A SCOTTISH author has penned a book in defence of a childhood friend who was convicted of murdering his former girlfriend in Canada three years ago.
JA Lang, known as Jimmy, has written an account of the trial of Andrew Watson, originally from Edinburgh, who was convicted last year at the age of 79 of murdering his 74-year-old ex-girlfriend Lisa Fredette in Peterborough, Ontario, in 2014.
Fredette was bludgeoned to death and her body has never been found. After a controversial trial – which Watson claimed was not fair due to media coverage – he was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to 25-years-to-life imprisonment.
Lang and Watson kept up a remarkable correspondence during all of the events surrounding the trial and in the new book, Rough Justice in Ontario, Lang excoriates the Canadian criminal justice system with claims from Watson about alleged beatings from cellmates, his time in segregation, and being denied access to his case.
Lang told the newspaper Peterborough This Week: “I felt compelled to convey his experiences while at the same time making Canadians more aware of the inept judicial system that denied Andy, and many, many others, a fair and speedy trial.”
Watson wrote to Lang in his first letter after his arrest on November 22, 2016: “I am treated exactly the same as the convicted criminals who share this prison.”
The arrest came two years after he was warned by a detective to stay away from Fredette, who then went missing. Her blood was later found on a shovel in Watson’s house.
Watson sacked his lawyer and ignored Lang’s plea to re-hire her, writing: “I just cannot see paying a lawyer a huge amount of money to get me convicted and sent to jail when I can get myself convicted and sent to jail and it will not cost me two red cents.”
He did eventually hire a lawyer, but at the trial last year the blood evidence in particular convinced the jury of his guilt.
He has still never stated the location of Fredette’s body, but there is speculation that she was dumped in a nearby river.
According to the reports in Peterborough This Week, after the trial Lang wrote in an email that he believed the verdict was correct, highlighting what he thought might have happened and Watson’s mistakes.
He wrote: “I feel that if, in fact, he was the one who actually killed her he may have initially confronted her in her driveway with the intention of simply talking to her.
“Apart from making the apparent mistake of disposing of the body, which he still denies, he made so many other mistakes over these past two-and-a-half years which might have been avoided had he been advised by a good defence lawyer from the point of his arrest.”
However, Lang still stands by Watson, who is currently appealing against the verdict.
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