Widow bristles at lawyer’s questions about texts, car sketch

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ST. THOMAS – As Boris Panovski’s murder case lingered in the criminal justice system, the anxieties and frustrations ate away at the widow of a slain Toronto-area businessperson.

Last November, she was told through a text message exchange with investigating officer OPP Staff Sgt. Phil Hordijk, that the retrial of the former high-flying dog trainer wouldn’t begin until spring 2024.

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Eva Willer Frigo, 56, the wife of Donato Frigo, 70, who was shot to death at the Hullett Provincial Wildlife Area on Sept 13, 2014, replied that she felt “stuck.”

“I wish Boris would die, but if he dies he’s considered innocent, and he wants to die when he’s found guilty,” she wrote back to the police officer.

“I said what?” she said while testifying at Panovski’s retrial on Tuesday when shown the message by defence lawyer Margaret Barnes during Willer Frigo’s second day in the witness box.

“And you meant it, right?” Barnes said.

Willer Frigo paused before she answered, but when she did, her exasperation with the trial and, indeed, the criminal justice process, was palpable.

“If your husband was taken from you, how would you feel?” she said to Barnes. “And your life put upside-down. And here we are 10 years later. How would you feel?”

Panovski, 80, of Scarborough has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in Frigo’s death, and not guilty to the attempted murder of Willer Frigo. The couple was shot while riding their horses and training a field dog at the Huron County conservation area north of Clinton almost a decade ago after the annual field dog trials.

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Panovski has already had one trial with a jury in Goderich in 2018 and a successful appeal for a retrial in 2021. The case was ordered moved to St. Thomas last year and Superior Court Justice Marc Garson is hearing the evidence without a jury.

He has already heard the Crown’s theory that Panovski had a long-standing grudge against Frigo, a field dog enthusiast and owner of a construction company, over a champion field dog that Frigo renamed Belfield Silver, after Panovski was arrested in Waynesboro, Ga., during prestigious field dog trials in 2005.

Before, the dog was called Panovski Silver. Panovski, who proudly boasted that he won two national championships with dogs he trained for wine magnate Gabe Magnotta, had sold the dog to Frigo before the incident in Georgia.

He had also trained dogs for Frigo years earlier. After Georgia, Panovski was shunned by the close-knit field dog community.

Garson has heard that within two days of the shooting, Panovski cancelled his car insurance and gym membership, bought luggage, booked a one-way flight to his native Macedonia and left the same day.

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However, the case also leans heavily on identification and Willer Frigo was the only eye-witness to the shooting. She knew Panovski when she was younger and training dogs with her father, but hadn’t seen him in years at the time of the shooting.

She testified saw a fit man dressed in camouflage and wearing a ball cap run in the bushes to a parked car, then watched the car pull up to her wounded husband and a person inside it shoot her husband again.

The lingering trauma from the events was obvious. Willer Frigo had her support dog with her during her testimony and broke down in tears several times. During one line of questioning, she agreed she and her husband had called the police before over trespassers at their Caledon farm.

She told Barnes she couldn’t remember if her husband kept a baseball bat for their protection at their Caledon farmhouse, but “I have one by the door.”

“I lost my husband before my eyes. I was shot. He was shot again. So I had no answers. I wasn’t allowed to have answers, I wasn’t allowed to have answers. I wasn’t allowed to talk about it in therapy. The only people I could talk to were the police,” Willer Frigo said.

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Barnes asked Willer Frigo, who married Frigo in 2011, if she knew of “any bad blood” between her husband and Panovski.

Willer Frigo paused. “I don’t know. I know that Boris lived at the farm prior (in 1996),” she said. “Obviously something must have happened for him not to be with Don anymore.”

In the days following the shooting, Willer Frigo, who was wounded in the face with buckshot, sat down with a police sketch artist and gave her best description from those frantic moments of the suspect and his car.

Barnes showed Willer Frigo a photo of a random 1998 Toyota Corolla and asked it looked like the sketch of what seemed to appear as a boxy car.

“That’s what we drew. Was it accurate? I don’t know. What’s the date of that? Three days after my husband was killed. Four days? I’m going to ask you something. You have been looking at me for two days. What am I wearing on my neck?” she asked Barnes.

Garson told Willer Frigo he appreciated how difficult testifying was, but rhetorical questions wouldn’t help him decide the case.

“I don’t know what I saw that day,” Willer Frigo told Barnes when she was asked again about the car and said she had been awake since the early hours of the day thinking about how much chrome was on the vehicle.

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Barnes said Willer Frigo got a good look at the man but the widow said, “I mean, I had seconds.”

Barnes suggested that Willer Frigo wants “justice for your husband” but noted in the early stages of the investigation she told the police “that you didn’t think the dogs or Boris had anything to do with this.

“And over time, in your numerous and many conversations with the police, you’re convinced they arrested the right person,” Barnes said. Willer Frigo agreed.

“Your concern now and even back then is that because you didn’t recognize that person to be Boris, that’s a reason why Boris might not be found guilty. Is that your state of mind?” Barnes asked.

Garson said the question didn’t have any evidentiary value and had Barnes move on.

The trial continues on Wednesday.

jsims@postmedia.com

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