He had
spent many late nights working on this case which had taken time from
his own family. His wife was pregnant during the investigation with
a baby girl.
On June 27, 2006, Davis
was arrested and charged with first degree murder. On November 28,
2007 he was ordered to stand trial for first degree murder. On
January 8 2008, his lawyer said he would plead guilty to first degree
murder. This is rare in the criminal justice system.
On January 25, 2008 the
Teague family and friends faced Davis in court. He pled guilty to
the first degree murder of Jennifer Teague. He described how he
abducted her from Jockvale Road near the Via train tracks, took her
home, strangled her, wrapped up her body then dumped her a few
kilometres away on the trail. Jennifer's mother wept when she heard
her daughters last words were that she needed to go home because her
mother would worry. Everyone in the court room cried. Everyone,
except Davis.
Mr. Teague kept eye
contact with him the entire time trying to get some sense that
Jennifer's killer felt any remorse for his crime. He did not. Mr.
Davis did not have any prior offences just this one act of senseless
rage and violence towards an innocent young woman. The only relief
for the family was they were spared a lengthy trial.
Since the murder Jean
Teague has difficulty enjoying the things she used to do like
shopping, hockey pools and Christmas and birthday celebrations. Each
Christmas the family buys an ornament for Jennifer for the tree.
They are kept together to give to the first granddaughter. Her
brothers miss their sister terribly and her friends have nightmares
and difficulty sleeping.
Wendy's and other fast
food chains now offers taxi fare to staff working the late shift.
Councillor Jan Harder said
that people should be more aware of their neighbours.
Jennifer Teague - Jenny to
her family, Jen to her friends would be 33 now. No one knows what
she would have done with her life as all of her wonderful potential
was never be realized due to the senseless act of a madman.
-30-
References:
Jennifer Teague, Wikipedia
The Detectives,
Season 2, “The Walk Home”
The Ottawa
Citizen
Very little is
online about the killer. This was his only brush with the law.
.
