Poison (24 page)

 

 

Korol spoke with Dhinsa. Dhinsa said he never told Dhillon that Startek gave approval for the polygraph. Then Korol visited
assistant Crown attorney Brent Bentham, who had been assigned the case, and gave him a copy of Startek’s letter. Korol smirked. Startek. He had nothing against the man personally. But the homicide detective had rarely encountered him in court. Startek was predominantly a family lawyer.

On Tuesday, barely 30 hours after the polygraph test ended, Steve Hrab’s promise to Dhillon about media exposure came true. The headline on the front page of
The Hamilton Spectator
said: “Pair were poisoned, police now believe.”

On the other side of the country, 4,500 kilometers away, a man named Gurbachan Singh visited his son’s paper mill near Surrey, British Columbia. Gurbachan was from the Punjabi village of Panj Grain. He still kept a house there, just down the street from the Brar family—including Sarabjit, the young woman who married Dhillon. At the mill Gurbachan, who understood English, saw a local newspaper spread out on a table. He picked it up and read a familiar name in a brief article. Newspapers in B.C., which has a large population of East Indian descent, had picked up the story that Hamilton police suspected that someone had murdered a man named Ranjit Khela using poison. The article said another person, Parvesh Dhillon, may have been poisoned earlier and it quoted Steve Hrab: “The circumstances surrounding her death are very similar in medical terms. The symptoms and signs of her sudden illness were similar. It’s a very, very acute reaction.” Hrab added that police knew who the killer was. “The individual who is doing this is targeting people for a reason. But I don’t want anyone to fear there’s a lunatic running around out there.”

The story said Parvesh, who lived with her husband, Sukhwinder, became violently ill and was rushed to hospital last year. Gurbachan paused on the name. Sukhwinder Dhillon? The same man who had married Sarabjit from his village? And fathered her children? Perhaps the police in Hamilton would be interested to hear what he, Gurbachan, knew.

The phone rang in Hrab’s office. Tips come in all the time. But this one was more than a bit interesting. Hrab spoke with Warren Korol, who had unearthed the Indian connection in the case—the multiple marriages, the death of the third wife, Kushpreet. But now there appeared to be more.

Korol phoned Gurbachan. The Indian man told Korol about Sarabjit’s newborn boys—Dhillon’s sons—dying in the middle of the night soon after Dhillon’s only visit with them. Rumor had it that Dhillon had earlier warned Sarabjit not to name the babies, not to register their births with authorities. He gave Korol Sarabjit’s phone number in Panj Grain. Korol let the information sink in. Parvesh. Ranjit. Kushpreet. And newborn boys? Could Dhillon have murdered his own children? Later, he phoned Pierre Carrier in New Delhi. Korol gave Carrier Sarabjit’s phone number.

“You should know, Warren,” Carrier said, “I’m a liaison officer, not an investigator.”

“I understand.”

“We’ll need to involve the Indian authorities in this, to contact Sarabjit and so on. Warren, if you come to India I could arrange for you to see the people you need to interview. Otherwise an investigation here will probably take two or three years. Things move very slowly. You should seriously think about coming over yourself.”

On December 18, Korol met with Ontario’s deputy chief coroner, Dr. Bonnie Porter. She called Dr. Michael McGuigan at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children. McGuigan was also medical director of the Ontario Regional Poison Information Center. McGuigan agreed to review the symptoms exhibited by Parvesh Dhillon at the time of her death. But even if McGuigan confirmed the symptoms were the same as those caused by strychnine poisoning, Korol still had no forensic proof. He spoke to Joel Mayer, head of the biology section at the Centre of Forensic Sciences. CFS still had Parvesh’s tissue samples, which Korol had delivered two months ago. No progress to report yet, but Mayer was still optimistic they could detect strychnine with further testing. Korol knew that without toxicology, it would be next to impossible to prove in court that Parvesh had been poisoned.

The next night, back in Hamilton, Korol and Dhinsa interviewed a man named Inderjit Singh Mangat. Mangat told them about a gathering four days after Ranjit’s death. He said Lakhwinder told several people that Ranjit’s dying declaration to her was that Jodha had given him a pill. At that moment, Dhillon had heard Lakhwinder, Mangat said, and walked over to her. “Dhillon said ‘No, Ranjit didn’t eat anything at my house,” Mangat recalled. “And then Lakhwinder said Ranjit must have been joking. The other people there offered no reaction.”

Korol and Dhinsa had suspected it before but now they were convinced—the Khela family’s cone of silence wasn’t rooted entirely in a belief that death is God’s will. It was a coverup. Korol recorded his suspicions in his notes.
“I believe it is possible that the Khela family know more than they are telling us. They may be trying to cover up the death so they can collect insurance money that Sukhwinder Singh Dhillon will give them.”

