Transcript of an interview conducted by Detective Ron Miceli of the Guelph Police Service with Felicia Hisaka, regarding her time spent working with Paul Farrington, the owner of Summer Rose Fashion Boutique in Guelph, Ontario.
Transcript provided without the consent of the Guelph Police Service. This is not an official GPS Document.
[Transcript Begins]
Miceli: The tape is rolling, Miss Hisaka.
Hisaka: Oh, it is? Are we starting?
Miceli: We are, yes. Can you please state your name for the record?
Hisaka: Right, right… My name is Felicia Hisaka. I’m 21 years old.
Miceli: Thank you. Now, why don’t we start off by discussing how you first came into contact with Paul Farrington, alright?
Hisaka: Sure, sure… Right… Well, I first reached out to Paul when I saw the ad he’d put in the paper about… I think it was about six months ago. I forget exactly which paper, but it was one of the ones available at the University. I saw the ad though. It said he was looking for models. Specifically, Asian models…
Miceli: And you replied?
Hisaka: I did. I’d been looking for a job for the past couple of months and I was… I was kinda getting desperate. I mean, just reading the text, it came across as a little… Demeaning… Y’know? Like… How do I describe this? It read a little like a craigslist ad, looking for a hookup. I kinda got the vibe that whoever wrote it just had an Asian fetish.
Miceli: But despite that, you still answered the ad?
Hisaka: Like I said, I was desperate. I’d seen the ad in the paper for a couple of months beforehand… And I needed the money so…
Miceli: Right.
Hisaka: Look, I tried to not be a dumbass about it. After I called and said I was interested in the gig, I told a couple of friends of mine where I was going. I figured in case anything happened, and I didn’t come home, they’d know where I was. And I mean, to be fair… Paul didn’t really come off as that creepy when I showed up at his store.
Miceli: Why don’t you tell me about how that first photo shoot went.
Hisaka: Well… It was kinda awkward. But I’ve been through worse. When I got there, Paul came out and greeted me. He thought I was a customer at first, but when I told him who I was, he invited me out into the storage room with him. He did kinda strike me as a little socially awkward. But he was respectful, he didn’t like, put his hands on me or anything and considering the situation he was about as professional as he could be.
Miceli: Define, professional in this situation.
Hisaka: He’d set up this sorta photo backdrop. It was just clouds and a blue sky. It was kinda a cheap setup, but it was fine for what it was. He said he’d gotten this overstock shipment of mandarin gown style dresses, and he wanted to sell them online. He took my measurements, then he gave me some dresses he wanted me to try on and I modeled them for him. He took his pictures and he paid me three hundred bucks when we were done. We were done in just a little over an hour.
Miceli: Did he make any advances on you during or after the shoot?
Hisaka: No. None at all. The closest he got to touching me was when he took my measurements, and even then it was just measurements. Then after the shoot, he offered me a pop and asked if I’d be interested in doing some future shoots for him. He said he needed a model.
Miceli: And you said yes?
Hisaka: Yeah. Like I said before, I needed the money and I was like, as far as I knew he was just a small business owner looking to market his shit. It wasn’t really a full time job or anything. I was still looking, but he called me in every couple of weeks and it was a little bit of extra spending money.
Miceli: So during your subsequent photo sessions with Paul, you didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary?
Hisaka: Not really, no. I mean, he was always a little bit awkward around me. But he was also a little bit awkward around his customers. If anything, he kinda started growing on me. I actually even bought a couple of dresses off of him. We’d make small talk, he’d ask about my classes, my family and stuff like that. I’d ask him about his life, and how the shop was doing. I never really found any of his questions particularly invasive or anything. For the most part, he always kept it completely professional.
Miceli: For the most part?
Hisaka: A couple of times when we had to do some later shoots, he did invite me to stay for dinner. He said his apartment was right over the shop. But I really just took that more as like, a common courtesy type thing than anything else. I didn’t read too much into it.
Miceli: So when did things change, then?
Hisaka: The day I forgot my sunglasses.
Miceli: Walk me through that, will you?
Hisaka: Alright… [Sigh]. So he’d called me in on a Saturday, saying he just got this new shipment of dresses in, and he wanted to list some of them on his website. I went over like I usually did, we shot for an hour, then talked for a little while before I left. I’d just gotten to my car when I left my sunglasses behind. So I went back for them. When I went back into the shop, I didn’t see any sign of Paul. That was a little weird, since he could usually hear the door open from the back, but I figured he might’ve been upstairs in his apartment taking his lunch. I didn’t want to bother him, so I just went into the storage area and grabbed them… And that’s when I heard Paul talking…
Miceli: What was he saying?
