Jimmy Wise not guilty of murder, jury decides after six days and 58 witnesses

WINCHESTER – Despite being pursued by police for years, Jimmy Wise is a free man after a jury in a Cornwall court declared him not guilty of second-degree murder and manslaughter on Dec. 7.

Wise has had a complex and fraught relationship with the law, but the former Chesterville-area mechanic had his latest brush in 2018 when he was charged with the murder of Raymond Collison. Wise was 75 years old at the time.

Collison, a local handyman and father with a history of heavy drinking and mental health issues, went missing in 2009. His family became alarmed when he didn’t cash a monthly disability cheque. The investigation into his whereabouts went nowhere until two teenagers found a skull in a ditch next to Thompson Road, near Morewood and just east of Jaquemet Farms’ grain elevator, in 2014. At first they thought it was a Halloween decoration. An investigation turned up Collison’s remains, buried in a culvert with an automotive fan belt shackled to them and pockmarked with five bullet holes.

A missing person’s case became a homicide investigation when Ontario’s chief forensic pathologist found a “projectile” in Collison’s skull.
The Crown prosecuted Wise, arguing he had shot Collison in the back of the head, execution-style. But how did Wise figure into this?

Police had already looked into Wise in this case. In 2016, police raided Wise’s apartment above a Winchester pizza shop and charged him with breaking and entering, assault, obstruction of police officers and trafficking in stolen property. But those charges were dropped.

Crown attorney Jason Pilon argued in court that Wise and Collison didn’t merely know each other, but that Wise had it out for Collison. Pilon told the Cornwall court last month that Wise considered Collison a “pest and a nuisance,” and had threatened him just weeks before Collison went missing and had warned Collison to stay away from his repair garage. Further, Pilon said, Wise had taken an unusual interest in Collison’s death and had “conspicuous knowledge of the cause and manner of his death.”

With DNA evidence long eroded, the Crown had to build its case on conjecture and circumstantial evidence. Despite 58 witnesses, nobody could attest to anything concrete or incontrovertible. Collison frequented Wise’s neighbour’s place and was known to drop in at his garage. Wise often mowed his neighbour’s lawn. Collison reportedly spent three days holed up with a friend, badly shaken after a man on a riding mower at Wise’s neighbour’s house told him not to come around anymore. A pre-trial ruling meant the jury didn’t hear the other half of the story: that allegedly the man on the mower said he would make Collison “disappear” if he ever came back.

To further support its case, the Crown pointed to a bullet hole in Wise’s garage; human blood on his tailgate (though it wasn’t usable in a DNA test); the fact that Wise had once owned a similar type of engine belt as the one wrapped around Collison’s remains; that Wise had tried to deflect blame onto the owner of a local hotel; and that Wise had sold Collison’s truck and trailer for $1,600 while Collison was still missing.

A plausible-sounding theory maybe, but as the defence countered, just a theory. There was no hard evidence tying Wise to the crime.

The jury deliberated for six days, though not without interruption. The judge called in jurors one by one after hearing reports of threats behind closed doors. One juror admitted to threatening to punch another juror in the face and vocally wishing for other jurors’ parents to be murdered so they could understand the pain of losing a parent. The juror reportedly told the judge he’d made mistakes and would “like to leave this thing.” The Crown pushed for a mistrial but the judge granted the juror’s wish. The juror was released from duty.

Wise left the courtroom after the verdict in a wheelchair. The tough former mechanic had suffered a debilitating stroke in 2014, just five months before Collison’s body was found. He was happy and said he was “surprised” by the verdict, given how long the jury had deliberated. He’d followed along through the trial with the help of a hearing aid.

One thing the jury wasn’t allowed to hear was Wise’s history. He was only ever convicted for robbery, theft and weapons possession as a young man, but his run-ins with police carried on his whole life.

Five local murders, including two farmers, in the 1980s shocked the community and brought Wise into his most famous and bizarre police encounter. A tape of a phone discussing one of the killings convinced an investigator it was Wise’s voice on the other end of the line. Wise was never charged, despite police getting a warrant to search his home and car and 10 police officers surveilling him around the clock for a year. A police press conference at the time assured the public that the police believed they had identified the murderer and were just gathering enough evidence to charge him. A month later, Wise was charged with vandalism, after a $2 million communications tower at Williamsburg went down, its cables cut with an oxyacetylene torch. The charges were dropped and Wise later filed a defamation suit against the OPP, which was settled out of court under never disclosed terms in 2002. Wise also received an apology from then-solicitor general Joan Smith.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to Farmers Forum in 2018, one local called Wise a “Boo Radley” type figure, referring to the frightening but harmless character from To Kill A Mockingbird. Once upon a time he was just known as the go-to guy for repairs.