David Milgaard, who spent one-third of his life in prison after being wrongfully convicted of rape and murder, has died at age 69..He died in a Calgary hospital this weekend, a source confirmed to the CBC..The cause of death is unknown..In 1969, then-16-year-old Milgaard who lived in Winnipeg at the time, was charged with first-degree murder in the sex slaying of Gail Miller, a 21-year-old Australian nursing assistant working in Saskatoon..He was convicted at age 17 and spent 23 years in prison..His wrongful conviction has been described as one of the worst miscarriages of justice in Canadian history..For years Milgaard’s lawyers had maintained police involved in the case had the “worst kind of tunnel vision.”.Joyce Milgaard, his mother who died in 2020, spent two decades on a tireless crusade fighting to prove his innocence and have him released from prison..He was released in 1992, but it took five more years before DNA evidence linked a notorious rapist to the crime..Milgaard’s conviction was tossed by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1997 after DNA tests proved semen found at the crime scene wasn’t a match..Larry Fisher was eventually convicted and sentenced to life in prison where he died in 2015. .Miller was raped, stabbed to death, and left in a snowbank in Saskatoon on January 31, 1969..That morning, Milgaard and two friends arrived in Saskatoon en route from Regina to Calgary, stopped at the home of a friend Albert Cadrain, then continued their trip..Cadrain later contacted police, claiming Milgaard acted “suspiciously” and had blood stains on his clothing..Milgaard and his travelling companions Ron Wilson and Nichol John all maintained that he was innocent..John later changed her statement and told police she saw Milgaard stab Miller..Wilson later recanted his second statement to police linking Milgaard to the crime. He said he was coming down from a drug high at the time..Fisher later confessed to six rapes, four in the area where Miller was killed..Milgaard, who was brutalized in prison, was awarded a $10-million compensation package..He spent years working as an advocate for others facing wrongful convictions and fighting for prisoner’s rights..Milgaard, who had been living in Alberta, leaves behind two teenaged children.
