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Accused admits lying during murder trial

Beryl Musila takes the stand in murder trial of a St. Albert senior.
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St. Albert resident Beryl Musila is cross-examined by Crown prosecutor John Schmidt on the stand in Justice Larry Ackerl's Court of King's Bench on Tuesday morning. Musila, who is representing herself, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of St. Albert senior Ron Worsfold. She has pleaded guilty to indecently interfering with Worsfold's remains. AMANDA MCROBERTS

Beryl Musila admitted to telling dozens of lies in multiple conflicting accounts following St. Albert senior Ronald Worsfold’s murder, all while knowing he was crumpled, dead, in a blue Rubbermaid tote she packed herself. 

On trial for first-degree murder, the self-defending St. Albert resident was her own first witness, taking the stand some six weeks after the trial began.  

Musila, now 34, said she lied to several police officers in three different encounters on July 9 and 10, 2017, when all the time she knew 75-year-old Ron Worsfold’s naked, bound, bludgeoned and stabbed body was in a large blue Rubbermaid tote. She knew he was in the tote because she put him there—but, she said, with some help. 

“Ms. Musila, you’d agree with me that throughout that weekend you lied many times about what happened to Ron, right?” Crown prosecutor John Schmidt asked. 

“About Ron’s whereabouts? Yes,” Musila admitted.  

Schmidt showed Musila a series of landline Caller ID photos detailing calls between Worsfold’s landline phone and her boyfriend Robert Rafters’ cell phone made after midnight July 8, 2017 in which she said she had been either doing cocaine with new acquaintance Tyler Fisher or asleep. 

The calls contradicted Musila’s timeline and her account that Rafters was with her in the apartment. 

“Absolutely not … there’s no way I made a call to Rafters at 4 a.m.” 

She acknowledged a later-morning call at 11:18 a.m. from Worsfold’s land line to Rafters’ cell. 

“I agree, that was me calling,” she said. 

In sworn testimony earlier in the trial, Rafters adamantly denied involvement in Worsfold’s murder or even being inside the apartment around that time, or knowing Worsfold’s body was in the tote.

Brutal Awakening

Around 11 a.m., Musila said, she was woken from hungover sleep. 

Musila testified she didn’t know Worsfold was dead until she was awakened by the sound of Worsfold’s daughter yelling up at apartment 205 at 75 Mission Avenue in St. Albert. 

“When I didn’t get a response, I turned on the light. There was blood on his hairline and a stab wound in his neck,” she said, adding that the duvet was pulled up over his body. 

“Your next response was to tell Ms. Worsfold that you didn’t know where Ron was … and you said Ron had gone for a walk,” Schmidt said. 

“That is correct,” she said. 

“So you walk into a bedroom where somebody has been violently killed, and your first reaction is to tell the daughter of that deceased person that you don’t know where they are,” Schmidt said. 

“Well, my reaction was panic. I didn’t know how to tell her … I didn’t know how to put those descriptions together,” she said. 

“You lied to her,” Schmidt said.  “Yeah, I did.”

‘You’re panicked then, right? Then you called Mr. Rafters.”  

“That is correct,” she said. 

Musila admitted to packing Ron Worfold into the tote—but with help, she said. 

She said she had no intention of transporting a dead human body in the tote, only meaning to pack her personal belongings in it.  

She verified points in the path she had traveled with the large blue tote containing Worsfold’s body, via taxi and pickup rides with friends from St. Albert and Edmonton to Morinville and a garage sale and finally a post-parole party in rural Parkland County. 

At the beginning of the trial in April, Musila pleaded guilty to indecently interfering with Worsfold’s remains.

'Cleaning the Scene'

Schmidt suggest Musila then started to clean up the crime scene. 

“The crime scene never started to get cleaned up,” she said, repeatedly telling the court neither she nor Rafters had “cleaned up” the grisly scene.  

“We never cleaned up a crime scene … I was packing my belongings,” she said. 

She said she wasn’t the one who put manacles on Worsfold’s wrists. 

“I used duct tape on his ankles,” she said. 

“I’m going to suggest to you that removing a body from a bed and removing the bloody blanket is part of cleaning up a crime scene,” Schmidt said. 

“Okay. I mean, that makes sense,” she said. “That was not what I was thinking when I was covering him with a blanket.” 

Schmidt asked if she had his dignity in mind. 