Hisaka: It… It sounded like he was saying my name, ‘Felicia’… I thought he was calling to me, so I went looking for him. And while I was looking for him I noticed that his basement door was open, which was kinda odd because I’d never seen it open before.
Miceli: So what did you do?
Hisaka: I went and checked it out. I was kinda worried that Paul had fallen and gotten hurt while he was down there. I wasn’t trying to be quiet, or sneak up on him or anything… I just don’t think he heard me.
Miceli: Do you mind telling me what you found down in Paul Farrington’s basement?
Hisaka: I found… Paul… He was in one of the rooms off to the side. The basement was kinda rough and unfinished, but he had some plain walls up. And I looked into one of them and I saw him sitting on the floor with his back to me… He was looking at several photographs that he’d hung on the walls, and it didn’t take me long to realize that they were all of me… They were… Um… They were the photographs he’d taken over the past couple of months… And he was… He was masturbating to them…
Miceli: I see.
Hisaka: I just sorta watched him in horror for a moment… It was fucked up! Like, I’d just turned my back for a few minutes and when I came back he was just… He was just jerking off to pictures of me in his basement! That’s fucked up! And after I saw it, I had to get the hell out of there. I started going back up the stairs and I might’ve taken them a little too fast… I… I slipped. And he heard me.
Miceli: What did he do?
Hisaka: While I was picking myself up, I looked back to see him running out into the hallway, half naked. He looked panicked… Probably for good reason and started yelling at me for sneaking down there on him. I kept apologizing but he just kept screaming… I’d never heard him raise his voice like that before… He was tugging at his hair and crying and yelling. It was hard to make out exactly what he was saying but I know that at one point he said something like: “You were supposed to be mine… Not like this, I didn’t want it to be like this!”
Miceli: So you suspect that he had more than just a sexual obsession with you. His intentions may have been, in some twisted way romantic too?
Hisaka: Maybe? I don’t know… [Pause] I just know that I tried to get up the stairs again, but he just grabbed me and pulled me back down. [There is a long pause.] Next thing I know, he had his arms around my throat and I couldn’t breathe… He was sitting on my back and pinning me to the ground and I remember thinking: “Oh God… He’s going to kill me.” It was probably the most terrifying moment of my life… I… [Exhale] I thought for sure I was going to die… I could feel my vision fading and I was crying and begging him to stop, but he wouldn’t… He just kept squeezing tighter and tighter and then… That was when I passed out…
Miceli: Do you need to take a minute?
Hisaka: No… I’m… I’m okay. It’s just… It’s… Scary to think about it. I… I didn’t think I was going to wake up again… I just… I vividly remember blacking out. Like, you know how you never remember it when you fall asleep, right? Well… I remember blacking out. I remember losing consciousness. I remember being so fucking afraid because I was so, so, so sure I could feel myself dying… I’m sorry.
Miceli: Just take your time. Breathe. Slow, deep breaths. In and out.
Hisaka: Right… Right… [Pause] Thanks…
Miceli: When an you’re ready, can you tell me about what happened when you regained consciousness?
Hisaka: Yeah… Yeah, of course… When I woke up, I was still in the basement, only in another room.
Miceli: Aside from the attack you just described, did you have reason to believe that Paul had done anything else aside from move you, while you were unconscious?
Hisaka: You’re asking if he raped me…
Miceli: You don’t have to answer if you’d rather not discuss it. But it would be helpful to the investigation if you did.
Hisaka: No, it’s fine… No. I don’t think that he did anything aside from just moving me to another room. He had handcuffed me to the bedframe of the bed I was on, but it was just one hand, so I could still move around a little bit. I was able to sit up on the bed and that was about it. I could also hear him moving around in the next room and I imagine he heard me, because shortly after I woke up, he came into the room with me.
Miceli: Did you have any indication as to how much time had passed between the attack, and when you woke up?
Hisaka: I did. He’d taken my phone, but I was still wearing my watch. It’d been about 20 minutes, roughly.
Miceli: Okay. You said he came into the room to speak with you. Can you tell me about that?
Hisaka: Yeah… When he came in he was more… He was a lot more composed. Kinda apologetic. He said he was sorry that it had come to this, and that he wanted to make things right with me… I told him that he just needed to let me go, and I’d forget all about it, I said that I wasn’t going to tell the police if he did. He just sorta shook his head and kept saying “No, I need you to be mine.”
Miceli: Did he give any indication as to what he meant by that?
Hisaka: A little… I just… I just wanted out, so I just sorta said what I thought he wanted to hear. I said that I’d be his if he just let me out… And then he asked me if I would marry him and if I would be his whenever he wanted… He kept offering me things too. He offered to pay for my school, he kept saying he’d be a good husband and that he loved me…
Miceli: And you went along with this?
