Content warning: This story contains graphic details
Stacey Worsfold was so worried about her father on a July 2017 afternoon, that she filed a missing person’s report with the RCMP.
What followed was a days-long frantic search for her father, which culminated in the eventual discovery of his body in a rural area outside of Edmonton.
The Crown delivered their opening statement Wednesday with shocking alleged details in the first-degree murder trial of St. Albert resident Beryl Musila, 33, accused in the July 7, 2017 death of St. Albert senior Ronald William Worsfold, 75.
Musila currently has no lawyer and is self-representing for the six week-long trial, which is expected to see 50 witnesses.
Stacey Worsfold was the first witness in the trial in Justice Larry Ackerl’s courtroom at the Court of King’s Bench.
She detailed what got her worried enough to file a missing person report with the RCMP.
Days earlier Worsfold told his daughter his truck went missing, but as she was driving by his house around 11 a.m. on July 8, 2017, she noticed his rusty old blue Ford truck was parked back in the apartment lot.
Stacey Worsfold was curious, because she hadn’t heard it had been found, she testified. The daughter honked her horn, hoping her dad would lean out the window to see her, and then banged on the glass door to try to get her dad’s attention.
Instead, Musila came to the window and told her she and Worsfold had argued, and that he’d gone for a walk, Stacey Worsfold testified.
The daughter said she told Musila to get her stuff out of her dad’s apartment.
“I told her I wasn’t leaving until she was gone,” she said.
“She wouldn’t let me in the building — another tenant let me in the building,” Stacey Worsfold said.
“I banged on the door and said … I wanted into my dad’s apartment,” she said.
Musila refused, and said she was cleaning, Stacey Worsfold said.
“Ms. Musila would come to the window and yell out things at me, every ten or 15 minutes … like ‘I’m cleaning,’” she said.
At 1:30 p.m. Stacey Worsfold was standing in the parking lot, when Musila came out of the building.
“She had keys and was going to take my dad’s car. I said, ‘You’re not going to take my dad’s car,’” Stacey Worsfold testified.
Musila then ran back in the building, she said.
Then, someone showed up in a grey SUV and brought suitcases.
Another man brought a large black suitcase, went into the building and came back out and left immediately, Stacey Worsfold testified.
About twenty minutes later, an older man came and delivered a blue tote, then returned to his vehicle and left.
“I followed him into the apartment building … I advised him not to go into my dad’s suite,” Stacey Worsfold testified.
The man spoke to Musila and then exited the building, Stacey Worsfold testified.
Eventually, Musila had about 20 boxes as well as the tote, Stacey Worsfold said.
A taxi came, and the driver loaded her boxes into the taxi, she said.
“He brought out a blue tote that was extremely heavy,” Stacey Worsfold said, adding that the man had to rest it on the cement before hoisting it into the vehicle.
“In my mind, I was wondering what she was taking of my dad’s,” she said.
She saw Musila jump into the taxi van, which then turned around and left.
‘Weirdly cleaned’
Worsfold’s family members had arrived, and her son gained access to the apartment through a second floor patio door that wasn’t locked.
“At first we were kind of taken aback because the apartment was not like it normally is. We looked around the apartment assuming items were missing or stolen,” she said.
They then went to places he might have walked to on a hot day —Canadian Tire, Sobey’s, Dairy Queen. They reached out to the Petro-Canada gas station where he worked.
The daughter was assuming she had to wait 24 hours before reporting him missing, but she wasn’t leaving until he came home.
“I jumped up every time someone walked by, hoping it was my dad,” she said.
The apartment had been “weirdly cleaned,” she said. “Clean in one area, but not in another area.”
“This was out of character for my dad,” she said. “His car was there and he wasn’t.”
After calling the RCMP, a constable asked a few questions, and two officers came over.
They pointed out a red substance on the bottom of a safe that looked like blood.
They moved pillows on the floor and discovered that a piece of carpet had been cut out in front of the bed, Stacey Worsfold said.
There were brand new sheets on the bed —but no comforters, odd because he had several on the bed, she said.
The officers lifted up the mattress.
“There was just a huge blood stain on it,” Stacey Worsfold said.
Around then, the police asked her to go to the detachment.
Guilty plea for one charge
Last October, Musila originally pleaded not guilty to one count of first degree murder and one count of indecently interfering with Worsfold’s remains. But on Tuesday (April 25), she entered a guilty plea to the latter, while maintaining her not guilty plea to first the first degree murder charge.
After firing her sixth attorney in as many years, she will be self-represented in Edmonton’s Court of King’s Bench.
It’s not unheard of for defendants to self-represent. The province provides a guide for defendants who choose to exercise their constitutional right to represent themselves, and an amicus (friend of the court) has been appointed to ensure a fair trial.
After several successful requests for adjournment since her arrest related to change in counsel—and the intervention of the COVID pandemic itself—Musila’s most recent application to once again adjourn trial over counsel issues was dismissed last week by Justice Ackerl.
A jury of three men and nine women was selected on April 20.
