Canada’s schedule of horrific trials continues

SVEKLA TRIAL UPDATES VIS THE EDMONTON JOURNAL

Canadians have obtained intimate insights into hell at its various levels in society. This look is seen by watching or reading headline news stories with the details of trials of (alleged or convicted) serial killers.

As February 2008 drew to a close it came time to launch proceedings against Thomas George Svekla, composing the latest fury of byzantine murder tales concentrated in the western end of the nation.

Thomas Svekla pled not guilty on Feb 19 08, to second degree murder, and other charges related to committing indignities to human remains, and further charges related to sexual assault and battery, including sexual interference with an underage girl.

The trial is underway in Edmonton, Alberta, and will probably last until June this year. He is alleged to have murdered Rachel Quinney and Theresa Merrie Innes, whose bodies had been ‘discovered’ and/or ‘found by Svekla (or one of his sisters).

As the trial proceeded against Thomas Svekla in the third week of April 2008 in Edmonton, Alberta, for the murder of two sex trade workers, the judge (Svekla chose to be tried by judge alone) heard about three different women being choked.

More and more testimonies are being heard in support of the prosecution's contention that Thomas Svekla is a serial murderer in the deaths of Theresa Innes, 36, and Rachel Quinney, 19, and possibly others, possibly a lot of others. Svekla is a suspect in Project KARE's ongoing investigation into multiple murders around the city of Edmonton.

One woman testified, "He was telling me to shut up, to be still. He said all it would take is for him to push a little harder and I would be dead," this after Svekla had chased her around a house screaming, said he would kill her if she "told anyone about the attack," so she didn't (and even dated him later).

On other occasions he did strangulation acts upon two different women, one testified, "I knew it wasn't right. I was telling him to stop. I lost consciousness."

Wiretap evidence indicates that Thomas Svekla has concocted an image in his head as the 'Pickton of Alberta,' a reference to the six-time convicted serial murderer from the Lower Mainland, Robert William 'Willy' Pickton, except he is innocent.

This trial adds up to be another story of wretchedness and debauchery based in a fruitless and deadly pursuit of the 'high' found in crack cocaine (see below), which leads to human degradation. The story is emanating from events in central Alberta, including Fort Saskatchewan, Sherwood Park, and High Level (so far).

This case is the first to fall within the jurisdiction of Project KARE, "an investigational unit, created with the highest priority to examine the deaths of several 'High Risk Missing Persons' who have been found in the surrounding rural areas of the City of Edmonton."

But to the horror of observers another body was found outside Edmonton just when Svekla’s trial was due to begin. Brianna Danielle Torvalson, 21, was found dead Feb 21 08, within the dumping grounds consistently used in the commission of a host of horrid deeds around the city.

According to reports from those of her acquaintance, Brianna Danielle Torvalson was last seen homeless suffering severe bouts of crack cocaine addiction on Edmonton streets about a week and half before her remains were discovered on a little used branch of acreage roadway near Sherwood Park. (The area east and south-east of Edmonton contains a vast labyrinth of acreages.)

She is recorded as the first homicide of 2008 in the city; before the end of the first day of investigation Torvalson’s file had been transferred to Project KARE for investigation.

Returning to the trial of Thomas Svekla, his defence lawyer Robert Shaigec appears be decided to portray his client as one of the least lucky people on earth who has an unusual bent for stumbling upon the dead, and a sister who is out to get him.

If it wasn't for bad luck Thomas Svekla would have no luck at all. He haplessly stumbles onto dead bodies, two of them, and haplessly wanders around wondering what to do about it. It comes as no surprise he was a hapless wanderer during this period, when he spent countless hours getting 'stoned' on crack cocaine.

He had a seemingly endless supply according to the witness who shared the crack pipe on the very binge that involved the discovery of Rachel Quinney’s mutilated body; no explanation is provided about the sources of all these drugs, but for lay-people, while reports often cite this as an inexpensive substance, people spend entire fortunes to destroy their lives on it.

Other proceedings within this trial have Svekla charged also with sexual assault and threatening to kill a woman at or near Edmonton between Aug 1 02 and Jun 30 04. And in Jul 07 he was charged with sexually assaulting an underage girl at or near Edmonton between the dates of May 30 and Dec 28 95.

It was Donna Parkinson, one of Svekla’s six sisters (he is the only son), discovered the body of Theresa Innes on her property in 2006 and phoned police to report her brother and the arrest for the two murders ensued.

During a wiretapped phone conversation played in court, Svekla told Donna Parkinson that he has enemies in High Level. He claims it was while working in High Level that he 'found' the body of Theresa Innes. It was in the back of a truck he owned. He claims he thought it was a bag of worms.

