from the toronto star.
PETERBOROUGH — Brenda Waudby badly needed a friend, and the woman with the blonde, scraggly hair who sat next to her at her Narcotics Anonymous meeting seemed to fill the bill.
Waudby was trying to cope with the sudden death of her 21-month-old daughter, Jenna, who died just hours after Waudby dropped her off at a babysitter.
She was also fighting to shake a cocaine addiction, and she and her common-law husband were breaking up.
So Waudby desperately needed someone to confide in during the spring of 1997, and the woman who introduced herself at the meeting as Ramona Speigel seemed to need her, too.
"I felt sorry for her," Waudby recalled. "She was an addict. She was in the same boat as everybody else. She was genuine. She was a nice woman."
Waudby grew to value her as a trusted friend, close enough to bring to her mother's home and baby Jenna's grave.
It was not until five months later that Waudby discovered that her friend, who had attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings off and on during that time, wasn't Ramona Speigel at all.
She was really Maja Schlegel, a Toronto undercover officer sent to Narcotics Anonymous to gather information on her regarding Jenna's death.
Waudby found herself staring at Schlegel in disbelief as she was charged with second-degree murder.
She also found herself wondering how police could be allowed to infiltrate a closed-doors therapy group that she thought was confidential, and to confiscate counselling records.
"I just shook my head," Waudby recalled.
"She apologized to me. She said she was sorry that she had to do it."
A crown attorney threw out the charge against Waudby as unfounded before it reached trial, after reviewing medical reports indicating she was not with her daughter at the time the fatal injuries were inflicted.
Peterborough police Chief Terry McLaren declined to comment, saying the case is still under investigation.
Requests for interviews with Toronto police Chief Julian Fantino and Schlegel were referred to Staff Inspector Bruce Smollet, who said the undercover operation at Narcotics Anonymous would have been approved by Peterborough police, who headed the case.
Smollet said Toronto police have no written policy against undercover operations in counselling groups, and would not comment on whether they have infiltrated other Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
"You've got to be really careful on this one," Smollet said.
"Maja ... didn't go into these groups looking into the groups themselves. She was in there as an undercover officer with the subject, so that the actual content of the group was not a concern of hers."
This winter, five years after Jenna's death, there was finally a break in the case.
The new evidence had nothing to do with Waudby and her counselling files.
It was a single dark, curly strand of hair or fibre — which was never tested or used as evidence — that fell into police hands when they removed it from the office of Toronto pathologist Dr. Charles Smith last December.
Yesterday, after the strand was examined at the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto, the case was reviewed in Peterborough by a group that included a group that included McLaren, Ontario deputy chief coroner Dr. James Cairns, centre director Dr. Ray Prime, and prosecutor Brian Gilkinson.
Cairns declined to comment on the results of forensic testing on the strand, citing the ongoing investigation.
Meanwhile, the undercover operation at Narcotics Anonymous — dubbed Project Jenna by investigators — has driven at least three recovering drug addicts besides Waudby out of the counselling group, according to the woman who was her NA sponsor.
"I was shocked, angry and disillusioned," said Waudby's sponsor, a professional woman and recovering drug addict.
"It's (police infiltrating meetings) never been an issue before, and I've never heard of it happening."
Narcotics Anonymous is modelled on Alcoholics Anonymous.
A spokesperson for Alcoholics Anonymous North America said he has never heard of undercover police officers planted in an AA meeting.
The Narcotics Anonymous Web page said the group uses "confidential self-disclosure" to help wean addicts from drugs.
"NA has only one mission: to provide an environment in which addicts can help one another stop using drugs and find a new way to live," it states.
Waudby said she was further shocked to read a newspaper report that the officer who posed as her friend for five months was honoured as the city's Police Officer of the Year for 1998, in a gala ceremony sponsored by the Toronto Board of Trade.
A police news release on the award stated:
"The officer maintained contact with the suspect every day, gaining her confidence, and a month later, the suspect confessed to the murder of her child."
