Saskatoon police discovered the body of a woman in a culvert just 15 minutes after searching an area where her husband's truck had driven to a few days before.
David Woods is on trial charged with first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Dorothy.
On Jan. 2, 2012, police GPS tracked Woods' truck leaving Saskatoon on Highway 11, heading south and exiting onto a dirt road before heading back onto Highway 11 and turning around somewhere south of Blackstrap Lake and north of Hanley.
Sgt. David Hudson, the lead investigator in the case, testified Thursday that the route Woods' truck took around 4 p.m. struck him as strange.
So he said police decided to search the Blackstrap Lake Valley area two days later on Jan. 4 — 15 minutes into the search, they found a body in a culvert.
Hudson said the body was face-down, wrapped in polyurethane wrap and encased in ice, which had to be melted in order to remove the body from the culvert.
Pictures show green electrical tape and white nylon rope had been used to secure the plastic wrap around the body. Hudson testified the only way he knew the body was that of a woman because a painted toenail was visible.
Police then took the body to the hospital so that an autopsy could be performed. Hudson said he was instructed to ensure the body was lying face up in order to preserve any possible evidence of strangulation after a rope was observed inside plastic wrapping, he said.
"(It was) highly unusual at that time of year, at that time of day," Sgt. Hudson told the court about why Woods's route stuck out for him.
