Records show call to Greg Fertuck's phone near gravel pit where estranged wife disappeared, court hears

A trail of electronic footprints left by Greg Fertuck's cellphone on the day his estranged wife disappeared leads to a tower within eyesight of the gravel pit where her truck and personal belongs were found, an expert testified at Fertuck's first-degree murder trial on Thursday.

The footprints, in the form of call records presented at the trial in a Saskatoon courtroom, show an incoming call to his phone number at 1:20 p.m. on Dec. 7, 2015 — the day Sheree Fertuck, Greg's wife, was last seen.

This call activated the Farrerdale tower, which rises over the gently rolling hills near the gravel pit east of Kenaston, Sask., according to a report on the records prepared by former Telus Mobility investigator Bruce Funk.

"The call lasts one minute and 20 seconds," he testified in Court of Queen's Bench Thursday.

Though Sheree Fertuck's body has never been found, her semi-truck was found at the gravel pit near Kenaston on Dec. 8, 2015 — the day after she was last seen.

The prosecution alleges that Greg shot Sheree twice during a confrontation at the pit, where she worked, and then moved her body to another location.

Greg Fertuck has pleaded not guilty to the charge of first-degree murder.

Funk testified at Fertuck's trial by video from Vancouver on Thursday. His 11-page report detailed calls made to and from Greg's phone between 8:34 a.m. CST on Dec. 7, 2015, and 12:08 p.m. CST the next day.

In a six-hour interrogation by RCMP in October 2017, Greg admitted to police that he had gone to the gravel pit on Dec. 7.

He said he'd taken a call on his phone near the gravel pit that day from an officer with the Workers' Compensation Board.

Funk said in his testimony the call records do not show specific addresses, intersections or businesses. Rather, the calls activate cell towers, and that allows analysts to extrapolate a phone's movements.

In Greg's case, the phone triggered towers in the neighbourhood where he lived, then near where he went for physiotherapy, then near the Kenaston gravel pit and then near Clavet, southeast of Saskatoon.

The sequence generally corresponds to the movements Fertuck told RCMP that he made in his 2017 interview.

In that interview, Fertuck at first strenuously denied he had been at the gravel pit on Dec. 7, but later admitted he was there after RCMP Staff Sgt. Charles Lerat confronted him with evidence that linked his cellphone to a tower near the pit.

Fertuck's trial, which began on Sept. 7, continues on Friday. Justice Richard Danyliuk is presiding over the judge-only trial.