Hisaka: Not at first… When he started talking about marriage, I sort of stopped. I told him that if he really loved me, he’d let me go and he’d stop hurting me. But he just got upset when I said that. He started groaning and he started hitting the wall and shaking his head. He said that… He said that one way or another, I was going to be his… That was about the time I started getting angry. I started yelling at him, demanding that he let me go and pulling at the handcuffs. But he just got more and more agitated. He kept punching and kicking the wall and screaming back at me… At one point, he just started banging his head against the wall. He wasn’t always speaking. Sometimes he just screamed. Then after a few minutes of that, he left and then he brought in the mannequin…
Miceli: The mannequin?
Hisaka: Yeah… It was sort of like one of the wooden ones he used in the shop to display the dresses. Only this one was a little more… He’d carved all these symbols into it. I didn’t really get why at the time. But he brought it in and I remember that he said: ‘She’ll love me.’
Miceli: What happened after that?
Hisaka: After that, he left me again. He said that I needed to think about our future. Then I heard him going back upstairs. As soon as he did, I started looking for ways to break free. The bed he’d handcuffed me to was sorta old. The frame was pretty flimsy. It had this metal headboard with bars, and some of the screws were pretty rusted.
Miceli: So you were able to break free?
Hisaka: Yeah… It took me a little while. I had to actually break the screw on one of the bars, but I was able to pull it off and get off the bed. He’d locked the door to the room I was in, but the walls he’d put up were just plain drywall. There wasn’t really anything that stopped me from taking the bar from the bed I’d just broken off and breaking through it. I just sorta used the bed bar to hammer through until there was a hole big enough for me to crawl through.
Miceli: Paul didn’t come to investigate the noise?
Hisaka: No. I think he might’ve been upstairs in his apartment at that point. The shop was closed by the time I got free from the bed.
Miceli: I see. Continue.
Hisaka: Right… Well, once I was out I started looking for the door back upstairs. The basement wasn’t huge, but the layout was kinda confusing. Plus, not all of the rooms had doors… So… I saw some things…
Miceli: Can you explain what you saw?
Hisaka: Okay, well… In one of the rooms I passed almost right after I got out, I saw some more of those mannequins… The wooden ones that he’d carved all those symbols into. He had this room that it sorta looked like he’d been using as a workshop or something. And he had these old books and shit. They looked sorta occult-ish… I don’t know. Anyways, he’d made a couple of those mannequins and it looked like he’d torn some of them apart for some reason. It was weird… Then I saw what was in the next room and… [Sigh] Christ…
Miceli: Do you need a moment?
Hisaka: No… No… I… I just don’t know how to even begin to describe it… Like, when I went over to the next room, I kinda couldn’t help but look and when I saw it, I didn’t know what the fuck it was supposed to even be… Like… Okay, it was another bedroom, like the one he’d put me in. Only this one was… He’d done it up more. The light had this sort of pinkish hue to it. The bed was nicer. And there were these plush animals all over it. Like someone was supposed to be living there… And when I first walked by, I thought someone was living there. Like… I saw what looked a lot like another woman standing there and that’s what made me stop, because I thought he might’ve kidnapped someone else… And I guess he did…
Miceli: The… ‘woman’ you saw… When did you realize that she was…
Hisaka: A mannequin? A lot later than I should have. It was… It was the skin that threw me off… Maybe it was the dim light, but it still kinda made her look… alive? I don’t know… I went up to her trying to talk to her and when I put my hand on her shoulder, it felt wrong. Like, the skin felt cold but normal and the body felt too stiff. When I tried to turn her around, she just fell over and I just kinda stared at her, trying to figure out what the hell I was looking at because it didn’t immediately compute… And then the longer I looked, the more I realized… She was… It was human skin… He’d just put it over one of his… Jesus…
Miceli: Please. Take your time.
Hisaka: I’m sorry I… You saw it, right? You saw it!
Miceli: I have seen it, yes.
Hisaka: Jesus… That poor girl… She couldn’t have been much older than I was and he’d just… He’d put her skin on one of those fucking mannequins… Shit, it was worse than that… There were still parts of her… Parts of her he’d kept so he could still… Jesus… So he could… So he could still fuck her… When I saw that, some of the shit he’d been saying started to make sense and I realized… I realized that’s what he was going to do to me…
Miceli: Did you interact with the remains in any other way?
Hisaka: No… No, I just… I didn’t even want to touch it I just… I just stared. Hey… Can I ask you something?
Miceli: If you’d like.
Hisaka: Did you… Did you ever figure out who she was?
Miceli: We did… Yes… Her name was Carly Murphy. She was also a student at the University of Guelph who’d gone missing approximately one year ago.