After The Star questioned police about the operation, the Web site carrying the news release was altered this week to delete the text, "the suspect confessed to the murder of her child."
Smollet said the deletion was made because it would be "absolutely unfair" to Waudby to leave the impression that she had confessed to murdering her daughter.
Reports and transcripts of the undercover operation refer to Waudby repeatedly arguing that she was innocent and that she suspected the child's babysitter of the killing.
On Sept. 5, 1997 — the day Waudby received a copy of the coroner's report on Jenna's death — a police bugging device in the undercover officer's apartment recorded Waudby repeatedly stating she didn't beat her daughter.
Ironically, it also recorded Waudby saying that she thought she was going to be wrongly charged with murder.
Waudby: I have this funny feeling I'm going down for murder, eh.
Schlegel: What happened then?
Waudby: Wednesday morning?
Schlegel: Um hum.
Waudby: Got her up out of the crib. Cuddled up with her. Found that she was tired. Put her back to down and let her cry herself to sleep ...
Schlegel: (unintelligible) You didn't shake her?
Waudby: Nope.
On Sept. 7, 1997, Waudby was riding in the undercover officer's green Chevrolet Corsica, which had been bugged as well. Waudby complained that she thought people from her old drug-taking days were out to get her.
Waudby: (Expletive) man. I wish you were a cop. I wouldn't have any worries.
Schlegel: Sorry.
Waudby: Or are you one of them?
Schlegel: Can't do `er, sorry.
Waudby: (Laughing) Or are you one of the ...
(Talking at the same time — unintelligible.)
Schlegel: Fake I'm an addict (laughing). You never know.
Waudby: I don't know. (Person's name) works for them.
Schlegel: Well, there ya go.
Waudby: On drug squad nonetheless.
Schlegel: They may be able to hire me onto the drug squad.
Waudby: Hire you as an informant. You'd have to (unintelligible).
Schlegel: I don't think I'm into ratting, thank you.
Their final taped conversation was at 9:58 a.m. Sept. 17, 1997, when Schlegel called Waudby to tell her that Schlegel's sister had been critically injured in a car accident.
Schlegel sounded distressed, saying, "The best I can say is I'm going to call you when I get a chance, okay?"
The next day, Waudby was arrested for second-degree murder, and she saw the woman she believed was her friend at the Peterborough police station, as one of her arresting officers.
"I felt horrible." Waudby recalled. "I feel like the system violated me personally."
Waudby said she felt violated again Sept. 28, 1999, when police seized her psychiatric records from the Etobicoke office of Dr. Mark Ben-Aron.
The raid came three months after charges were dropped and focused on a psychiatric assessment that had been ordered by her lawyer before the charges were dropped.
Ben-Aron said in an interview that he protested to the officer who took the records that they were protected both by patient-doctor and lawyer-client privilege, since Ben-Aron had been retained by Waudby's lawyer.
"When police came in, I was distressed," Ben-Aron said.
"The issue was much greater than me. The issue here is in terms of the protection of the inherent rights of the individual."
The court order from a justice of the peace did not require the records to be sealed, but Ben-Aron sealed them anyway.
He said he can't help but worry about them.
"I worried that someone might unseal it and then reseal it," the psychiatrist said. "That's human nature."
Other counselling records from Waudby were seized on Feb. 7, 1997, from 4Cast, Four Counties Addiction Services Team Inc., where she had been getting one-on-one therapy at the same time she was attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings.
Waudby said she's still receiving counselling but would never attend a group session again.
She said she even has trouble opening up in one-on-one sessions, noting she balked when her current therapist asked her to put her thoughts down on paper.
She said she only hopes that the tiny hair or fibre tested finally points police away from her and toward her daughter's real killer.
"They had tunnel vision, and it was me and me alone who they saw in the tunnel."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
fucking pigs!
