Man confessed to drowning daughters, Mountie says
By TARA BRAUTIGAM
Canadian Press
GANDER, N.L. — A Newfoundland man accused of drowning his young daughters confessed to the crime during an undercover police operation, telling an RCMP officer who was posing as a mobster that “he got rid of them.”
The officer testified Tuesday at Nelson Hart’s double murder trial that Mr. Hart made the damning admission during a conversation at a Montreal sports bar on April, 2005.
“Mr. Hart said ... that he’s done something terrible in the past and that one day he will tell me and that will bring tears to my eyes,” said the officer, whose identity is protected by a publication ban.
“Mr. Hart said he had dealt with two people and that they’re in the ground now.”
The officer was posing as a tough, skirt-chasing mobster when the conversation took place.
He told the court he rolled his eyes at Mr. Hart and told him he didn’t have to lie to impress him.
“Then he took his wallet out and there was a picture of the two young girls ... and said, ‘I’ll leave it at that,’” the officer said in Newfoundland Supreme Court.
But Mr. Hart didn’t, the officer continued.
“He said the two girls were his blood and that he got rid of them,” he told the jury.
“He said he kept his mouth shut and now there’s no heat on him.... I said that me and him were now really blood brothers. It was a really intense conversation.”
Mr. Hart’s daughters, Karen and Krista, died in August 2002 while with their father at Little Harbour, a popular swimming and boating spot on Gander Lake.
On the day their bodies were pulled from the water, Mr. Hart told police he had panicked and left both of them at the lake after Krista fell in.
A police videotape entered as evidence shows Mr. Hart telling an officer he didn’t jump in the lake to save Krista because he couldn’t swim. Instead, he returned home to get his wife, who also couldn’t swim, the jury has heard.
By the time police arrived at the scene, the two girls were dead.
In subsequent interviews with police, Mr. Hart, an epileptic, said he had a seizure and didn’t know how the girls ended up in the water.
He said he changed his story because he feared he would lose his driver’s licence if police discovered his medical condition.
In further testimony Tuesday, the undercover officer said Mr. Hart bragged that he had no children in order to land a job with a phony trucking company the RCMP set up to serve as a front for a fictitious criminal organization.
“He said, ‘I have no kids. Thank God for that,’” the officer testified. “It was kind of a selling feature.”
But the sting nearly fell apart in its early stages.
At one point, Mr. Hart questioned the officer, saying he suspected he was working for the police because of his long jacket and short haircut, court heard.
“I went on talking about how much I did not like the police,” the officer said, adding he eventually persuaded Mr. Hart he wasn’t a cop.
Throughout the sting, Mr. Hart grew close to the officer. The two gambled, attended strip clubs and ate at high-end restaurants together.
But on June 8, 2005, five days before Mr. Hart’s arrest, the officer told him “the big boss” had discovered unspecified problems with him during a background check.
Mr. Hart feared the boss was going to kick him out of the gang, the officer said.
“Mr. Hart was very worried and sad about the news,” the officer testified. “He said he would rather have a call saying his mother was dead than losing the group.”
Mr. Hart was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder five days later.