Case Summary
In May 1984, a New Brunswick jury convicted Walter Gillespie and Robert Mailman of the murder of 55-year-old plumber George Leeman. Almost forty years later—four decades spent entirely behind bars or subject to parole conditions—their wrongful convictions were rectified in January 2024.1
A jogger found Leeman’s body in Saint John, New Brunswick’s Rockwood Park on November 30, 1983. He had been viciously beaten to death and his body partially burned. No physical evidence was ever obtained connecting Mailman or his friend Gillespie to the crime. Moreover, the men had an alibi: they left town that day to pick up a replacement windshield wiper part for Gillespie’s then-girlfriend’s Buick. Nonetheless, Mailman’s lawyer would argue decades later, police “started the investigation with the view that [he] was the killer … [and] now we have to find the evidence to support that.”2 Mailman was known to them because he sold bootlegged goods, had served time in prison for theft and assault, and had been acquitted of more serious offences. He was tried three times for a previous homicide, and, in 1977, acquitted of the attempted murder of a Saint John Police officer. Mailman later told reporters, “[t]hey just never let that go.”3
With no physical evidence, police built their case on the word of two purported eyewitnesses. One was Leeman’s friend Janet Shatford, a 29-year-old single mother on social assistance whom police approached after a key to her home was found with his remains. In her first police statement, Shatford said she had no knowledge of the murder. She also took a polygraph test, which accorded with her statement. These were never disclosed to Gillespie and Mailman.4
Police were not content with Shatford’s account: in the words of the detective who eventually arrested her, he interviewed her further “to get a story that I would be satisfied with.”5 According to Shatford, he questioned her “day after day”—by phone and at the station, “sometimes for five hours”—while she maintained, for weeks, that she had no involvement in her friend’s death.6 On January 19, 1984, police searched Shatford’s home and brought her to the station, where she was questioned for hours. Still she denied any role in the killing, and the search yielded nothing of interest, yet that night Shatford was arrested and charged with second degree murder.7
This development arose from a statement given by 16-year-old John Loeman Jr., the other purported eyewitness, who had babysat for Shatford. His life had been difficult, marked by impoverishment, foster homes, and youth detention facilities. When police first approached him in December 1983, Loeman Jr. told them he knew nothing about the homicide; this statement was never disclosed, nor were two further, similar statements. The day before Shatford’s arrest, however, Loeman Jr.’s boss called police to report that the youth said he witnessed the murder. This time, his police statement alleged that he had “heard a yelp from behind [a] house” and hid in the brush “around back,” where he saw Mailman striking Leeman with a shotgun.8 He claimed that Shatford was also present and hit Leeman in the face with an axe, while Gillespie stood around with a bucket full of gasoline. Rather than alert the authorities, Loeman Jr. claimed, he conducted his own investigation at Shatford’s home and found “a shotgun, axe and pail in a bedroom closet” (presumably the items for which police, fruitlessly, searched).9
Gillespie was arrested and charged with second degree murder on January 19, 1984, Mailman on the following day. While he was detained awaiting trial, Gillespie later told reporters, a police officer tried—for 10 to 12 hours—to elicit a statement from him against Mailman, promising that his charge would be reduced to “aiding and abetting and he’d only get three years in prison.”10 Gillespie refused, stating, “I wasn’t there and I don’t think Bob Mailman was there, either”; the officer replied, “If you’re willing to protect him, then you’re going to go down with him.”11
Similarly, Shatford later told the press that police pressured her to change her story during her pre-trial detention: “I kept telling them I didn’t do it…. They were just telling me that I was there.”12 Relentlessly, police “pounded” their case theory into her: “They told me that I was there swinging an axe.”13 Eventually, she “heard it so much that it was just planted there.”14 In the end, Shatford said, “They told me I was there. I couldn’t prove I wasn’t…. I was just a welfare bum.”15
