Bill Mullins-Johnson was sound asleep when the anguished screams awoke him.

"Valin's dead! Valin's dead!" cried Bill's sister-in-law, Kim Lariviere.

Mullins-Johnson raced up to the bedroom of his four-year old niece. "That's where I saw her in a room on her bed," says Mullins-Johnson. He says he watched in horror as his brother, Paul Johnson, rolled Valin's stiff lifeless body onto her back. They tried to revive her but it was too late. The little girl was dead.

"What the hell happened here? That's what was going through my head," remembers Mullins-Johnson. Soon the police arrived at the home and immediately started taking statements. Mullins-Johnson explained that he lived with Valin and the rest of her family and had been babysitting her the night before.

Little did he know that he had quickly become the chief suspect in Valin's death.

Less than 12 hours after Valin's body was discovered, Mullins-Johnson was taken into custody and charged with first-degree murder. "Everything after that point is kind of in blotches. I was in tears. I was in hysterics. I couldn't believe what was happening to me," says Mullins-Johnson.

Interview notes compiled by the investigating officers show that no matter the question, Mullins-Johnson kept repeating the same answer: "Every time they interviewed me at the police station I just kept saying, 'I didn't do it. It wasn't me.'"

News of Valin's death and Bill's arrest spread rapidly through the extended family. The news was especially devastating for Laureena Hill, Bill's mother and Valin's grandmother. "My sister said I screamed for three to four hours.

(I) couldn't stop screaming," says Hill. "I couldn't understand people when they talked to me. It sounded like they were talking gibberish to me. It made no sense."

There was still more disturbing news to come. Doctors said Valin had been sexually assaulted. Bill was accused of not only killing but also sexually assaulting the little girl.

In September 1994, after 14 months in custody, Bill finally got his day in court. He held fast to the belief he would be found innocent. After all, there was no physical evidence linking him to Valin's death. However, doctors testified there were signs of sexual abuse and Mullins-Johnson's fate was ultimately sealed by the testimony of Dr. Charles Smith.

Convicted

Then the top pediatric pathologist in Ontario and the prosecution's star witness, Dr. Smith testified that Valin was strangled to death while being sodomized. After only six hours of deliberations, the jury made its decision. Mullins-Johnson was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

For his own safety, Mullins-Johnson was sent to Warkworth Penitentiary in southeastern Ontario, a prison with a long-standing reputation for housing sex offenders. At Warkworth, Mullins-Johnson was considered just another in a long list of killers, rapists and pedophiles. For the next decade, an eleven-by-seven foot Warkworth cell was Bill's home. Throughout those years, he continued to maintain his innocence, but the only person who believed him was his mother. "We cried, cried all the time. Rehashed that stupid trial every time we got together," says Hill.

The years crawled by and Mullins-Johnson struggled with depression in prison. But in 2001, finally there was someone other than his mother, who was willing to listen to him and eventually come to believe Mullins-Johnson was innocent. "There was not a shred of forensic evidence linking Bill to the crime scene," says David Bayliss, a lawyer with the Association in Defence of the Wrongfully Convicted. "This was an alleged sex-homicide. There was no semen. There was no blood. There was no saliva, no hair, no biological material whatsoever connected Billy to Valin or the bed where she was found dead."

By the time Bayliss got involved, controversy was swirling around the pathologist at the core of Mullins-Johnson's case. "We knew that Charles Smith was heavily involved in the case and that immediately, in the case of AIDWYC lawyers, gets the antenna standing straight up," says Bayliss. "There's been a history of mistakes, demonstrated mistakes by this particular doctor."

Dr. Charles Smith

Back in the early 1990s, Dr. Smith was hailed as a superstar in the world of pediatric pathology. He pioneered the use of CT scans on skeletal remains to detect previously unseen signs of child abuse. In a 1998 interview obtained by W-FIVE, he touted himself as the voice for dead children. "Dead kids don't talk," said Smith. "They have a great deal to say to us if only we were to listen to them very, very carefully."

In recent years, however, Dr. Smith's reputation has taken a beating. Other experts have discredited several of his opinions. He's been criticized by judges and the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons. On more than one occasion he's even misplaced evidence and he did it again with autopsy exhibits in Mullins-Johnson's case.

After nearly two years in bureaucratic limbo, the Ontario chief coroner's office ordered a search of the office that Dr. Smith kept at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. Remarkably, the critical pieces of missing evidence, autopsy slides, were found on Smith's desk. With the medical exhibits finally retrieved, two expert pathologists determined the bruises on Valin's body were "misinterpreted." The marks, they concluded, were not evidence of strangulation or sexual assault, but simply the gravitational pooling of blood after death. Valin likely succumbed to a "sudden natural death."

