Friday was day three of the first degree murder trial of Neil George Snelson, 45.
The Kelowna man is accused of killing Jennifer Cusworth, then 19, in 1993.
Cusworth was found dead in a ditch; her body was found submerged in several inches of water.
On Friday, the jury learned that the young woman was strangled and severely beaten before she died.
Dr. Ronald Roy, a pathologist who examined Cusworth’s body, took the witness stand on Friday.
Roy examined Cusworth’s body after it was brought to the morgue at Kelowna General Hospital.
The doctor told the court that there were numerous signs of trauma on the teen’s body, especially on the head and neck area.
The injuries included lacerations, lesions on the face and deep bruises.
Roy told the court that the bruises were even found on the teen’s brain.
The doctor says that the severity of the injuries that Cusworth sustained were the result of significant force, most likely the result of being struck with a blunt object.
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He also described injuries that came from strangulation.
But Roy testified that it would have been those severe blows to the head that in the end killed the young woman.
The doctor told the court that Cusworth had a significant amount of alcohol in her system, saying she would have been quite intoxicated at the time of the murder.
Shortly before Snelson was arrested two years ago, he went to a Lutheran church on Lakeshore Drive where he and his family had been members for years.
The pastor, Lee Loveridge, testified on Friday that Snelson had come to him to have a talk.
Loveridge said Snelson confided in him that police were following him.
He explained that he thought it was in regards to a party he had attended in 1993.
He told the pastor how the police’s actions were causing stress of his marriage and that he had to explain to his wife Brandi why the police were monitoring his movements.
The pastor told the court that Snelson was embarrassed but admitted to him that he had sex with a woman the night of the house party but that he didn’t know who the woman was.
The pastor admitted to the jury that while it was never said it was “implied in our talk the woman he had sex with was Jennifer Cusworth. I recalled that was what I came away from that meeting with”.
The most emotional testimony on Friday came from Jennifer’s uncle Ed Morris.
Morris was the one who had driven Cusworth to the house party.
He described how happy his niece was to be going out that night, how he hugged her and told her he loved her before she got out of the vehicle.
Two days later, when Cusworth still had not come home, Morris and his wife went looking for answers, first at the house on Richter Street then at the police detachment where the couple learned the shocking news that the body of a young woman matching Cusworth’s description had been found.
Morris told the court how at that news, his wife fainted and fell out of her chair.
The trial will resume on Monday.
It is expected to last another three weeks.
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