Two weeks before Gillespie and Mailman’s trial date, Shatford gave a new statement, matching Loeman Jr.’s. In exchange for her testimony, she pled guilty to the reduced charge of manslaughter. Shatford later alleged that police told her she “was never going to go to jail,” whereas “they would take my kids away and I'd never see them again if I didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear.”16 She was, in fact, sentenced to 13 years—reduced to six after the Crown advocated for her at her sentence appeal. Ultimately, she spent three years behind bars.17
At Gillespie and Mailman’s March 1984 first trial, jurors heard Shatford and Loeman Jr.’s damning accounts, as well as the men’s alibi, supported by multiple witnesses. The Buick’s owner, Marjorie Mills, provided a receipt for the replacement part. The trial ended in a hung jury. Prior to their second trial, police investigated the alibi, confirmed that the Buick’s windshield wiper had recently been repaired, and failed to disclose this fact. At the retrial, the Crown urged jurors to reject the alibi evidence. They did so: on May 11, 1984, both men were found guilty of second degree murder, after a mere two hours and twenty-five minutes of jury deliberations.18
Immediately after their conviction, both Gillespie and Mailman told the trial judge that they were innocent. He then listed off their prior convictions and said, “I don’t know what the point is of rehabilitation.”19 He sentenced them to life imprisonment with no parole eligibility for 18 years.20
From New Brunswick’s Dorchester Penitentiary, Gillespie and Mailman began their long campaign to rectify their wrongful convictions. Within weeks, they started appeal proceedings; in June 1984, not yet having found a lawyer for his appeal, Mailman also wrote to the Crown prosecutor (receiving no response). Subsequently, he retained defence counsel Wilber MacLeod—to whom, before the appeal date, Loeman Jr. made the first of many recantations.21
On October 24, 1985, the now 18-year-old Loeman Jr. called MacLeod and said that they needed to talk. MacLeod drove to his home and tape-recorded an interview with him. Loeman Jr. told him, “Everything I said at the trials was a lie.”22 He said he learned of the murder from police, who claimed he was observed at the crime scene; he was then questioned repeatedly and pressured into telling the story he gave the jury—or else, he would be “charged with [Leeman’s] murder and would go to prison.”23 He also stated that police paid him $400.00.24
In November 1984, Loeman Jr. swore an affidavit recanting his trial testimony. Defence counsel sought to introduce it as fresh evidence for the approaching appeal, which the Crown asked be adjourned, as they needed more time due to the recantation. But before the new appeal date, Loeman Jr. retracted his retraction, in a July 1986 letter to police that the Crown filed with the court, along with two police affidavits supporting his trial evidence and “denying any threats to [him].”25 One officer swore that he took Loeman Jr.’s January 1984 statement, which matched his testimony. Police were, of course, aware that his earlier statements (denying knowledge of the crime) matched instead with his recantation, but again that went undisclosed.26
The New Brunswick Court of Appeal found that Loeman Jr.’s recantation to MacLeod was not credible, and dismissed the appeal on February 10, 1988. Gillespie sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, but his request was denied in 1994. Even after their appeals failed, Gillespie and Mailman kept trying, from prison, to rectify their wrongful convictions. They passed polygraph tests, paid for by Gillespie, and ran poker games to raise funds for document photocopying and private investigation. Fellow inmate Ron Dalton, also wrongfully convicted of murder, helped them send letters to counsel, justice ministers, and the media. After his exoneration, Dalton volunteered with Innocence Canada (a non-profit advocating for wrongfully convicted persons, of which he is now Co-President), and continued his work on their behalf.27
As the 21st century approached, journalist Gary Dimmock investigated Gillespie and Mailman’s convictions and the dubious evidence solely supporting them. He interviewed Loeman Jr. and Shatford (who had finished serving her sentence). Both recanted their trial evidence, Shatford for the first time, Loeman Jr. far from it. Shatford described her testimony as absurd and said she did not witness the murder, never mind participate. Dimmock observed that she did not “seem to fully understand the implications of the false story she told.”28
