The Katherine Janeiro murder trial ended earlier this month with the accused, 61-year-old Robert MacQueen, being found not guilty in the young woman's stabbing death in her Barrie apartment 30 years ago.
Janeiro, mother to a young daughter, was found dead on Oct. 10, 1994 in her Dunlop Street West home, near Anne Street.
Janeiro's body was found lying on the floor, covered in blood from multiple stab wounds to her neck and chest. She'd been at a pair of downtown bars most of Sunday night and early Monday morning prior to her body being discovered. Her death may have been the result of a robbery, police said at the time.
Portrayed by both the Crown and the defence as someone who was a drug dealer, selling cocaine out of her apartment for the leader of a notorious biker gang, not much else was revealed about Janeiro’s life.
So, who was Katherine Janeiro?
Janeiro left home at age 16 and moved to Barrie. A year later, she gave birth to a daughter. About 10 months prior to her death, Janeiro had moved into the Dunlop Street apartment with her toddler, Dawn Nelson.
“I knew her when she was with her common-law husband, then she separated and was living alone in that apartment,” Julie Robles, a close friend of Janeiro’s in the 1990s, said following the trial.
Robles, who lived in Toronto at the time, said she would visit Janeiro in Barrie almost every month. Robles referred to her friend as 'Kathy'.
“Her parents would drive me up if they were picking up Dawn to babysit her for the weekend, because we went out to the bar or whatever. They were nice. They would take me up and bring me home,” Robles said.
According to Robles, Janeiro met her partner when she was 16, in Toronto.
“Then she got pregnant and he was living just down the street from me and my parents at the time. He seemed really nice,” she said.
Whenever Robles would visit Janeiro in Barrie, in the beginning, she would go to their house and stay there.
“He never came to the bar,” Robles said. “I don’t recall him ever coming to the bar — it was always me and Kathy and friends. So, I don’t know if that was a problem for him.”
Robles said young Dawn wasn’t there most of the time when she visited. She also said Janeiro was “unhappy" and had separated from her partner.
Robles said she never had any contact with him after Janeiro’s death.
“He never reached out and I never reached out to him," she added.
Janeiro’s parents, who have since passed away, were Portuguese and Robles' parents are Spanish.
“So her parents would come to my house after her death, or they would run into my parents at the grocery store," Robles said. "They would cry as to what happened."
Prior to her death, Robles said Janeiro was on social assistance and would receive her "baby bonus."
“She never worked. She didn’t sell that stuff (cocaine) until she lived in that apartment. And I only found out about it in May of 1994 when I went up that weekend,” she said, having visited Janeiro prior to the Thanksgiving long weekend when she was killed.
“Because I had never done anything of that sort, so for me, I kind of just always distanced myself,” said Robles. “We came home from the bar that night and they were going to do a couple lines (of cocaine). I just excused myself and went into Dawn’s room to go to bed. I heard her tell her friends ‘she doesn’t do any of that, she doesn’t touch drugs, she’s cool’ and just left it at that.”
Robles said she knew Janeiro had sold drugs a “couple of times” and that business was conducted in her apartment.
“It’s almost like she kind of hid that she was selling it, but it did come out eventually, between the two of us … I guess for some extra cash. She never really told me why she did it,” Robles added.
Robles said she remembers meeting MacQueen, the accused in the trial, briefly in May 1994.
“I only met him the one time, going to the bar, and that was pretty much it. She talked about him here and there, but it … kind of fizzled out.” she said of Janeiro’s romantic relationship with MacQueen.
Robles said she intended on spending time with Janeiro the weekend she was killed.
“I went up that weekend … on the Friday,” she said. “I had the day off from work and went up. She wasn’t home. There was one of those white message boards on her door and it said she had gone to Orillia.”
Robles assumed she was with a man named Doug, Janeiro’s boyfriend at the time of her death, “so I left, because it said she would be back on Sunday or something.”
While Robles was returning home to Toronto, Janeiro had called and left a message saying, “Oh, come back, I came back early.” But Robles said she decided to try to return to Barrie on a later weekend.
It was sometime in the early hours of Monday when Janeiro was killed.
“Her mom called me after they found out,” Robles said. “It was early Tuesday morning, definitely after 5 a.m., when I was woken up. Her mom called me screaming that ‘Kathy was dead, Kathy was dead’ and hung up on me.”
Robles said she tried calling back, but Janeiro’s mother wasn’t answering.
“Then she called and was crying, saying that she was dead. I really couldn’t get much from her at that point. I’m assuming the police were there at that point, I’m not 100 per cent sure,” Robles added.
“I was bawling. I couldn’t believe it … she seemed fine and she seemed happy (as) she was with this new person, so I was devastated,” she said.
Robles said she took her friend's death pretty hard, “especially in the days leading up to the funeral, which was very quick. It happened a few days after.”
Fast-forward almost 30 years to the day and Robles found herself sitting in a Barrie courtroom watching the murder trial unfold. For her, hearing details about her close friend during the trial brought memories rushing back.
“I knew most of it,” Robles said. “I knew about 85 per cent of what was told, with the selling of drugs and stuff. It’s just that she was portrayed like that's who she was, just a drug dealer, and that wasn’t true. That was later in those last few months of her life.
"I get it, the defence lawyer has a job to do, but it seemed like that was it, that was her life, which wasn’t true.”
As much as Janeiro partied at her young age, Robles described her friend as a “good mother” to her two-year-old.
“Kathy loved her. She was her pride and joy,” Robles said of Dawn. “We would do the odd day trip to Wasaga (Beach). I think I gave Dawn some pictures of that day (during the trial). I have pictures of them in that apartment together. She had her toys and she was fed, and she got up whenever Dawn needed something.”
Robles said she was “very nervous” of meeting Dawn at the Barrie courthouse during the trial.
“I hadn’t seen her in 30 years,” Robles said. “She was almost three when that happened. She was living with her grandparents and lived just down the street from me. So, when I went up there to see her, I wasn’t sure how she would react, if she would be happy or sad. It was very nerve-wracking.
"But she welcomed me with open arms. She was super polite and so composed. I’m proud to see how well she turned out, considering what she has had looming over her," Robles added.
During a lunch break in the trial one day, she and Dawn “went over the pictures, and we were just talking. I apologized for not being around for 30 years, because maybe she had questions that no one else could answer, and maybe I had them,” lamented Robles.
After the not-guilty verdict for MacQueen, Robles reached out to Janeiro’s daughter.
“I gave her her space, just in case,” Robles said. “She said she was just trying to let it sink in and try not to be too resentful. Again, very composed. It is extremely hard to see her go through that, going through and seeing everything that maybe she didn’t know, in detail, and then to have that outcome.”
When asked what Janeiro would think about her daughter in the present-day, dealing with the stress of such an ordeal, Robles was blunt.
“She would be super proud of her. Kathy was, and Dawn is, take-no-prisoner. She says what she feels, but Kathy was probably more outspoken than Dawn, but Dawn composes herself very well like Kathy used to," Robles said.
During the trial, Dawn Nelson stormed out of the courtroom in tears immediately after hearing the not-guilty verdict on Oct. 9.
“I was two at the time of her murder and it has been a lifetime that has been stolen from me and a lifetime that I will never be able to share with her,” she said in a written statement to BarrieToday about an hour after the verdict.
“To all the investigators and the Crown Attorney’s Office, I am grateful for your hard work, but I am disappointed and distraught by the verdict.” Nelson added.
BarrieToday reached out to Nelson for further comment for this story, but did not receive a reply before to publication of this story.
