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(Updated)

Sixteen years after the murders of Bill Staples, and his daughter Rhonda Borelli — the trial of the man accused of killing them, has finally begun. 51-year old Mark Staples — Bill’s son, and Rhonda’s brother — faces two counts of first degree murder in a case that the crown says is all about money.

January 16th 1998, was the last time that anyone saw — or talked to Bill Staples and Rhonda Borelli. The pair disappeared from their Binbrook farm and although police suspected foul play from the beginning, it took six months, to find their bodies.

Today the jury of eight women and four men heard from a retired forensic police officer from the Hamilton Police Service. Terry Hill was called in, when the bodies were found in the back of Bill’s Sonoma pickup truck, at a Park ‘n Fly parking lot near Pearson airport.

Hill told the court that the bodies ” were in such a state”, investigators were afraid to lift them, in case they fell apart. Hill also went to the Staples farm on a number of occasions, looking for evidence in the case. On one occasion, he retrieved buttons, buckles, and zipper pulls from clothing items that had been burned in an incinerator on the farm. At another time, OPP investigators helped to recover a section of concrete from a shed on the farm that had human blood that had soaked into the cement.

Hill also testified that undercover surveillance officers following the accused, Mark Staples, and recovered two garbage bags from a bin at his bankrupt golf centre. In it they found the keys to Bill Staples safe deposit box.

The jury also heard from Bob Packham, a long time friend of Bill’s — and the eventual executor of his will. Packham told the jury again and again that Mark Staples needed money badly — and at one point he discovered a cheque missing from Bill’s cheque book made out for 20-thousand dollars to Mark’s struggling business — Mulligan’s Golf Centre.

However, in his cross examination of the first witness — police Sergeant Terry Hill — Defence Attorney Marco Sciarra managed to wring a number of concessions. Among them, police did not:

Check to see whether Mark Staples had ever tried to access the safety deposit box.

Did not find the murder weapon, or any DNA evidence in the truck, or at the farm linking the defendant to either crime scene.

Nor did they pursue a tip from a man who thought he saw Staples missing truck in the parking lot of the Hotel Constellation, across the street from where it was eventually discovered, even though the man gave a description of the vehicle, a partial licence plate number that matched, and even offered to travel to Orillia with police, to view the truck, after it was recovered.

Police received that tip two months after Bill and Rhonda disappeared. It would be another four months before the truck, and the bodies were found.

The cross examination of Bob Packham, will begin Tuesday.