Loeman Jr., meanwhile, had recanted many times over the years. In 1990, he sent letters recanting to the Supreme Court, New Brunswick’s solicitor-general, the federal parole board, MacLeod (again), and the press, at one point alleging that police “threatened to charge him with perjury” if he did not retract his affidavit.29 He also wrote to Gillespie and Mailman, apologizing “for giving false testimony,” though sometimes he wrote follow-up notes of retraction.30 In 1997, while serving a sentence for fraud, he sent further recantation letters (to Mailman and the Department of Justice) at the urging of another inmate, Michael Hebert, to whom he had also recanted. According to Hebert, he said that “he was young … didn’t have a stable upbringing, and … was looking for attention”; the Leeman murder “was a big case and there was a big deal about it.”31 In 1998, Loeman Jr. told Dimmock that police “told [him] what to say on the stand.”32
Gillespie and Mailman remained in prison for several years after the public recantations of both Crown witnesses. Finally, Mailman was released on parole after 18 years behind bars, and Gillespie after 21 years. Gillespie’s parole conditions required that he reside in a halfway house, where he lived until his conviction was overturned almost two decades later. On parole, Gillespie and Mailman, who had become such close friends through their shared ordeal that they thought of each other as brothers, met daily at a coffee shop to discuss their case. Looking back, Gillespie described Mailman as “very passionate … he used to dig open transcripts 24-7, all the time—just never gave up on it.”33 The two spoke every day up until, then after, their acquittal.34
Meanwhile, Innocence Canada worked with Dimmock for years after taking on the case. Shatford recanted again, in 2012, this time to an investigator working with the group. Their lawyers also learned of the undisclosed Buick repair confirmation and initial, innocuous police statements. In 2019, counsel found out that police kept “a ledger of hundreds of dollars of payments” to Loeman Jr., all undisclosed, totaling $1,800 “in addition to hotel and relocation costs”: “[f]or a 16-year-old living in poverty in 1984 … a lot of money by any standard.”35 Shatford had also received an unspecified (though small), undisclosed sum.36
In December 2019, Innocence Canada filed an application to then Minister of Justice David Lametti, requesting a review of Gillespie and Mailman’s convictions (per Section 696 of the Criminal Code).37 During this review, one of the officers interviewed by the Criminal Convictions Review Group said that he believed Mailman was “where he should be. But not for this murder.”38 Four years later, in December 2023, Justice Minister Arif Virani granted Gillespie and Mailman a new trial. He found that “a miscarriage of justice likely occurred,” given that “new and significant information … call[ed] into question the overall fairness” of their trial process.39
Gillespie and Mailman’s lawyers told the new trial court that theirs “was a case where the ends justified the means.”40 They argued that the wrongful convictions flowed from “police tunnel vision [and] the non-disclosure of important evidence,” of which the jurors were thus unaware, and referenced the “recantations by the two key Crown witnesses,” both of whom had admitted to perjury.41
Gillespie and Mailman were acquitted on January 4, 2024, after the Crown called no evidence at their hearing. Chief Justice Tracey DeWare found that “serious mistakes were made,” and “the miscarriage of justice that occurred as a result … had the direst of consequences.”42 She stated: “The justice system … failed Mr. Mailman, Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Leeman.… I offer my sincere apology.”43 She observed that the wrongful convictions “also caused an injustice for the family and friends of Mr. Leeman[,] who have been deprived of answers as to the circumstances of his homicide.”44 Leeman’s great-nephew, Michael Sherrard, told reporters, “It’s a travesty for both people. For them and my uncle George, and it was too bad that had to happen.”45
Gillespie was 80 years old when he was acquitted; Mailman, 76, had been diagnosed with terminal cancer in November 2023 and given just months to live. After the hearing, Gillespie stated, “I feel good,” and said he would “just like to thank everybody” as he had not believed that he would live to see his acquittal.46 Mailman said that it was “a relief that they found us innocent after 40 years,” but the event “was certainly overshadowed by the fact that now I’m going to die.”47 Both men also described the devastating family impact of their wrongful convictions, sharing pain and loss that the acquittal could not erase. While he was incarcerated, Mailman’s sons both died, and he no longer went to their gravesites because they were vandalized after his visits. He stopped speaking with his grandchildren to spare them the embarrassment of “association with a convicted killer,” and never met his great-grandchildren.48 Once exonerated, Gillespie started talking with his daughter after not “connect[ing] for almost the last 40 years.”49