“That’s where my mind was at,” she replied. 

“Was your mind thinking of giving the body some dignity when you dumped it into the tote in the first place?” he queried.  

Musila said neither she nor Rafters packed up the bloody pillows, bloody sheets, bloody clothing that ended up at the makeshift dumpsite in rural Parkland County along with the duct-taped blue tote containing Worsfold’s body. 

She said she wasn’t the one who flipped over the bloody mattress, but she did admit to putting crisp new sheets on the bed after the bloody mattress was flipped. 

“I would suggest that was also an act to help clean up a crime scene,” Schmidt pressed. 

“Your evidence is … you did not put those bloody things into your bins and boxes,” he said. 

“That is my evidence,” she said. 

“And those bloody sheets and pillows, bloody towels and bloody clothing, your evidence is those things were removed from Apartment 205 before you woke up and discovered that Ronald Worsfold was dead?” Schmidt asked. 

“That is my evidence,” Musila said, grabbing a black Bible from the stand beside her and waving it.

Schmidt reminded Musila that on July 10, 2017, she had told Inspector Heidi Ravenhill that she had been told to chop up Worsfold’s body and put the pieces into a small black suitcase that had been brought over while she was packing. 

“Rob had told you to chop up Ron’s body and put it in there?” he asked.  

“Yes, that was a statement that I made, and I was rambling on, but that was not (true),” she said.

The courtroom watched video of Musila getting out of a taxi van at the Morinville Plaza Hotel, dragging the tote containing the 128-pound Worsfold out the taxi’s side door, where it slid to the ground as she scooted it out of the way. 

“This is a man that you have testified was a good friend of yours, right?” Schmidt asked. 

“Yes,” she said.  

“Somebody that you always wanted to have in your life, right?”  

“Yes,” she said.  

“Somebody who was nothing but generous to you?”  

“Yes.”  

Somebody who had taken you in when you were on hard times? 

“Yes.”  

“On your evidence, you say you saw this man in the bedroom, who had been killed by somebody who was not you, and this man who was a friend who had been nothing but kind to you. You put him into that bin, moved him into this taxicab and dragged his body across the parking lot, right”  “That is correct,” she said. 

“And you left that body in the 30-degree July heat, right?” Schmidt asked. 

“Yes, that was the temperature,” she said quietly. 

Conspiracy in the making

Musila told Schmidt some of the items shown in the periphery of the July 8, 2017 hotel video had been switched out, replacing her containers of clothes, although she hadn’t noticed it at the time.  

“A black suitcase magically appeared from out of nowhere,” she said. 

Previous statements she made about Worsfold being violent, abusive, and manacling her to the bedpost for hours when he was at work were lies, Musila said. 

In her sworn testimony before the jury, Musila said she and Worsfold were being stalked by someone violent. 

“Someone hated Ronald Worsfold and myself. But I never imagined things would come down to a murder,” she said. 

In the days leading up Worsfold’s murder, she said, the two platonic friends lived in constant stress and worry, despite police involvement, she said. She showed the jury security footage of them moving items she said made them targets to a storage company. 

“Despite our efforts, the harassment continued and the tension mounted … The person responsible for Ronald Worsfold’s murder took careful and involved planned steps to make sure I took the fall for Ronald Worsfold’s murder,” she said.

Musila told the jury she noticed someone leaving, running from the hallway of Worsfold’s apartment, and that she ran after them, leaving shoes and keys behind, because she thought she recognized them, and she wanted a rash of break-and-enters to stop. 

Musila said Worsfold took her to Source Adult store in Edmonton on the evening before his murder, and paid for her purchases because she needed something for herself. 

“I was going through a difficult time … where I was struggling with self-esteem,” Musila said.

As to statements confessing to murdering him that were made following her July 9, 2017 arrest, Musila said, “I didn’t fully understand the circumstances surrounding Ronald Worsfold’s death.” 

She told the jury her  evidence would show she was” set up” for Worsfold’s murder and that she “walked blindly into that trap.” 

“I ask you not to disregard the absence of evidence. You must ask yourself why the evidence from the murder scene was not forensically tested … Do not be content if the puzzle pieces do not fit together. I ask you to try to find the pieces until you exhaust every avenue,” she said.  

The lengthy trial is expected to wrap up next week. 

 Updates will be published online at stalbertgazette.com

 

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