'My life is going to change,' accused murderer allegedly tells friend a day after Bay Roberts homicide

One minute, she was home in Conception Bay North in the bathtub; the next, three friends — who, unbeknownst to her, would soon become the subjects of a major police manhunt  — were reportedly at her door with pizza and beer, inviting her to a cabin for the night. 

It was the evening of Sept. 30, 2204, and the woman had recently returned from a trip to Salmon Cove to switch out the tires on her vehicle — a task she said Matthew Kavanagh was supposed to help her with the previous day but didn’t show up.

As she ran some errands, Kavanagh met her, giving her gas money as a consolation and saying he’d stop by later. 

That night, he came to her place with Terry Cole and Stephanie Noftall, two pizzas and some drinks, asking if she wanted to go to a family member’s cabin outside Clarenville. The woman packed some clothes in a reusable shopping bag and left with them in the Chevy Cruze they had arrived in. 

When the vehicle broke down on the Trans-Canada Highway, they called a cab to take them the rest of the way. 

Testifying in a St. John’s courtroom Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026, the woman said the mood and conversation during the ride out of town were lighthearted.

Over the next three days at the cabin, however, it grew more serious as they searched for a way to get back home. There was a lot of sleeping, she said, and Cole and Noftall, both opioid users, were sick with withdrawal. 

Prosecutor Colin Sheppard asked her if she remembered any specific conversation at the cabin. 

Cole, she said, commented at one point that “his life was going to change,” and referred to something he’d witnessed involving a terrified man.

Noftall, she said, told her that someone named Mike had explicitly threatened her and her child. 

Kavanagh asked Cole to go find a vehicle they could borrow to drive home to the Carbonear area. 

Cole left and returned in a four-seater side-by-side. 

“He was large as life,” the woman testified. “He had the music pumping and he was smiling.” 

They all got in the off-road vehicle, with Kavanagh taking the wheel, she said, not bothering to tidy up the cabin or take any of their belongings with them. 

They made the trek home, stopping in a store for cigarettes and alcohol along the way.  

After that day, the woman said she never saw Cole, Kavanagh or Noftall again until a year later, when she testified at their preliminary hearing in a Harbour Grace courtroom. 

The woman was the 16th witness to testify for the Crown at the trio’s trial. They have each pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder and committing an indignity to a human body in connection with the death of 42-year-old Michael Filler. 

Fillier’s remains were found inside a burning pickup on a dirt road in Bay Roberts in the early morning hours of Sept. 30, 2024, after he was captured on CCTV at a nearby gas station. 

An autopsy revealed he was strangled to death before the truck was set on fire. 

The Crown alleges Cole, Kavanagh and Noftall were with Fillier at the gas station and accompanied him to the spot where his body was later found, fleeing in a Honda Civic that Kavanagh later traded for a Chevy Cruze. 

Over the past three days, Sheppard and fellow prosecutor Alex Marshall have called on witnesses to piece together the activities of Fillier and the three accused in the days before and after the homicide. 

On Wednesday, Fillier’s longtime best friend — his roommate in Spaniard’s Bay, and owner of the pickup — told the court he has been sober for a year, but he and Fillier had been using crack cocaine heavily on Sept. 29, 2024.

Fillier had recently started dating Noftall and wanted to go look for her, since she wasn’t returning his calls, he said. 

Cole was Noftall’s ex and wasn’t on good terms with Fillier, the man said. He told the court he had heard the two men threatening each other on the phone and assumed one day they’d come to blows. 

The man and Fillier drove around and finally reached Noftall by Facebook Messenger, asking to pick her up. At first, she told them she couldn’t: she said she had bumped into her family at church and gone home with them and couldn’t leave. She later agreed for them to pick her up near the house. 

The man testified Fillier then dropped him off with another friend and left with Noftall in the truck, intending to spend the night with her at home. 

The man never saw Fillier, Noftall, nor his pickup again. 

Noftall’s mother also testified, saying she wasn’t a church-goer and hadn’t spoken to her daughter in a couple of weeks when she got a text from her at 2:24 a.m. on Sept. 30. 

“Hey Mother, can you do me a big favour? If anyone messages you and asks if I’m at your place, can you tell them that I am and that I don’t want to bothered?” the message read. 

The woman said she believed Noftall was living at the time with her boyfriend of three years: Cole.

Noftall’s mother said she personally didn’t get along with Cole, suspecting he was physically abusive towards her daughter. 

Another man, escorted by sheriffs into the courtroom, since he is currently serving a three-year jail sentence for break-ins and theft in the Conception Bay North area, testified he had been making money buying and selling vehicles in the fall of 2024. He gave three statements to police after Fillier’s death, at first telling them Honda Civics were hard to come by and he hadn’t had one in a month, then saying Kavanagh had traded him a “squeaky clean” Civic Sept. 30 for a Chevy Cruze. 

He also told the court he had seen Cole — with whom he didn’t get along — Kavanagh, Noftall and another woman on a side-by-side days later. 

Defence lawyers — Jason Edwards and Courtney Mills for Cole, Stephen Orr and Iain Hollett for Kavanagh, and Jon Noonan and Trevor Murphy for Noftall — have cross-examined most of the witnesses, pointing out discrepancies between their statements to police and their testimony in court.  

At least three of the witnesses, including a woman who testified she saw Kavanagh pick Cole up the night before the homicide, recanted parts of their police statement on cross-examination, or acknowledged some of their memories could be inaccurate due to their substance abuse or other issues.

The trial continues Friday, Oct. 23, with testimony from four police officers involved in the accused’s arrest. 

Proceedings are scheduled to last for up to a month.