Jurors in the first-degree murder trial of St. Albert resident Beryl Musila heard beer, cocaine, sex, and conversation dominated an encounter between two strangers in the wee hours of July 8, 2017, mere hour(s) after Ron Worsfold was murdered.
Musila is on trial for first-degree murder in the death of 75-year-old St. Albertan Worsfold, who was killed on July 7, 2017. The 33-year-old is self-representing through the six-week trial.
The Crown alleges Musila drugged Worsfold, then stabbed and beat him with a hammer until he died. The Crown believes his body was put in a blue tote and transported to several locations in the region.
Tyler Cody Fisher lived on the third floor in the same building as his landlord, Worsfold, who managed the complex where Musila was reportedly staying with the senior, at 75 Mission Avenue in St. Albert.
Fisher testified Tuesday afternoon that he spent the evening of July 7, 2017 drinking beer, doing cocaine and playing video games. Around midnight, he heard Musila crying in the parking lot and she said she locked her keys in the apartment and couldn’t get back in , Fisher testified.
The two started talking and Musila said she was upset about how her life was going, Fisher recalled. Fisher brought a beer for each of them and some cocaine that they consumed.
The two took Worsfold’s Chevy Cruze to a nearby apartment property’s parking lot where they hung out in the car, drinking beers, doing lines and talking, Fisher said.
He didn’t observe Musila to be particularly intoxicated or to have trouble operating the car, he said.
“To be perfectly honest, I thought she was pretty sober ... just upset about life,” he said.
Musila later invited him into Worsfold’s apartment, where Fisher expressed hesitance at spending time in Worsfold’s apartment in his absence, he said.
Not to worry, Musila said. Musila told him Worsfold was on vacation in Jasper.
Once inside, Fisher said he noticed a dresser that had been knocked over, and a mess of some articles of clothing in the hallway.
Two doors, leading into the bedroom and spare room, were closed, he told the jurors, adding that he didn’t go into the bedrooms, nor did he see anyone else while he was there.
Fisher testified Musila asked if she could go change.
“She came back out in lingerie,” he said.
The encounter became intimate and he testified Musila gave him oral sex.
‘Dragging it down the stairs’
Former Mission neighbour Leah Hampshire testified that Musila needed a suitcase that weekend in July 2017.
“I ended up speaking with her, I let her know I didn’t have a suitcase,” she said.
Hampshire was out of Atavan, which she had been prescribed for panic attacks. Musila gave her about 16 of them.
“It was just brought over in a bag, she didn’t really say anything. She gave me the Atavan,” she said.
A midday commotion in the parking lot of Worsfold’s apartment caught her attention on Saturday, July 8, 2017.
“One of Ron’s daughters was yelling at Beryl,” she recalled.
She saw Musila come down the apartment stairs with a large four-foot by two-foot blue plastic tote covered in duct tape.
“It was closed with duct tape so you couldn’t open it,” she recalled.
“Beryl was dragging it down the stairs.”
As the heavy tote thumped on each stair, it made a noise.
“All you could here was thud, thud, thud,” she said.
The tote was lifted into the back of the taxi van, but Hampshire didn’t remember who lifted it, she said.
The Crown alleges a four-foot plastic Rubbermaid tote was used to transport Worsfold’s stabbed, bludgeoned and lifeless body, removing it from Mission Avenue in St. Albert to a variety of locations and ultimately a makeshift dumpsite. It was discovered on the same property as a house party at a rural Parkland County residence on Sunday, July 9, 2017.
Last week, Musila reversed a previous plea of not guilty to indecently interfering with Worsfold’s remains, entering a guilty plea in Justice Larry Ackerl’s court.
Stolen car case escalates
Jurors heard a coincidental inquiry into a stolen car got the investigation going in the Worsfold case.
On Monday, Crown prosecutor John Schmidt asked RCMP Const. Marc Barrette about the events he recalled from July 8, 2017.
“I was following up on a file for a stolen vehicle … I called the complainant on file, Ron … his daughter answered,” said Barrette, who now works in Westaskiwin with the RCMP’s GIS.
After the call, he went to the apartment to talk with Stacey Worsfold, arriving at about 8:30 p.m.
When she mentioned her dad was missing, Barrette started a missing persons file, adding Worsfold’s name and description to the police data bank in case someone spotted him.
Stacey mentioned the last person in the apartment was Musila, so Barrette tried to call her, trying four or five numbers on file.
Then, he called the last person whose number appeared on the landline of the apartment, a number for Robert Rafters.
Crown witness former Cpl. Lori Blaylock, now retired from the RCMP, was with Barrette when he made the call to Rafters.
