The Ontario Court of Appeal in Toronto on April 8, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Colin Perkel

By The Canadian Press

New trial ordered in 1989 murder of 10-year old Toronto girl

Nov 27, 2025 | 1:18 PM

OTTAWA — The Court of Appeal for Ontario has ordered a new trial for a man convicted of killing 10-year-old Darla Thurrott in 1989.

In a decision issued Thursday, the court concluded there was a miscarriage of justice in the case and set the conviction aside.

In 1990, Timothy Rees was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 15 years.

In 2023, the federal justice minister referred Rees’s conviction back to the Court of Appeal for Ontario after the “identification of new information.”

The appeal centred on a tape that the police had not disclosed that recorded a conversation between an officer and the landlord of the building, who lived in the same home as the victim.

INCLUSIVE WORK PROGRAM

New contract to help employ recycling depot workers facing job loss in Mission

10h ago

FATAL CRASH

1 dead after single-vehicle collision at Lougheed Highway Saturday

11h ago

Surrey Police Service say a nine-year-old has died after collision with large vehicle

12h ago

The Ontario court decision says the disclosure of that tape would have helped the defence make its case, pointing to the landlord as a third-party suspect.

It says that “there is a reasonable possibility that withholding the content of that tape from the appellant diminished the overall fairness of the trial process by denying him the ability to further advance his third-party suspect defence.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 27, 2025.

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press