Key Opens Handcuffs At Trial

Found in search of suspect's home
Testimony continues in Lisa Posluns killing
Feb. 1, 2006. 01:00 AM
PETER SMALL
STAFF REPORTER


Police found five handcuff keys in the home of the cleaner accused of sexually assaulting and stabbing Yorkville realtor Lisa Posluns, a murder trial has heard.

The day Nelson DeJesus was arrested, police executed a search warrant at his Toronto residence and began searching for possible evidence, Det.-Const. Wade Knaap testified yesterday.

They found four handcuff keys in a small ornamental wooden wagon in the living room, the forensic investigator told DeJesus' murder trial yesterday.

The next day, police found one handcuff key in a jewellery box atop a dresser in a bedroom, Knaap told Crown prosecutor Paul McDermott

DeJesus, 36, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in Posluns' death.

The 38-year-old commercial real estate broker's body was found early Sunday, Nov. 3, 2002 with seven stab wounds to the torso and her throat slit in an obscure ground-floor equipment room in the building where she had an office on the fifth floor.

DeJesus had been a cleaner at the building.

McDermott and co-counsel Susan Orlando expect to call evidence showing that when DeJesus was arrested at gunpoint after a police chase near his Euclid Ave. home on March 24, 2003, he had on him a pair of handcuffs that contained Posluns' DNA.

The Crown believes he used those handcuffs to restrain Posluns after surprising her at her office on Nov. 2, 2002.

In Superior Court yesterday, McDermott asked Knaap to try to unlock the cuffs with one of the four keys found in the living room and the one found in the bedroom. Both worked. The keys are similar to police handcuff keys, Knaap testified.

On Feb. 5, 2004, the handcuffs that were found on DeJesus as well as another pair were submitted to the Centre of Forensic Sciences for testing, Knaap testified.

The origin of the second set of cuffs was not explained.