Layne Boorman says there were about a dozen of them in the town of Watrous, Sask., ranging in age from 13 to 50, with one thing in common – they liked doing drugs.
Methamphetamine, cocaine, ecstasy, marijuana, LSD, cocaine.
"We did drugs together, the odd bunch in town. Everyone looked down us," Boorman said Wednesday at Taylor Wolff's trial for second-degree murder.
Boorman is a Crown witness at the trial for Wolff, 33, who is charged in connection with the disappearance of James Carlson.
Carlson vanished from Watrous — a town of just under 2,000 is about 100 kilometres southeast of Saskatoon — on May 14, 2008, one month before he was scheduled to testify against Wolff at a drug hearing.
On Wednesday, Boorman and a handful of others from the self-described "drug scene" in Watrous were scheduled to testify at Court of Queen's Bench in Saskatoon.
It's a somewhat unusual murder trial in that the alleged victim's body was never found. James Carlson simply never showed up for work one day.
His truck and car were later discovered abandoned.
'I gave them a story'
Carlson's disappearance had immediate consequences for those in his circle.
Boorman said that police systematically picked up the people in the group for questioning. He said it was a terrifying experience for a teenager.
"I gave them a story to get them off my back. I told them what they wanted to hear," Boorman said.
"I was scared."
An agreed statement of facts reveals that police enlisted a former girlfriend of Wolff to work as an agent. Lindsay Reiber testified on Tuesday that she met Wolff "through the drug scene" and that, at one point, he confessed that he shot Carlson and dumped his body down a well.
Reiber said that she and Wolff used meth together when they lived together in Watrous. According to Boorman, so did Carlson and his neighbour, Darryl Rintoul.
"There's a lot of stories in every scene," she said.
Boorman struggled under questioning on the stand on Wednesday morning.
He said he can't recall exactly who he saw, or when, "because I saw the same group of people, every single day."
That, and "I was 18, my mind was mush, I was using a lot of drugs."
The trial continues all week.