Murder trial continues with testimony from Bay Roberts store clerk – one of the last people to see Michael Fillier alive

The early morning hours of Sept. 30, 2024 were apparently unusually busy at the Shell gas station and attached convenience store in Bay Roberts.

The manager, a young woman, arrived in the dark to open the L.T. Stick Drive business, turning on the gas pumps, switching on the lights and booting up the computer system to start the day at 5 a.m.

In the first 10 minutes of the store opening, she had already served a half-dozen customers.

By 6 a.m., the gas station pumps saw a nearly steady stream of customers.

One of those customers was Michael Fillier, and the woman is believed to be among the last people to ever see him alive.

She testified in the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador in St. John’s Tuesday, Oct. 20, as a Crown witness at the trial of Terry Cole, Matthew Kavanagh and Stephanie Noftall.

Cole, Kavanagh and Noftall have each pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and committing an indignity to a human body in connection with the death of Fillier, 42, whose remains were found in a burning truck on a dirt road in Bay Roberts, minutes after his vehicle was captured on CCTV cameras leaving the gas station parking lot.

An autopsy revealed he had been strangled to death before the fire.

The silent CCTV footage — hours of it, taken from various angles inside and outside the front of the store and attached Tim Horton’s restaurant — was shown to the jury Tuesday before the former store manager testified at the end of the day.

She remembered serving Fillier, who was captured on video going into the store at 5:47 a.m., and told the court he had purchased gas, snacks and dog food.

She couldn’t recall serving two other customers when the Crown showed her video of them in the store at 6:53 a.m.

The woman said it was around 7 or 7:30 that morning and barely light out when she noticed gray clouds in the sky outside and wondered if it might rain. She said a customer later told her it was smoke from a burning truck found nearby, on Country Road.

In the CCTV footage prosecutors played in court, Fillier is seen arriving at the gas station in a blue Chevrolet Colorado, pumping gas, then heading inside the store. When he returns to the truck, he circles around the gas pumps and parks at the far end of the parking lot, staying there for about an hour.

Eventually, a gray car appears to park alongside him, and two people get out and get into the truck.

Later, the truck and car are seen leaving the parking lot together.

Prosecutor Colin Sheppard focused on video of a woman walking across the far end of the lot and entering the Tim Horton’s restaurant with a blue backpack, bypassing the customer lineup to head towards the washrooms. She emerges about five minutes later and heads back towards the parking lot.

RCMP Const. Kylea Greentree took the witness stand as the officer who collected the CCTV evidence. When cross-examined by Iain Hollett, one of Kavanagh’s lawyers, Greentree said she was unable to comment on an alleged 46-minute time stamp discrepancy between two of the videos.

The trial will continue Wednesday morning. The next witness expected to testify is Justin King, a Western Bay man currently in jail for a series of break-ins and thefts in Conception Bay North, who allegedly traded vehicles with Kavanagh the day Fillier was killed.