Press Release: Innocence Canada Wednesday, August 9, 2023 Tim Rees

 Today, the new Minister of Justice, Arif Virani, and his predecessor, David Lametti, announced that Tim Rees’s conviction for the 1989 murder of 10-year-old Darla Thurott was to be sent back to the Ontario Court of Appeal to be reviewed.

Darla was strangled in her bed at her home in Etobicoke on March 16, 1989.  She was found by her mother in the morning.  Tim Rees, then 25 years old, who had visited Darla’s parents the evening before and stayed overnight, was convicted of the murder on September 15, 1990, and sentenced to life imprisonment.  His appeal to the Court of Appeal was dismissed on June 16, 1994, and the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear his case.  After 26 years in prison, he was released on parole in October 2016, and he remains on parole today.

 

Innocence Canada adopted Mr. Rees’ case in 2016 and in 2018 filed an application claiming that he had been wrongly convicted with the then Minister of Justice, Jody Wilson-Raybould.  The compelling feature of his application was an undisclosed tape-recorded statement of the landlord who lived in the same home and slept in the room immediately across the hall from Darla.  The landlord, since deceased, had given a highly incriminating statement to the police hours after the murder but the defence knew nothing of it.  The landlord was able to testify with impunity, and falsely, that he never had a relationship with Darla and had not been in her bedroom on the night she was murdered.

 

If the missing tape-recording had been disclosed in 1989, it is doubtful that Mr. Rees would ever have been charged, let alone convicted of Darla’s murder.  In a remarkable twist, in 1989 it was members of the Toronto Police Homicide Squad who did not reveal the existence of the missing tape-recording, and in 2016 it was members of the Toronto Police Homicide Cold Case Squad who found the missing tape-recording after they had been assigned to respond to Innocence Canada’s request for access to the original investigative files.

 

Innocence Canada counsel James Lockyer, who filed the ministerial application, said today:

 

“The decision of the two Ministers to send the case back to the Court of Appeal is a huge step forward in establishing Tim Rees’ innocence.  He was a victim of extraordinary non-disclosure.  He has always claimed his innocence and testified to his innocence at his trial.  Fortunately, his parole officer believed he was wrongly convicted because, without that, he would likely not have been given parole.”

 

Innocence Canada will be advocating for Mr. Rees in the Ontario Court of Appeal.  Mr. Rees is now 60 years of age.  He is very relieved and grateful for the Minister’s decision.   

 

For further information, contact:  

 

James Lockyer at 416-518-7983 or jlockyer@lzzdefence.ca

Jerome Kennedy at 709-725-2966 or jkennedy@wrmmlaw.com