No. All I want to know is....
Excuse my speech. I had an accident and had an intracranial hemorrhage in 2006, and my speech isn't as good as it used to be.
It's a very personal thing, murder. It goes to a grief too deep for crying. People don't seem to understand that. It's as if.... Well, “God doesn't give you more than you can bear”, or things like that, are said to you. It could have been managed; it could have been deterred. We were there; we were two people who could have Zachary. But she walked around that courtroom, adjusting drapes, pouring water, and we were sat in the back, not saying a word, and no one could come to the courtroom with us, because she was walking free, and they knew that if they came, she would just go over to them and indicate friendship. Although they loved Andrew, they didn't want her in their lives, and we didn't blame them. But it was lonely.
We managed. To actually interface with her was tremendously painful. I used to look at her hand and think to myself, everybody seems to think that she's a delicate little doctor and couldn't possibly have done this. I haven't pulled a gun, but I figure it doesn't take much to pull a trigger. It was a very brutal crime, as that judge well said, but it was a very particular one. Only my son Andrew was her victim.
She fooled everybody, because everybody was giving her the victim's rights, that everybody is innocent until proven guilty, and that America would change the law and give her the death penalty. But the death penalty was never a problem, because in Pennsylvania only police murderers, or people who murder two people, or who torture.... Those are the three murderers who might be getting the death penalty. Her lawyer would say that the Americans tell lies and could change that. But they never would. Why would they? Then nobody would ever extradite anybody to America.
She got all these things. Judge Green said to her one day, “Dr. Turner, I'm so sorry the law is slow and that we have your life on hold.” I wanted to scream from the back, “My son's life is on hold forever, and you have the audacity to apologize to this woman?”
But of course the victim's survivors have no rights. The crown prosecutor said, “I'm not your son's lawyer; I represent Canada and America.” He didn't even want to be seen with us, because it would mean that perhaps he was biased towards us. I find that absolutely abominable, because in Pennsylvania we were treated so well by the police. I know that doesn't always happen in America. We came to Newfoundland with great expectations. We thought, America and Canada are friends; they have an extradition process. Shirley—the murderer—told us that her lawyer told her that he could easily get two to three years in Canada before she was extradited, so that would give her time for the baby.
I just want people to know that we lost Andrew; nobody could have prevented that except Turner. But it was total disregard for Zachary. We were there, but we got searched. We had an hour visit with him because she said we might hurt him. We had to pay a lady to sit there and supervise us while we had that hour.
We did all that; we didn't care. We got searched all the time. You can't imagine how wonderful it was to walk down that corridor and know there's part of Andrew there. He was beautiful. But we were put through terrible pain to get to Zachary, and then this happened.
So I just want you to know there are changes that could be made, and I'm hoping they will get made.
Thank you.