The Saint John Chief of Police, Robert Bruce, expressed his “concern” after the acquittal about the role police played “in the original investigation and prosecution,” and announced that “a comprehensive review” would be conducted.50 He commissioned private investigator Allen Farrah, a retired RCMP senior officer, to carry out this task.51
Gillespie and Mailman, meanwhile, sought compensation. Both wished to support their loved ones, and Gillespie hoped to improve his living conditions, which had, ironically, dropped off due to his acquittal: he left the halfway house, lost his part-time job there in the process, and moved to an apartment so small it reminded him of “another jail cell.”52 Mailman dryly told reporters that the funds would not “do me any good where I’m going,” but asked: “Do you not think after 40 years of pain and suffering—my boys are in the grave, I lost my wife, I lost my freedom—after what they’ve done to me and Wally … do you not think we should be compensated?”53
On March 1, 2024, the province of New Brunswick entered into a compensation agreement with the men for an undisclosed sum. Gillespie died weeks later, in April 2024, four short months after his acquittal. He had not yet received his compensation. Reflecting on Gillespie’s life, Dalton observed that his efforts to “raise awareness of wrongful convictions in this country … will be a part of his legacy.”54
Farrah’s report summarizing the results of his review was released March 7, 2025.55 He concluded that the wrongful convictions’ primary cause was “police tunnel vision”: “a negligent and narrow focus” on Gillespie and Mailman “that distort[ed] the interpretation of evidence and actions.”56 By “December 1983, tunnel vision had taken hold, leading the investigators’ efforts in their pursuit of the [pair] despite the absence of tangible evidence connecting them to the crime.”57 Farrah found that police were “negligent with the alibi evidence” and, crucially, in their “handling of the key witness” (Loeman Jr):58 “The detectives relied heavily on [this] witness whose cooperation and statements were inconsistent and lacked corroboration.”59 Moreover, Loeman Jr “was a teenager … [whose] parents were not present” for his interviews, and his “principal witness statements were not recorded.”60 Overall, police deficiencies in “interview and interrogation techniques” resulted in key witness statements with “[c]ritical discrepancies” and insufficient detail, which Farrah found to be “lacking” in “probative effort.”61
Farrah also “found significant information gaps in the police file” pertaining to their “witness relocation” arrangements with Loeman Jr.62 Indeed the file was missing numerous critical documents, including “witness statements, forensic reports,” adequate documentation of the (insufficient) alibi investigation, the “Crown Brief presenting the evidence and facts” to be led against Gillespie and Mailman, and any inventory or index of the file documents—such that “it is impossible to know what else may be missing.”63 Likewise, Farrah “could not determine how the police managed … disclosure to the Crown” and defence counsel, since there was no file documentation of the disclosure process.64
At a press conference following the release of this report, Chief Bruce expressed his “regret” that Gillespie and Mailman “had to go through this.”65 He acknowledged Farrah’s finding that the investigation’s “biggest failure … was that once [police] focused on Mr. Mailman and Mr. Gillespie, they stayed on that track and looked for evidence that would support their case.”66 He stated: “It’s a tragedy that [the wrongful convictions] lasted this long. Unfortunately, Mr. Gillespie wasn’t able to enjoy much of his life after that, and it’s a tragedy that he and Mr. Mailman didn’t get to enjoy their lives in this process.”67
Mailman died just over seven months later, in October 2025.68 Dalton remembered him as “a fighter to the end” who, in concert with Gillespie, “made an indelible mark on New Brunswick’s justice system … that’s also had national implications.”69 Their case, he told press, set a precedent for courts to engage with other longstanding wrongful convictions—such as those of Brian Anderson, Allan Woodhouse, and Clarence Woodhouse, Indigenous co-defendants wrongfully convicted for a 1973 homicide who were exonerated in 2024-2025.70 In their cases, Dalton said, “we could point to Mr. Mailman and Mr. Gillespie and say, this is what happened, and just because [decades] elapsed, it’s no reason not to face up to it and deal with it.”71