In an experiment you’d expect to see on a CSI episode, the defense team for Robert Baltovich used two pig corpses as stand-ins for Elizabeth Bain’s missing body.
According to the prosecutors, Baltovich killed Bain on June 19th, hid her body under bushes in a park, and returned two days later to move her body, using her car, to a remote area about an hour’s drive north of the city.
In the experiment, the defense team brought two pigs to a guarded enclosure at the park, dressed them in shorts and t-shirts as they believe Elizabeth Bain had been dressed, slit their throats, and left them to decompose for the next two days. They were then placed in barrels for an hour to represent the time it would have taken to drive them to Lake Scugog and dispose of them.
The point of the experiment was to show that, under those circumstances, there would have been substantial evidence of decomposition in the car, specifically maggots and decomposition fluids. The entomologist who conducted the experiment reported that, “it is highly probable that hundreds of maggots from the body would have fallen off into the car.”
However, when Bain’s abandoned car was discovered three days after the murder, there were extensive blood stains on the back seat, but no maggots or other signs of decomposition.
Yesterday, after a re-trial, the prosecution dropped its case and Robert Baltovich was declared not guilty.
Elizabeth Bain’s body was never found.