PETERBOROUGH — Brenda Waudby badly needed a friend, and the woman with the blonde, scraggly hair who sat next to her at her Narcotics Anonymous meeting seemed to fill the bill.
Waudby was trying to cope with the sudden death of her 21-month-old daughter, Jenna, who died just hours after Waudby dropped her off at a babysitter.
She was also fighting to shake a cocaine addiction, and she and her common-law husband were breaking up.
So Waudby desperately needed someone to confide in during the spring of 1997, and the woman who introduced herself at the meeting as Ramona Speigel seemed to need her, too.
"I felt sorry for her," Waudby recalled. "She was an addict. She was in the same boat as everybody else. She was genuine. She was a nice woman."
Waudby grew to value her as a trusted friend, close enough to bring to her mother's home and baby Jenna's grave.
It was not until five months later that Waudby discovered that her friend, who had attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings off and on during that time, wasn't Ramona Speigel at all.
She was really Maja Schlegel, a Toronto undercover officer sent to Narcotics Anonymous to gather information on her regarding Jenna's death.
Waudby found herself staring at Schlegel in disbelief as she was charged with second-degree murder.
She also found herself wondering how police could be allowed to infiltrate a closed-doors therapy group that she thought was confidential, and to confiscate counselling records.
"I just shook my head," Waudby recalled.
"She apologized to me. She said she was sorry that she had to do it."
A crown attorney threw out the charge against Waudby as unfounded before it reached trial, after reviewing medical reports indicating she was not with her daughter at the time the fatal injuries were inflicted.
Peterborough police Chief Terry McLaren declined to comment, saying the case is still under investigation.
Requests for interviews with Toronto police Chief Julian Fantino and Schlegel were referred to Staff Inspector Bruce Smollet, who said the undercover operation at Narcotics Anonymous would have been approved by Peterborough police, who headed the case.
Smollet said Toronto police have no written policy against undercover operations in counselling groups, and would not comment on whether they have infiltrated other Narcotics Anonymous or Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
"You've got to be really careful on this one," Smollet said.
"Maja ... didn't go into these groups looking into the groups themselves. She was in there as an undercover officer with the subject, so that the actual content of the group was not a concern of hers."
This winter, five years after Jenna's death, there was finally a break in the case.
The new evidence had nothing to do with Waudby and her counselling files.
It was a single dark, curly strand of hair or fibre — which was never tested or used as evidence — that fell into police hands when they removed it from the office of Toronto pathologist Dr. Charles Smith last December.
Yesterday, after the strand was examined at the Centre of Forensic Sciences in Toronto, the case was reviewed in Peterborough by a group that included a group that included McLaren, Ontario deputy chief coroner Dr. James Cairns, centre director Dr. Ray Prime, and prosecutor Brian Gilkinson.
Cairns declined to comment on the results of forensic testing on the strand, citing the ongoing investigation.
Meanwhile, the undercover operation at Narcotics Anonymous — dubbed Project Jenna by investigators — has driven at least three recovering drug addicts besides Waudby out of the counselling group, according to the woman who was her NA sponsor.
"I was shocked, angry and disillusioned," said Waudby's sponsor, a professional woman and recovering drug addict.
"It's (police infiltrating meetings) never been an issue before, and I've never heard of it happening."
Narcotics Anonymous is modelled on Alcoholics Anonymous.
A spokesperson for Alcoholics Anonymous North America said he has never heard of undercover police officers planted in an AA meeting.
The Narcotics Anonymous Web page said the group uses "confidential self-disclosure" to help wean addicts from drugs.
"NA has only one mission: to provide an environment in which addicts can help one another stop using drugs and find a new way to live," it states.
Waudby said she was further shocked to read a newspaper report that the officer who posed as her friend for five months was honoured as the city's Police Officer of the Year for 1998, in a gala ceremony sponsored by the Toronto Board of Trade.
