The bizarre double homicide trial of Thomas Bomberry stuttered along again this week in a Hamilton courtroom when a major Crown witness had to be arrested and forced into court to testify.
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Kirsten Bomberry – at whose Six Nations home three violent homicides occurred in 2018 – gave extensive interviews to police just after the incident and successfully defended her restraint that she only helped hide evidence out of fear.
But since then, she has repeatedly insisted she doesn’t remember anything about the vicious killings.
“I don’t want any part of any of this,” Bomberry said from the witness stand on Wednesday after police brought her to court.
“They arrested me and made me come to court. It’s enough.”
Bomberry is one of the Crown’s major witnesses in the trial of her cousin Thomas Bomberry, 46.
Thomas Bomberry pleaded not guilty to two second-degree murder charges in the deaths of seven-month pregnant Melissa Trudi Miller and Alan Porter on Six Nations in 2018.
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The bodies of the Miller, Porter and Michael Jamieson were wrapped in blankets, tied with electrical cords, covered with a tent and left in a stolen pickup in a field near London.
Thomas Bomberry was not charged in Jamieson’s death.
Nicholas Shipman pleaded guilty in March 2022 to three counts of manslaughter and was sentenced to 22.5 years less time served.
His then-girlfriend, Jamie Beaver, pleaded guilty to the aggravated assault of Miller before the woman’s death and, in Nov. 2021, was given four years of time already served.
Charges of being an accessory to murder after the fact were eventually withdrawn against Roland Sturgeon and Vernon Shipman.
And Kirsten Bomberry – also charged as an accessory – was acquitted of accessory charges after convincing a court she had hidden some of the weapons used in the bloody crime because she was terrified of what Nicholas Shipman might do to her after he killed the others.
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According to an agreed set of facts assembled by police, there were multiple other people on Six Nations who knew about the deaths of Miller, Jamieson and Porter as Shipman and others worked to ditch their bodies, which weren’t discovered for about four days.
Thomas Bomberry’s case has been delayed repeatedly over the last few years.
Between the reluctance of Kirsten Bomberry to testify and Thomas Bomberry’s firing of lawyers, the case has languished, leaving the family members of Porter, Jamieson and Miller frustrated.
“It will never be over,” murmured one family member outside the courtroom.
One trial, with Kirsten Bomberry on the stand, stopped abruptly in 2022 when – Thomas Bomberry announced he wanted to retract some agreed-to evidence that he had already confirmed and then fired his lawyer.
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This week, Kirsten Bomberry didn’t show up despite a close police watch over the last few weeks, so Justice Andrew Goodman issued a material witness warrant for her arrest.
Court was adjourned again on Tuesday when Bomberry hadn’t been found but she was arrested soon afterwards.
In her cross-examination testimony, painfully extracted by defense lawyer Stephen White, who Bomberry cried at several times, she insisted she remembered nothing.
But White was able to get several points from her.
Bomberry said she remembered viciously beating up her cousin, Thomas Bomberry, a few days before the homicides. He was held at gunpoint, hit with a baseball bat and stabbed in the legs with a screwdriver.
White suggested Thomas Bomberry had been too injured to be at the drug-and-drinking party and may have been elsewhere on the property but his cousin wouldn’t confirm that idea.
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She said she didn’t believe Thomas Bomberry had anything to do with the deaths but added that she didn’t actually watch the killings because she was trying to protect another person at the gathering from watching the violence.
Bomberry denied it when White suggested that she might have implicated her cousin because she had still been angry at him due to their previous fight, and was trying to avoid being convicted herself/
Later Bomberry said she didn’t remember Thomas Bomberry hitting anyone with a lacrosse stick but she also was “not saying something didn’t happen”.
Kirsten Bomberry was released from custody and replaced on the stand Wednesday by Chelsea King, who had been her close friend at the time of the homicides.
King told the court about seeing Kirsten Bomberry burning flooring from her trailer in a firepit and how her friend had used King’s vehicle to transport a knife, a shotgun and a lacrosse stick to a hidden place on Highway 54.
The judge-only trial continues next week.
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