Source: Toronto Star, Xtra
In the weeks before his slaying, prominent Toronto gay bar owner Janko Naglic told his doctor and a lawyer that he was worried because his live-in lover was threatening to kill him, the man's murder trial has heard.

Latest: Mendez-Romero acquitted of murder charge (3/4/08)

"He said Ivan was demanding half of his business and if he didn't get it he would kill him," lawyer Douglas Barker told Ivan Mendez-Romero's murder trial today.

Naglic was owner of The Barn and The Stables, a bar on Church St.

On Oct. 27, 2004, Naglic was found, his mouth and nose bound by duct tape, face down at the bottom of stairs near the entrance of his Mount Pleasant Ave. and Eglinton Ave.-area home.

Mendez-Romero, 39, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.

Barker told prosecutor Erin McNamara that he had attended garden parties at Naglic's home, where he met Mendez-Romero, and was asked by a mutual friend to speak to him because he was worried about something.

The lawyer said he met Naglic, 58, about a month before his death, where Naglic related the death threat.

"First of all, I couldn't believe what he was saying. I said, `If it happens again, you either go to the police or come to me and I'll take you to the police.' "

But he never saw Naglic again, he said.

Naglic's family doctor, Frederic Crouzat, said that less than a month before Naglic died, he told him he was very worried about his relationship with Mendez-Romero.

"He caught his partner with a female from Cuba" he said, reading from his medical notes. Naglic told him Mendez-Romero had married the woman to help her come to Canada, the doctor said.

Naglic told him he had "an interaction" with Mendez-Romero, who "threatened to shoot him," Crouzat told prosecutor Ann Morgan.

Earlier this week, Barrie Martin, a long-time friend of Naglic's told a similar story about the couple.

Martin had come upon Mendez-Romero unloading beer cases outside The Barn and asked about Naglic's whereabouts.

"He's inside," Martin told court yesterday that Mendez-Romero had replied. "The bitch is not dead yet."

Under cross-examination by Laurence Cohen, Martin observed that "bitch" was a descriptor usually appended to women and was disapproving of its pejorative application to gay men. "Frankly, in the social circles I travel in, it's not a word used frequently."

Naglic met Mendez-Romero in Varadero, Cuba. A year later, Mendez-Romero was living in Toronto, cohabiting with Naglic and working at The Barn.

Naglic orchestrated a "marriage of convenience" so that Mendez-Romero, 20 years his junior, could stay in Canada. That union was dissolved and, at the time of Naglic's death, Mendez-Romero had entered into another purportedly arranged marriage with a woman his lover appears to have tolerated, grudgingly, until realizing Mendez-Romero was sleeping with her.

Naglic discovered the couple in a motel room and was devastated by the betrayal. A heated argument ensued and Naglic said he wanted Mendez-Romero out of his house, out of his bar, out of his life.

"He said his life was ruined," Martin testified. "He was very upset that Ivan had threatened his life."

Naglic told him, Martin said, that Mendez-Romero had demanded half of everything Naglic owned, including a Miami condo and million-dollar yacht.

When Toby Rose, a forensic pathologist in Ontario's chief coroner's office, first examined Janko Naglic's body she found signs of bruising or swelling around both eyes, but no sign that Naglic had offered resistance to his attackers.

Rose, an associate professor of pathology at the University Of Toronto, testified that when she first examined Naglic's body he was face down at the foot of the stairs with his head pointed toward the hallway, partially lying on a red Persian rug. He was wearing a red dress shirt, black slacks, cowboy boots and a beaded belt.

"[There was] duct tape wrapped around the lower part of his head around his nose and mouth and on his right wrist," Rose told the court.

Rose said that Naglic died of "smothering" from the duct tape wrapped twice around his mouth and nose. She told the court that the compression against Naglic's nose was enough that it was pushed to the side and that the skin underneath the tape was very white as a result of the pressure.

Full article: TheStar.com | GTA | Gay bar owner said he feared for his life, trial told
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