They made the call on the speaker phone call in the bullpen of the St. Albert RCMP detachment.
The call started around 12:20 a.m. on Sunday, July 9, 2017.
Musila grilled Blaylock in cross-examination on Tuesday.
“Robert Rafters answered the phone and he had indicated you were his girlfriend for four months, and then the phone was passed to you,” Blaylock told Musila.
In court on Monday, Blaylock said that on the call, she asked Musila when was the last time she saw Worsfold.
Blaylock said Musila talked about what she did with Worsfold “last night.”
“She said ‘last night’ but I believed she was referring to Friday … she said she was drinking, and when Ronald and her fight, he generally goes for a walk and that’s the last time she saw him.
She said he had let her borrow his car, that the Toyota was stolen, possibly with keys and the phone in the car,” Blaylock recalled.
“During that phone conversation, do you recall me mentioning Mr. Worsfold … with making any references to physical abuse, sexual abuse or blackmailing me?” Musila asked her in cross-examination.
Blaylock said she did not.
Earlier in testimony, Blaylock said Musila told her on the call that Worsfold’s family wanted her out of the apartment, they didn’t agree with her and Ron’s relationship, and they believed she stole the Corolla, but he gave her the keys last night and she took the car last night.
“She indicated she’d be back in St. Albert in the morning, (and that) Ronald takes care of her,” Blaylock said, adding that on the call, when asked about her whereabouts, Musila gave two possibilities.
“She at first said she was in Red Deer, and then said she was in Olds.”
Blaylock said it was after she identified herself as a supervisor at the St. Albert detachment that the phone went dead.
“When I identified myself as a corporal with the RCMP, that’s when phone went dead,” she said.
Earlier in the trial, Musila cross-examined Barrette, asking whether the phone had something wrong that would cause him not to hear her correctly.
No, he said.
“In your notes, you say I hung up on you,” Musila told him.
“At that time, do you know who had the phone? You can’t … because you weren’t there,” she said.
Musila asked Blaylock why she didn’t call Rafters’ phone back immediately after the phone went dead.
Blaylock testified she recalled saying to Barrette at the time, “She’s lying.”
Signs of foul play
It was after the call to Rafters’ phone that Barrette and Blaylock returned to Worsfold’s apartment.
“I noticed things seemed amiss,” Blaylock told Crown prosecutor John Schmidt on Monday. “I observed signs of foul play.”
Where two pillows leaned against the side of the bed, underneath there was a cut-out chunk of carpet of about six-inches square. Underneath on the plywood subfloor, and around the cut-out edges, there were rust-coloured stains.
“I was confident that it was blood,” she remembered.
The safe door was open, void of contents, and on the bottom, a “very bright cherry-red stain,” she said.
The blue linen sheets on the bed were so crisp and new, the creases from the cardboard package liner were still evident.
They lifted up the mattress, and on the underside, there was a smear of dried blood that was about seven inches square.
“It appeared someone was trying to cover up a crime scene,” she said.
“I told Const. Barrette we were locking the scene down as a potential homicide scene.”
Duct tape wrapped around his ankles
After firing a succession of attorneys over almost six years, Musila continued to mount her own defense.
Cst. Subegh Dosanjh, formerly of St. Albert RCMP and now with the Delta, B.C. city police force, described a partial denture found fused to a towel with blood and tissue, and an iPad with a note, that was found on the roof of a doghouse in the backyard of the rural residence.
DNA tests and a pair of purple metal handcuffs were among the latest evidence unfurling in the second week of the first-degree murder trial.
According to police testimony, a pair of shiny magenta-purple handcuffs—without a key—were inside the large duct-taped blue tote found to contain the Worsfold.
Duct tape, attached to a plastic strip, was identified in court in connection with the body of the victim.
“It was wrapped around the ankles of Mr. Worsfold,” Dosanjh told the Crown on Monday.
Two small containers containing fingernail clippings taken from the deceased’s left and right hands by the medical examiner during the autopsy were entered into the evidence, as well as dry swabs that had been rubbed on his hands.
One exhibit taken from the side pocket of the black suitcase was a pair of large sewing-type shears, about 10-inch long with black handles, which had carpet fibres on them.
A second pair of scissors, with black and grey handles and discolouration on the blade, taken from the side pocket of the black suitcase found at the second crime scene in rural Parkland County.
With a jury of nine women and three men, and two alternates, and dozens more witnesses still to come, the trial is expected to take another five weeks at least.
Visit stalbertgazette.com for expanded coverage of the trial.
