Victoria Bitter: The Jaidyn Leskie Story

A Drunken Night

It was June 14, the dead of winter in the southern hemisphere and it certainly felt like it in Moe. A cold drizzle was falling, and as was his practice, Domaszewicz got up at the crack of midmorning. He had been expecting to work that Saturday. A friend, Paul "Lizard" Lietzau had asked Domaszewicz to do some work on his car, and in exchange, Lietzau was to knock down a small retaining wall in Domaszewicz's backyard. But the job was interrupted when Lizard informed Grishka that he would need the car on Saturday night because, of all things, he was to attend a debutante ball.

The car was drivable, so Lietzau picked it up a day earlier, saying he would return it the next day. He also left behind the long iron crowbar he planned to use for the demolition job.

With no pressing work to do, Domaszewicz drove to downtown Moe to pick up his regular Saturday Tattslotto tickets and a bag of lollies, and then headed over to Bilynda Murphy's house. He had, it seemed, wanted to spend the day with Jaidyn, and that fit into Bilynda's plans quite nicely. It was during one of the periodic thaws in her relationship with Kadee and the two planned to attend a party that ultimately ended up at a local bar that night. Domaszewicz was less than enthusiastic about the idea of the party, but, according to the statement he later gave authorities, he left open the possibility that he might join up with Bilynda and her sister after dropping Jaidyn off with a local babysitter who would be looking after Brehanna.

Before Grishka and Jaidyn left for his house, Bilynda dressed the boy in a pair of gray sweatpants with the words "Baby Games" emblazoned on them; he wore a green long-sleeved shirt, a windbreaker and a red jacket over top of it all. It was after all, winter in Victoria. She had run out of Jaidyn's diapers so she placed one of Brehanna's nappies on him, a girl's diaper with a pink lining. She packed a small blue plastic bag full of a few needful things, four more of Brehanna's diapers, a change of clothes, a bottle, a sort of granola bar, a lollipop and an apple, and sent the two on their way. It was still several hours before the party was to have begun and Bilynda asked Domaszewicz to drop her off at Kadee's house on the way, but when he went to fetch the car seats from the porch to strap the children into his old Ford for the ride, he realized that the car seats had been left in the rain. He grabbed the drier of the two, strapped Jaidyn into it and left Brehanna to sit in the backseat with a seatbelt on, as he would later say, "like a big girl."

As Bilynda got out of the car at Kadee's house, she asked her boyfriend for $50, saying she needed it to pay down a staggering phone bill and that she had no plans to drink that night. But Domaszewicz decided to slip her an extra $20. "You can't go to a party without drinking," Domaszewicz reportedly told her.

As she bounded out of the car, $70 in one hand, her toddler daughter in the other, Bilynda had no idea that it would be the last time she would ever see her young son alive.

What happened over the next 10 or 12 hours remains a mystery. According to Domaszewicz' statement to police, the two went out to the garage for a while, and Jaidyn watched as Grishka worked on one of the old cars he had. They played with the dogs for a while, and though Domaszewicz would later give several versions of the events, none of them clear, he claimed that at some point, Jaidyn either fell or was knocked over by the dogs, cutting his lip or perhaps bloodying his nose. Domaszewicz said he sopped up the blood with a few tissues which he later discarded in a trash bin outside his house and which later tested positive for Jaidyn's blood. They played Nintendo and watched television together until Jaidyn fell asleep.

Blood-soaked tissues at Greg's house

There was one classic Moe moment that day. It occurred around 3 p.m. when Domaszewicz got an angry phone call from an old acquaintance, Darren Farr, who said he had heard (apparently from the ever industrious Kadee) that Grishka had told someone he had a vendetta against Farr and might even be planning some sort of violence against him.

The two old acquaintances hashed out their differences they even agreed to have a drink together within several days to seal their newfound mateship. But Grishka was still seething and he called Kadee's house at about 4 p.m. to blame her for the falling out. Bilynda answered the phone, and Domaszewicz quickly regained his composure. As the couple chatted briefly, Bilynda later told authorities that she could hear Jaidyn chattering in the background. She claims she distinctly heard her 20-month-old son say the word "dog."

That night, Bilynda, Kadee, and Kadee's boyfriend went to the party as planned and as expected, the party ended up at Ryan's, a local nightspot known for the rowdy crowds it attracts on weekends. Bilynda, who had said that she had no plans to drink that night, got roaring drunk. She later admitted that she spent $60 of the $70 Domaszewicz had given her on booze and had gotten so drunk that the bartender not only flagged Bilynda, refusing to serve her any more liquor, but also flagged her sister, fearing that her sister, who was also inebriated but less so, was secretly feeding Bilynda booze.

Throughout the evening, Bilynda repeatedly tried to telephone Domaszewicz, but there was no answer, though Domaszewicz did speak to a neighbor by telephone twice that night, once shortly after 8 p.m. and again around 10 p.m. when he told the neighbor that he had run out of diapers, and asked if she had any he could borrow.

Finally, at 11 p.m., Bilynda managed to reach Domaszewicz. He later claimed that he was joking, playing one of those ridiculous practical jokes that he was known for, but he told the drunken mother that Jaidyn had an accident, that he had fallen against a space heater in the bathroom, burned his bottom and that he had to take the boy to a local hospital. The boy, he said, had ended up at the emergency room at the Marysville Hospital. Why he picked that name remains unclear. The hospital was still under construction and had not yet opened for business. In fact, there was no record of the boy having been taken to any hospital. Confused and in a stupor, Bilynda shared this information with the slightly more sober Kadee. She immediately telephoned Domaszewicz and he told her that though the boy had suffered a slight burn, he had taken him to the emergency room where they treated it with cream, and sent them home. Everything was fine, he said. There was no need for her to come home.

According to Domaszewicz's account, it was about 2 am on Sunday morning and Jaidyn was asleep on the couch when Bilynda called from the bar for a ride home. Rather than wake the boy, he later told authorities, he left him alone and asleep while he ducked out for the 25 minute ride to the bar, carrying with him a premixed can of bourbon and coke to help Bilynda keep her buzz intact. As she poured herself into his car, Bilynda asked where Jaidyn was.

"I told you," he reportedly replied. "He's in hospital."

Perhaps it was one of his stupid practical jokes, but as he wheeled past the Maryville Hospital, he continued to cling to the story and when Bilynda begged him to stop in to the hospital so she could see her little boy, he told her that they'd never let her in. She was, he said, "too drunk."

Instead, he took her to his house.