Wrongfully convicted man attends son’s homicide hearing

Thomas Sophonow, who was wrongfully convicted of murder decades ago, was in Calgary Monday to watch his son’s homicide hearing.

Sophonow was in the gallery as the Crown called evidence it hopes will establish Christian Thomas Desjarlais should stand trial for second-degree murder in the Oct. 31, 2017, killing of a Calgary man.

Desjarlais was taken into custody last Nov. 5, two days after the discovery of the body of 39-year-old Randeep Singh Dhaliwal in a home in the 100 block of Pineside Pl. N.E.

At the request of defence lawyer Adriano Iovinelli, provincial court Judge Bob Wilkins ordered a publication ban on the evidence at Desjarlais’ preliminary inquiry.

Crown prosecutors Jonathan Hak and Deven Singhal are expected to call 11 witnesses during the hearing, which will likely conclude Thursday.

Sophonow was visiting his exwife and children in Winnipeg in December 1981, when a doughnut shop waitress was murdered.

The body of 16-year-old Barbara Stoppel was discovered at her work on Dec. 23, 1981. She had been strangled and her remains left in a washroom in the shop.

Sophonow, then a Vancouver doorman, was arrested two months later at his Burnaby, B.C., home and taken to Winnipeg after people said he resembled a composite drawing of a cowboy hat-wearing suspect.

He was twice convicted of the slaying before the Manitoba Court of Appeal in 1985 acquitted him, citing numerous errors in how the jury was instructed.

It wasn’t until 2000, however, that he was exonerated when both the Winnipeg police and Manitoba Department of Justice apologized.

He was paid $2.6 million for his wrongful prosecution and the nearly four years he spent behind bars.

At one point during the proceedings, as Dhaliwal’s mother sat crying in the front row, Sophonow

moved up to talk to her briefly and console her.

He said during a break he was there to provide support for his son, noting no one else was there for him.

“I just want to find out what happened,” said Sophonow, who travelled from the B.C. lower mainland to attend the hearing.

He said it wasn’t difficult for him to be back in a courtroom decades after his trials.

“It doesn’t bother me at all,” Sophonow said. “It’s not Winnipeg.”

After Sophonow was cleared police turned their attention to drifter Terry Samuel Arnold, who by then was serving a life sentence for the murder of a teen in Penticton. Arnold, who in 2002 had his conviction overturned, committed suicide in 2005, as the main suspect in the Stoppel murder and the 1987 murder of Calgary teen Denise Lapierre.

I just want to find out what happened ... It doesn’t bother me at all (being in court again after past trials.)