Detective testifies widow ‘potential target’ after husband killed

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ST. THOMAS – Once the police zeroed in on Boris Panovski as a main suspect, they turned their minds to making sure the widow of a man slain at a Huron County wildlife preserve was safe.

During a long day of defence cross-examination, OPP Staff Sgt. Phil Hordijk, who was the lead investigator in the decade-old homicide, said he took steps to protect Eva Willer Frigo, 56, who was wounded in the ambush.

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“I took steps to ensure she was safe because I believe she was a potential target,” he said under questioning by Panovski’s defence lawyer Margaret Barnes.

Panovski, 80, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the shooting death of Toronto-area businessperson Donato Frigo, 70, on Sept. 13, 2014, at the Hullett provincial wildlife area, north of Clinton.

Frigo and his wife were on horseback when they were both shot. Willer Frigo was able to ride away to safety. She turned back to try to identify the shooter and watched as a car drove up to her husband, who was lying along the gravel road.

She saw a gun appear through the passenger window and Frigo was shot again.

The Crown’s theory is Panovski, once a highly successful dog breeder, had a longstanding grudge against Frigo over a champion dog named Panovski Silver that Frigo renamed Belfield Silver.

Panovski already had one trial in Goderich in 2018. He successfully appealed the jury’s verdict in 2021 and a retrial was ordered moved to St. Thomas a year ago. Just days before an Elgin County jury was to be picked, Panovski opted to have the case heard by Superior Court Justice Marc Garson alone.

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The retrial is entering its eighth week and the Crown has yet to close its case. The case has lurched along with some witnesses trying to jog foggy memories about what happened 10 years ago.

Hordijk returned to the witness box on Wednesday after the trial took a day off Tuesday. He began his testimony last week.

Barnes has been focusing on the OPP’s investigative practices and suggesting investigators may have had tunnel vision once they had Panovski on their radar. Panvovski wasn’t considered a suspect until four days after the shooting, and by then he had left Canada for Macedonia.

“By the end of Sept. 17, 2014, you were convinced that Boris Panovski was the guilty party,” Barnes said to Hordijk.

“I had reasonable grounds to believe that he was, yes,” Hordijk said.

“Based on what you knew about what happened on Sept. 13, 2014, Eva Willer Frigo was a target?” Barnes said.

“I believed she was a target, yes,” he said.

Barnes also has been pointing out the frailties of Willer Frigo’s initial description of the shooter. She was the only eye witness and she described the shooter as fit and in his 40s.

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Hordijk said Willer Frigo’s description was “consistent” with Panovski in terms of the camouflage clothing, his height, facial features and his gait. He used those descriptors when the police applied for a search warrant of Panovski’s Scarborough apartment and vehicles during the first week of the investigation.

Barnes pointed out Panovski was 70, not 40, at the time of the shooting.

“Mr. Panovski is not 40, but he was very fit,” Hordijk said.

The defence cross-examination of Hordijk continues on Thursday.

jsims@postmedia.com

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