I was woken by a phone call on Tuesday morning of last week.
It was my boss Delwyn, who told me of an interesting story that would be developing in the courtroom of Outlook's town hall.
I got up, got dressed, cleaned up, and made my way to the building prior to the morning's 10:00 am start time. Not long after I'd entered the courtroom and sat down, I was flooded with a whole bunch of memories.
See, the pages of The Outlook used to run something that I just called The Court Report. Every couple of weeks or so, there'd be a morning court session down at the town hall, and so I would go down with my notepad and take notes on anything interesting that would develop. My notes would then be formed into an article, the article would get published, and boom, there's The Court Report.
It wound up being a pretty popular feature and I wrote this piece for a number of years. But then one week, and I really couldn't tell you what year it was, I just decided that I'd had enough of it. I'd had enough of writing the same thing over and over where Person X got drunk and got this ticket and had to pay this fine, I'd had enough of seeing the sometimes seedy underbelly of people who call Outlook and the surrounding district home, and to be quite honest with you, even though it was a popular recurring article, I'd had enough of the comments I'd get in public about how, "Oh, that was a heck of a Court Report, Derek! I can't believe that person did that! Keep it up, love to read that stuff!"
On the one hand, yes, it's always nice to get compliments on my work. However, on the other hand, something about the scenario just didn't sit right with me after a certain point. What I was doing was essentially feeding the Coffee Row gossip circles, spilling details about things that happened during perhaps someone's lowest point in their life. All so that Persons A and B can sit back, swill their morning joe and think, "Boy, I'm glad that isn't me!"
So I stopped. Sure, these court sessions are public, meaning that any Tom, Dick or Harry can walk in, have a seat and listen to as much as they wanted. In truth, there was one old guy who DID in fact do that every time. I wish I could remember his name, but I remember where he was seated every time that I'd walk in the Outlook courtroom; back row, far right, listening intently. It was just something he liked to do, and I imagine he took all this new information home to his own coffee row gang, tuning them in to all the happenings and the "latest, need-to-know drama".
Outside of the Outlook court, I've covered some other cases that took me on the road. You may remember that a Broderick man named Rick Murphy was murdered in his home in March 2010, and the suspect was his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Brigitt Blanchard. She had stabbed him repeatedly, including 16 blows to the head, and it was said during her trial a year later in a Saskatoon court that she had "heard voices" that told her to carry out the deadly deed. The trial included the testimony of Ken Brevik, a close friend of the late Rick, and his uncontrollable emotions forced court to pause twice before he could utter his recollections of what he'd heard that night - the screams of his friend as he was being murdered next door.
That case was a tough one to write about, and it was the kind of material that just takes something out of you. I sat there in court, taking page after page of notes, and hearing all of these awful things that one human being committed against another, and I can remember the drive home after that first day in court, asking myself how the hell do I make sense out of any of this? How do I write it? Do I censor anything? Should I keep some of the heavier stuff out? Or do I write all of it as it was said in court, perhaps with a disclaimer before the article begins? That last one was the direction we took with the material, as the trial was exposing all manner of weird, bizarre, sick and twisted material. Put the kids to bed before you sit down with this week's paper, folks, because this one's a real doozy.
What's even crazier about that particular trial is the fact that on the morning after she attacked and killed Rick Murphy, Brigitt Blanchard walked into the Outlook court room and sat next to me as court was about to start. The body of someone's uncle, friend and relative was on a floor over in Broderick, and this woman was sitting next to me in broad daylight. Yeesh. The world can be a very bizarre place, my friends.
But alas, here I was again in the local courtroom last week. What happened was the woman who was being charged with manslaughter in the death of Milden resident Randy Garrett was set to receive her sentence. Melissa MacQueen walked into court in handcuffs, and I could almost feel the gallery of people all around me tense up. I was surrounded by family members and close friends of the victim, and they weren't afraid to show their emotions. What followed was a three-hour court session that saw a lot of details made public, a lot of tears flow in the room, and a lot of emotions being drained in the process.
Mine included. Here's the thing, while I knew that MacQueen was facing a manslaughter charge, I was unaware of another charge of sexual assault of a minor that she had against her. Once again, every detail of the crimes was read aloud in court, and some of the things I heard on that day was more than enough to make your skin crawl. I left the courtroom that day feeling drained and shaking my head at the putrid choices that we humans are capable of making.
If you wish to know the details of the case, you'll find it in this week's print issue and the story was posted online last week. I don't have the stomach to retype anything of note that I heard that day.
Sometimes, I just look at my fellow human beings and go, "Man, we're capable of being utterly insane, aren't we?"
For this week, that's been the Ruttle Report.
