DNA testing on 30-year-old bullet casings ordered in B.C. murder appeal

Bullet casings recovered from the scene of a B.C. woman’s murder 30 years ago will be retested for DNA after the province’s highest court ruled it is “in the interests of justice” to do so in support of an ongoing appeal.

Bullet casings recovered from the scene of a B.C. woman’s murder 30 years ago will be retested for DNA after the province’s highest court ruled it is “in the interests of justice” to do so in support of an ongoing appeal.

In 1994, Wanda Lee Martin was found dead in a Richmond apartment, fatally shot in front of her 18-month-old son. The murder weapon was never found, last week’s decision from the B.C. Court of Appeal notes. Shell casings were, however, recovered from the scene.

The three-judge panel has ordered those casings and the DNA swabbed from them to be handed over for further testing, allowing for the possibility that it could yield fresh evidence in the decades-old slaying for which Martin’s former partner says he was wrongfully convicted.

In 2001, William Wade Skiffington was found guilty of second-degree murder. That conviction was based on incriminating statements Skiffington made to an undercover officer during a so-called “Mr. Big” sting operation.

“The appellant says those statements were coerced and untrue,” the Sept. 24 decision from the B.C. appeal court says.

Skiffington spent nearly 18 years in prison after his conviction. After exhausting his options to challenge the conviction through the courts, Skiffington’s counsel appealed directly to the federal justice minister for a review of the case. He was granted bail in 2019 while that review was underway.

Skiffington has maintained his innocence and the decision releasing him from prison notes that he was denied parole “primarily” because he would not participate in programming that required him to admit guilt.