On Thursday, November 27, 2025, the Ontario Court of Appeal quashed Tim Rees’s conviction for the 1989 murder of 10-year-old Darla Thurott and ordered a new trial.
Darla was strangled in her bed at her home in Etobicoke on March 16, 1989. She was found by her mother in the morning. Tim Rees, then 25 years old, who had visited Darla’s parents the evening before and stayed overnight, was convicted of the murder on September 15, 1990, and sentenced to life imprisonment. His appeal to the Court of Appeal was dismissed on June 16, 1994, and the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear his case. After 26 years in prison, he was released on parole in October 2016, and he remained on parole until today.
Innocence Canada adopted Mr. Rees’s case in 2016 and in 2018 filed an application alleging that he had been wrongly convicted with the then Minister of Justice, Jody Wilson-Raybould. The compelling feature of his application was an undisclosed tape-recorded statement of the landlord who lived in the same home and slept in the room immediately across the hall from Darla. The landlord, since deceased, had given a highly incriminating statement to the police hours after the murder but the defence knew nothing of it. The landlord was able to testify with impunity, and falsely. that he had never had a relationship with Darla and had not been in her bedroom on the night she was murdered.
If the missing tape recording had been disclosed in 1989, it is questionable whether Mr. Rees would ever have been charged, let alone convicted of Darla’s murder. In a remarkable twist, in 1989 it was one or more members of the Toronto Service who never revealed the existence of the missing tape-recording, and in 2016 it was members of the Toronto Police Homicide Cold Squad who found the missing tape-recording after they had been assigned to respond to Innocence Canada’s request for access to the original investigative files.
Tim Rees, who is now 62 years old, said:
“For the first time in 36 years, I do not carry the burden of the conviction for murdering Darla. I did not murder her, and today’s ruling of the Court of Appeal is a big relief. I feel like my life can start all over again.”
Innocence Canada counsel James Lockyer, who was one of the lawyers who argued the appeal, said today:
“The decision of the Court of Appeal is an important step for Tim Rees. He was a victim of extraordinary non-disclosure. He has always claimed his innocence and testified to his innocence at his trial and before the Court of Appeal. Fortunately, his parole officer believed he was wrongly convicted because, without that, he would likely not have been given parole in 2016 and would still be in prison today.”
Jerome Kennedy, also one of the lawyers who argued the appeal, said today:
“The Court of Appeal’s decision is a huge and welcome relief for Tim Rees. We at Innocence Canada are proud to have helped him through this ordeal of his wrongful conviction.”
For further information, contact:
James Lockyer at 416-518-7983 or jlockyer@lzzdefence.ca
Jerome Kennedy at 709-725-2966 or jkennedy@wrmmlaw.com