Svekla is a mechanic who aspires to own a junk yard of vehicles. He insisted to his sister during the wiretap conversation that she did the right thing to turn him in and get him imprisoned, and he loves her for doing so, “You did the right thing.” He was afraid of what he would do next, he told her.

Apparently he was growing weary of being wired on crack all the time. He even resorted to alcoholism as an escape from it.

The two wiretapped conversations with his sister take many different directions, and he is doting on her feelings, expressing gratitude for a reprieve from drug and alcoholism and jail is affording this. He is finally able to make sense of his situation. He also claims to have a list of enemies that shall remain nameless because Svekla doesn't claim to be a detective. (No he isn't. A detective would not be obstructing justice in this way.)

He spoke to the sister about recent conversations with a friend in Idaho who works in a dentist shop. He discussed another friend Brad Ludwick who wandered away some time ago from Sherwood Park to live in another province. "I should have gone with him to live in the bush," of British Columbia. Ludwick is providing testimony for the prosecution, but some of it has been severely cross-examined, particularly his version of who saw what at his acreage property when Svekla was seen departing with an apparently unweildy hockey bag.

On 'day one' of the trial Svekla avoided looking at the gruesome video displays containing his own discovery of Rachel Quinney. The tears of family flowed in the courtroom while these horrific images held up her mutilated body to inspection as seen in the bush outside of Edmonton. Some members of the Quinney family in the courtroom were understandably enraged by the sights.

It is Svekla who 'found' Quinney's body in Jun 04 among trees in a farmer's field outside Edmonton, beside one of those fields he frequented to smoke crack cocaine for hours on end. It was Svekla who 'found' the body of Theresa Innes in the back of his truck in High Level. He claims to have thought it was a giant sack of worms to be transported to Edmonton. He tried to stash it at the household of his sister in Fort Saskatchewan in May 06. She found it in Jun 06 and his arrest followed her report to the police.

Crown prosecutor Ashley Finlayson told Court of Queen's Bench Justice Sterling Sanderman that he is building a circumstantial case against Svekla.

In fact, said Finlayson, during his opening his statement, neither woman had been visibly injured nor could the medical examiners say how either victim died. The Crown intends to draw important inferences about the murders from the indignities done to the remains.

The body of Theresa Innes had been 'folded and wrapped' in a shower curtain, "decorated with dolphins," and further wrapped in heavy orange garbage bags and a rubberized air mattress, and the body was bound by long, thin 'knotted' wire. Some reports say the mattress and shower curtain belonged to Svekla.

Svekla told Donna Parkinson that his legal troubles are as a result of people being out to get him. "I've got enemies in High Level," he said. In reality Svekla came under the scrutiny of Project KARE in Jun 04 after he reported finding Quinney's body, "tripped over the body in the bush," during a step off to urinate in the bush during his crack binge.

Shannon Millward told the courtroom that although he seemed terribly upset at stumbling onto Rachel Quinney's remains, her host Svekla did not want to contact police because he was worried it might cast suspicion on him.

She said, "I wanted to call police right away, but Tom was worried they would think he had done it. At that time, it didn't even cross my mind that he could have been a suspect. I thought we had just stumbled across a body.''

Millward told the court she worked as a prostitute in Jun 04 the night Svekla picked her up and offered her drugs. In fact, Svekla said he didn't want to have sex with her, but just wanted them to hang out together. (Crack cocaine creates a sense of euphoria that is a virtual replacement for a sexual orgasm.)

According to psychiatrists who have studied cocaine addiction, the sexual degradation involved with crack cocaine comes at the end of a drug binge and probably stems from what they call anhedonia (the medical outcome of the all too rigorous pursuit of ‘eudemonia’, which is found one way by using crack cocaine).

The pleasure deficient brain behaviour may be accompanied by other mental or physical deviations of the brain due to injury, illness, or congenital mutation, and these psychological permutations could be exacerbated by structural alterations to brain biology and behaviour perpetrated by prolonged drug use.

They say anhedonia is the loss of pleasure response in users, long after the drug stops getting the user high, and other psychotic reactions occur, like perhaps a paranoia sets in, and frustrations arise at the user’s inability to attain further drug elation.

This inability occurs either because the tolerance level is too high (or the aforementioned brain damage is profound in this regard, some doctors are amazed at the amount of change permutated in brain trunk routes, neuropathies and so forth, I know nothing, google it), or there is none of the high priced drug (at required amounts) left available to smoke. At this time a sexual desperation and frustration ensues and at this moment the degradations and depravities take over, this I think we have all seen if not experienced (. . . if you’ve read this far).