Carol Taylor is a Canadian sunny lady with a strong humanity. I met her online because of a painting spotted on the Facebook page of our common friend, the writer Beth Powning. In the past I read the book by Beth, The Hatbox Letters and, I fell in love for her writing.
Beth posted a beautiful, impressive painting made by Carol. It was Carol's mother; I would have discovered that she passed away two years ago.
"A lady happy as a wife and mother, quilter and knitter for the community" said me later Carol.
Finding the painting impressively beauty I contacted her. I didn't imagine the enthusiasm Carol would have put in our knowledge. She asked me where and how I knew Beth and Peter and I told her I was a reader passionate of her books.
Carol told me that she is a passionate of Italy. Unfortunately she said me, they had deleted the local art exhibit where the painting of her mother would have been exposed for Covid-19 reasons.
We were in march when the italian outbreak the most severe one in the entire Europe.
Carol told me in our conversations that she won, when little, in grade 11, a prize for poetry. Not only. She was encouraged to continue in her writings by her english teacher although she wanted to be an artist, using her hands for portraying reality.
She did it, but as she added "Still making art but venturing into words. Making art that contained words."
Carol also told me that, she won another prize: a 6th prize in mix media at the Florence Biennale because someone told to someone else that she had written about a trip she attended to Florence, a city Carol adores and visited last year for the second time.
She jokes: "A friend said me I am not clear when I write; I didn't imagine I would have won a prize at all!"
After this first and short conversation, Carol encouraged me of contacting her when I would have wanted because always online for writing (her husband is a columnist for a local newsmagazine), there was a long interruption.
I started to follow compulsively news about Covid-19 I think as everyone.
One day, months later, I thought that it was again time to re-contact Carol. She told me that there was a new art exhibit this time real and ready to be seen; it was about another work she did at long: I couldn't believe it, but Carol was and still is a sketcher in very famous Canadian trials of her territory, her Canadian city Saint John.
Following the trials of Jimmy "Whitey" Bulger, Tsarnaev (Boston Marathon Bombings), speaking about Boston, I started to consider the work done by sketchers in a trial absolutely beauty: sketchers are characters unknown in Italy but I have found always beautiful this work; being in contact, in direct contact with one of them amazing.
They are creative people and they live more than anyone else, maybe just like reporters do, a trial, because they are in grade of capturing facial expressions that woulde be left alone in opposite case, developing slowly or pretty rapidly an idea of what the story is about, moods of people, capturing sensations with rapidity.
Carol wrote also a book telling to her own readers the most important criminal cases she followed, she told me all excited. I said her I am a book reviewer and I would have been happy to review her book, if she would have appreciated it.
She sent me her book immediately, of course adding in the envelope several drawings and making the arrival of the copy a precious gift! In the dedication Carol wrote that this one is the first copy sent to Italy! Let's hope that other ones will be curious, in our country to discover her works!
The title of this captivating book with a wonderful smell! :-) I love smelling books, no sure you, and format is Capturing
Crime. Written with Greg Marquis, Roslyn Rosenfeld and Connell Smith the title couldn't be more appreciated and choosed well!
Carol, in this activity, put all herself. Being a compassionate lady she will judge the various cases she worked in, like a mother, an artist, a person, a woman.
At first, before that the government cutback fundings for trial sketchers, she worked pretty intensely and heavily; reading one of her typical day meant like to read the story of a hurricane lady, divided between courts, TV stations, family, meals, children...
Carol attended in 1959-1961 Saint John Vocational School in Saint John, the city where she would have worked mostly. A man, Ted Campbell who had attended the Chicago Art Student League taught her how to draw what was "in front of her."
So, later, thanks to these lessons she made a living working as a commercial artists at the Evening Times Global Telegraph-Journal, as fashion illustrator and later as a court sketcher. The major Canadian media CBC, CTV, Global Canadian Press and the Telegraph-Journal have called her over the past thirty years.
Sketches are important in Canadian trials because cameras are not admitted and so the mark of the passage of a trial, sentences apart, and journalistic work apart, are these sketches portraying judges, criminals, attorneys and so on.
In the 80s Carol covered 48 trials; in the 90s 33 more, and only with the advent of 2000s and cutbacks her presence less and less requested. Just in rare cases Carol attends trials at the moment; where there is more interest, where cases are bigger, but sure, the present is not anymore like the past.