A police news release on the award stated:
"The officer maintained contact with the suspect every day, gaining her confidence, and a month later, the suspect confessed to the murder of her child."
After The Star questioned police about the operation, the Web site carrying the news release was altered this week to delete the text, "the suspect confessed to the murder of her child."
Smollet said the deletion was made because it would be "absolutely unfair" to Waudby to leave the impression that she had confessed to murdering her daughter.
Reports and transcripts of the undercover operation refer to Waudby repeatedly arguing that she was innocent and that she suspected the child's babysitter of the killing.
On Sept. 5, 1997 — the day Waudby received a copy of the coroner's report on Jenna's death — a police bugging device in the undercover officer's apartment recorded Waudby repeatedly stating she didn't beat her daughter.
Ironically, it also recorded Waudby saying that she thought she was going to be wrongly charged with murder.
Waudby: I have this funny feeling I'm going down for murder, eh.
Schlegel: What happened then?
Waudby: Wednesday morning?
Schlegel: Um hum.
Waudby: Got her up out of the crib. Cuddled up with her. Found that she was tired. Put her back to down and let her cry herself to sleep ...
Schlegel: (unintelligible) You didn't shake her?
Waudby: Nope.
On Sept. 7, 1997, Waudby was riding in the undercover officer's green Chevrolet Corsica, which had been bugged as well. Waudby complained that she thought people from her old drug-taking days were out to get her.
Waudby: (Expletive) man. I wish you were a cop. I wouldn't have any worries.
Schlegel: Sorry.
Waudby: Or are you one of them?
Schlegel: Can't do `er, sorry.
Waudby: (Laughing) Or are you one of the ...
(Talking at the same time — unintelligible.)
Schlegel: Fake I'm an addict (laughing). You never know.
Waudby: I don't know. (Person's name) works for them.
Schlegel: Well, there ya go.
Waudby: On drug squad nonetheless.
Schlegel: They may be able to hire me onto the drug squad.
Waudby: Hire you as an informant. You'd have to (unintelligible).
Schlegel: I don't think I'm into ratting, thank you.
Their final taped conversation was at 9:58 a.m. Sept. 17, 1997, when Schlegel called Waudby to tell her that Schlegel's sister had been critically injured in a car accident.
Schlegel sounded distressed, saying, "The best I can say is I'm going to call you when I get a chance, okay?"
The next day, Waudby was arrested for second-degree murder, and she saw the woman she believed was her friend at the Peterborough police station, as one of her arresting officers.
"I felt horrible." Waudby recalled. "I feel like the system violated me personally."
Waudby said she felt violated again Sept. 28, 1999, when police seized her psychiatric records from the Etobicoke office of Dr. Mark Ben-Aron.
The raid came three months after charges were dropped and focused on a psychiatric assessment that had been ordered by her lawyer before the charges were dropped.
Ben-Aron said in an interview that he protested to the officer who took the records that they were protected both by patient-doctor and lawyer-client privilege, since Ben-Aron had been retained by Waudby's lawyer.
"When police came in, I was distressed," Ben-Aron said.
"The issue was much greater than me. The issue here is in terms of the protection of the inherent rights of the individual."
The court order from a justice of the peace did not require the records to be sealed, but Ben-Aron sealed them anyway.
He said he can't help but worry about them.
"I worried that someone might unseal it and then reseal it," the psychiatrist said. "That's human nature."
Other counselling records from Waudby were seized on Feb. 7, 1997, from 4Cast, Four Counties Addiction Services Team Inc., where she had been getting one-on-one therapy at the same time she was attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings.
Waudby said she's still receiving counselling but would never attend a group session again.
She said she even has trouble opening up in one-on-one sessions, noting she balked when her current therapist asked her to put her thoughts down on paper.
She said she only hopes that the tiny hair or fibre tested finally points police away from her and toward her daughter's real killer.
"They had tunnel vision, and it was me and me alone who they saw in the tunnel."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
fucking pigs!