On January 2, 1997, Korol got the call from Joel Mayer at CFS. He had news Korol did not want to hear. They had been unable
to detect strychnine in Parvesh’s tissue samples. Strychnine might well have been present, but over time it had leached out of the tissue, perhaps during the testing process itself. They just didn’t have the technology to detect whatever minuscule traces might remain.

Korol’s heart sank. It was a huge blow to the case. But perhaps there was other evidence that could tip the scales against Dhillon in court. They had Ranjit’s cause of death confirmed. Perhaps they could prove that Dhillon had easy access to strychnine, possibly find some in his house. And there was the Indian connection. They could prove their case indirectly, circumstantially. Look at all these people close to Dhillon who had dropped dead from the same symptoms. Korol boned up on the
Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty
. It is an agreement, signed between Canada and India in 1996, allowing smoother cooperation between the two countries on matters of criminal justice. He sent a request through the Department of Justice in Ottawa for advice on applying under the treaty to gather evidence in India.

On March 15, Korol applied again to a justice of the peace for a search warrant for 362 Berkindale Drive. In his written application, Korol said he believed that Dhillon had emptied a Fiorinal headache capsule and packed it with strychnine. There might be traces of the powder in the house. This time, a different JP approved the request. Police put the house under surveillance. On March 17, Dhillon left the house along with his two young daughters. A few minutes later, the police swept in and executed the search warrant. Dhillon’s niece, Sarvjit, and his mother, Gobind, were there, and were told to leave. A police search van backed into the driveway. Dhillon came home and stood outside, watching. Kevin Dhinsa walked up to him.

“Dhillon, you could save us all a lot of trouble if you just told me where I can find the
kuchila
.”

“I never had it,” Dhillon said. “I could never kill my wife. Or Ranna.”

The house appeared as though it had been recently cleaned. And the medicine cabinets had been emptied. Among items seized in the house were a mortar and pestle; contents of a vacuum cleaner bag; Ranjit Khela’s checkbook and his proof of death certificate; Canada Trust bank books for Parvesh and her father; a proof of death statement for Parvesh signed by a doctor; statement of death for Kushpreet Kaur Toor; handwritten addresses for Kushpreet and Sarabjit; marriage certificate from Dhillon’s wedding to Sukhwinder Kaur; divorce judgment with Sarabjit; checks to a local lawyer handling the purchase of properties for Dhillon’s used-car dealership on Barton Street East and Main Street East; six photographs from a family album showing bruising to Parvesh’s eyes.

They also seized an insurance policy on Dhillon’s niece, Sarvjit, that named her uncle Sukhwinder Dhillon as beneficiary. And in the bedroom dresser, they found a blister package of Fiorinal capsules, with one missing. Korol smirked. Dhillon was trying to be clever. Leave the open package in the bedroom dresser, as if that would prove Parvesh had taken the Fiorinal as he claimed to paramedics. Dhillon was unaware that the drug screen in fact proved that Parvesh had no Fiorinal in her system.

They vacuumed the place top to bottom, but the search failed to unearth any evidence of strychnine in the house. The only way to prove Dhillon had access to strychnine was to prove it in India. The search uncovered Dhillon’s passport, and one of the stamps showed that he had traveled to India prior to Parvesh’s death, and again prior to Ranjit’s death. On March 21, Korol received word that Police Chief Robert Middaugh had given him the green light to go to India. On April 1, Korol visited the Crown attorney’s office downtown to see Brent Bentham. The prosecutor had been considered a young prodigy by lawyers senior to him when he started in the office 12 years earlier. Now just 39, Bentham already had a long resumé of tough prosecutions in Hamilton. The bespectacled Bentham was a slim, quiet family man with straight brown hair, blue-gray eyes. A detail guy, taciturn, relentless, and without pretension, he spoke in a deep baritone with a measured, bookish manner. Korol gave him the final draft of his request for treaty assistance to go to India.

Korol received a fax from Pierre Carrier in New Delhi on April 15. It was a report on the preliminary investigation into the rumors about Dhillon in and around Ludhiana, conducted by an Indian Central Bureau of Investigation inspector named Subhash Kundu. The report confirmed the stories Korol had heard about Dhillon’s multiple wives and the sudden deaths of Kushpreet and the newborn twins. Korol phoned Carrier, told him the request for treaty assistance was on the way from Ottawa. Carrier said he would speak with his contact at the CBI. The next day, Korol faxed Carrier their itinerary.