In the book Carol signals me that on January 1989 for the first time a video was shown in the Hampton Courthouse.
Carol tells also the various differences between the several courthouses where she worked with and in. She preferred of course the largest ones; some were pretty littles and intimate for using this expression and her work wasn't simple.
Sketching means rapidity because that person won't stay sat in that place all the time; a sketch is not a painting where the person is in pose.
Cases followed by Carol have been the most diversified one. A case interested Richard Hatfield in 1985 an important politician. They found him with some marijuana and at that time there wasn't any kind of legalization of the substance. There was a big trial, the news was lived scandalistically. This politician, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of New Brunswick loved and appreciated and in love for art became a sort of devil for the community and at the end although he fought for being re-elected, he couldn't make it anymore. He died also pretty soon.
Not only: once the trial was over Hatfield asked to Carol one of her sketches! He was a man with sense of humor and art in his heart, this is for sure. Carol added that he financed a lot of artistic initiatives and after all, writes Carol, marijuana was and is largely used by everyone also by politicians, etc.
So...
Noel Michael Winters and Paul Haines Trials 1984. They were terrible criminals. Not only Winters killed several people but dismembered their bodies. It was an ugly story. People involved thought that if they didn't cooperate with him, they could have been killed.
Allan Legere Tood Metchett and Scott Curtis Murder Trial 1987 was another strong case.
Legere was a character with a complicated and distorted personality. A sort of doctor Jekyl and Mr. Hyde; not only; from his more tender age he was a little criminal, delevoping the art of being a dishonest person pretty soon.
The trial is about the murder of a man in his 60s left with broken face bones, strangled and the wife, beaten, sexually abused and left for dead. But she survived.
Legere de facto became later a sort of celebrity murderer.
The case of Anthony Romeo 1988 the one of a disturbing man that killed just because thought mentally that the man in front of him was a monster able to alter his future plans.
The Colombian Drug Smuggling Prosecution 1989 was sensational for the presence of security guards considering the topic of the case. Cocaine became always more important for international criminals like Pablo Escobar. At that time cocaine was only for rich people, and arrived in a weekly base in Canada with the complicity of many people inside the system. Just few drug was intercepted. A dirty job this one. Douglas Jaworski a pilot, involved in the cartel of medelin decided to collaborate with RCMP with a plan. He asked to being placed in the witness protection program, helping later to set up the operation. Many people were arrested, including, of course colombian pilots.
Remember Legere? We meet him again. With, for the first time, the use of the DNA for sorting out the problem.
In a way or in another Legere, convicted of murder in 1987, brought to Moncton for a medical appointment, escaped away.
The following months an escalation of violence interested the region of Miramichi but it was only when a priest of the catholic church in Chatham Head, Father James V.Smith was killed with a knife that the police men didn't have any doubts: this one was a work done by Allan Legere. It is an amazing tale the one of the capture of Legere. Later he was accused of the murder of Annie Flam, Linda and Donna Daughney and Father Smith.
Samantha Daw Toole, 6 years was found dead on the banks of the Saint John's river. Evidences revealed that she was also sexually assaulted before to be killed. The family of this kid was incredibly complicated, with a domestic existence close to the one of a nightmare; the couple was dysfunctional, and soon sunspects started to take a terrible shape: the one of George Pitt, the companion of the mother of Samantha. The trial in this case was celebrated in 11 days in 1994. Notices were sent to more than 80 jurors but just 30 and something showed up at the Saint John County Courthouse on Sydney Street.
The prosecutor was James McAvity assisted by Tony Allman the leader prosecutor of the Legere prosecution.
You will find other trials explained in words and sketches in the book.
This book is beautiful for everyone, to my point of view. For understanding the system, trials, if you have curiosity for murders and people who work behind as Carol Tyler does for many decades, giving a look at criminals, judges, people attending the trial; if you love art, sketches, drawings.
Personally at first I was a bit "scared" because I personally didn't know Canada as well as I know the USA; it is a country more reserved; same story for their most important trials and judiciary cases; I didn't have any clue of them.
I found that the warm approach used by Carol, the complete full-immersion in every trial she was part in, using words and sketches, the familiar, colloquial approach made me feel like at home.
New World Publishing is the publishing house that released this book; elegant and important book,you'll adore it!
Highly recommended for sure!
I thank Carol for this beautiful book!
Anna Maria Polidori
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