"Valin ... was not killed by anyone," says Bayliss. "Retrospectively when we look at this there was really no basis at all to find initially that she had been sexually assaulted."

Bill Mullins-Johnson walks free

In September 2005, armed with the new medical findings, Bayliss headed back to court. The federal justice minister immediately ordered a full review of the case. After 12 years in federal prison, Bill Mullins-Johnson was released on bail pending the review. "When I finally stepped out the doors there I was looking up at the sky. I forgot how blue the sky can be," says Mullins-Johnson.

Experiencing freedom again after all those years has been an exhilarating experience but the relief and happiness has been tempered with bitterness over his awful ordeal. "Very angry. Very angry. Very resentful," says Mullins-Johnson. "My prime years is what I lost out on. (Your) early to mid-twenties are the years you're supposed to finish school and start your career and find your place in the world. You know, start a family, if that happens, stuff like that. And I was robbed of that. I was right out robbed of that."

Another wrongfully accused

If anyone can relate to Mullins-Johnson's nightmare, it's Louise. She's spent the last eight years mourning the loss of her seven-year-old daughter and trying to recover from a devastating accusation. Faulty conclusions by forensic pathologist Dr. Charles Smith resulted in Louise being imprisoned and wrongfully accused of murdering her daughter.

Little Sharon had been missing for several hours when police found her body under the stairs in the basement of the family home in Kingston, Ontario. Her body was a grisly sight covered in scores of wounds.

Two weeks later police charged Louise with murder. "They said they know that I did it, they said they have the evidence that I did it," says Louise. "It was like I was in another world really because I just couldn't believe they were sitting there telling me that."

Dr. Smith concluded Sharon died a horrific death, stabbed more than 80 times, likely with a pair of scissors. "Dr. Smith was at my preliminary hearing and testified that you know he had no doubt that my daughter was stabbed to death," says Louise. "I'm just sitting there thinking: he's not right, he's wrong."

Dr. Smith was wrong but it would take almost two years for another expert to publicly challenge his findings. Dr. James Ferris is an internationally-renown forensic pathologist. He concluded there was only one possible explanation for Sharon's wounds. "They were absolutely classic of dog bite. In my view there was never any other reasonable opinion," says Ferris, who had high profile involvement in the Australian dingo-baby case.

But Dr. Smith had already testified there "was absolutely no way in the world a dog could have caused that pattern of injury," even though a pit bull living in the house was spotted with a red substance around its mouth on the day Sharon was found. And there were even dog teeth marks in some of the wounds themselves. So how to account for Dr. Smith's previous conclusion? "Simply incorrect interpretation of the findings," says Ferris.

Louise walks free

Eventually, Dr. Smith relented saying he "deferred to the other expert opinions." So, after spending 22 months in solitary confinement in prison, the Crown dropped its case against Louise and she was set free.

"He should admit that he was wrong," says Louise, "he just needs to accept the fact he made a mistake."

And, it's far from the only mistake attributed to Dr. Smith. Dozens of children's deaths are being re-examined by Ontario; cases in which Dr. Smith may have made other mistakes that may have led to time spent behind bars for people like Louise and Bill Mullins-Johnson.

Re-examining Dr. Smith's cases

Ontario chief coroner Barry McLellan felt he had to take action. In a ground-breaking move last fall, McLellan announced he was assembling an international team of experts to review forty-four of Dr. Smith's cases. "This is an unprecedented review and I'm taking this essential step to maintain that public confidence," says McLellan. "I'm unaware of any chief coroner or chief medical examiner conducting as extensive a review as what I've announced into any individual pathologist's cases."

But the review didn't prevent Dr. Smith from continuing to practice medicine. In September 2005 he left Ontario to take a job at the Saskatoon City hospital. W-FIVE caught up with him there but he refused to answer any questions. "I'm doing exactly what the wise counsel has instructed to do," Smith said.

However, in December 2005, Saskatoon City Hospital terminated his contract.

But that doesn't satisfy Louise. She's decided to take Dr. Smith to court. "I've said this from the start of this lawsuit I want an apology," says Louise. "Sharon was my world and she will always be my world. And if it wasn't for me fighting for justice for her, I probably would be with her because there's nothing here for me anymore."

As for Bill Mullins-Johnson, he's got a job now, working in shipping and receiving. While he tries to focus on the future he can't help but dwell on the past. So what does he have to say about Dr. Smith, the man he believes cost him more than 12 years of his life?

"He's a disgrace to his profession," says Mullins-Johnson. "His first oath as a physician is to do no harm, as far as I know. And that's all this guy had done for the last 12 years.