Hisaka: Jesus Christ…
Miceli: Her family is… Relieved… To have some closure on the case.
Hisaka: Yeah… Yeah, I bet… Christ…
Miceli: Do you need a moment? We could take a break if you’d like.
Hisaka: No… No, it’s fine… I just… How do you get over seeing something like that?
Miceli: Honestly… You don’t.
Hisaka: Not even if you’re a homicide detective?
Miceli: No. Not even if you’re a homicide detective. Felicia, what you’ve been through is nothing less than an extremely traumatic event. It’s okay that recounting some of these details is difficult for you to get through. They’d be difficult for anyone to get through. But being here, right now, going through this with me will help. It will help you heal and it will help finally put this case to bed. We’ve got time to wait, or take breaks if we need to, if that’s what you need. So please take your time.
Hisaka: Yeah… I guess… Thank you… Thanks… [Sigh]. Right… So… After I saw the mannequin… Carly… That’s when I started panicking. I just… I ran for the stairs. I had the metal bar from the bed frame with me. I was sorta expecting the basement door to be locked and I was right, it was. So I used the bed bar to try and break it down. It was just a wooden door, so it did some damage. It just wasn’t really enough… And I guess Paul heard the noise.
Miceli: He came to investigate?
Hisaka: Yeah… I heard him coming down from the apartment and he started yelling at me to stop. I could hear him moving around outside the basement door. I think he was sorta panicking… I don’t think he’d ever had someone escape before. And when I did, he didn’t really know what to do. I started screaming at him to let me out. I didn’t really think he would but I was hoping that maybe if we were loud enough, someone might hear and investigate. Maybe from next door or something. I’d put a pretty big dent into the door… You probably saw that, although I dunno if I could’ve actually broken through or not.
Miceli: So what did he do next?
Hisaka: Well after a couple of minutes of screaming at each other through the door, he finally opened it. I kinda wasn’t expecting him to. The moment I saw him, I kinda freaked out and started swinging at him with the piece of bedframe I had with me. I hit him in the head the first time, but I don’t think I got any other hits in. He grabbed it and started trying to pull it out of my hands.
Miceli: Did he?
Hisaka: Yes and no… I was kicking and scratching at him the whole time. Then, I saw him reaching into his pocket for something. I didn’t see what it was at first. Not until I felt it going into my ribs… Turns out it was a pocket knife… He’d… He’d stabbed me. After that, he was able to pull the piece of bedframe out of my hand. I remember… I remember him stabbing me again, this time in the stomach. And I remember hearing my heart racing in my ears and then… Next thing I knew I was falling back down the stairs… Everything was just a blur.
Miceli: Did you lose consciousness again?
Hisaka: No… My ears were ringing and I was in a hell of a lot of pain but like, I was still fully conscious. And I remember seeing him coming down the stairs towards me, and he was still holding the knife. He was talking, and ranting and raving but I only heard bits and pieces of it. I remember he said: “Now you’ve made me ruin you!” I guess because he’d had to damage my skin…
Miceli: And how did he react to that?
Hisaka: Not well… I was bleeding pretty heavily. I couldn’t really stand and when he got to the bottom of the stairs, he started hitting me… Kicked me… I remember I bit my lip at one point and I remember my mouth filling with blood. Paul grabbed me by the hair, he started dragging me down the hall, and the concrete was scratching my skin. I remember seeing another room up ahead that he was dragging me into. This one was built a little better. He’d actually insulated the walls. Then once he opened the door, the smell hit me… He’d torn up the concrete floor in this room… There was a pit he’d dug in the ground and I couldn’t see what was inside of it at first. I just remember him pushing me into it and suddenly everything was dark. The only light I saw was at the top of the pit, with Paul looking down at me… Then he just turned and he… He left… And it was just me… In the dark… W-with the smell… And the feeling of… I knew what they were… And they were so cold… Colder than the concrete had been…
Miceli: By they, you mean the bodies, right?
Hisaka: Yeah… The… The other girls… I don’t.. I don’t know how many they were. Some of them were just bones I think. Some of them didn’t even… Most of them didn’t even have their skin… God…
Miceli: You don’t need to describe it further if you don’t want to.
Hisaka: You’re going to play this in court, right?
Miceli: We will, yes.
Hisaka: Then yes… Yes I do… I don’t know how many girls there were… I couldn’t see most of them clearly but… [Pause] There were a lot. They were rotting and some of them were skinned and when I saw their eyes… They just stared… Empty… D-dead… Oh God… Oh God… [Pause. It sounds as if Felicia is crying.] He did that to them… He did that to them… And… And he’d just thrown me into the pit with all the dead girls and I was bleeding and sleepy and dizzy and I thought… I thought I was going to die there, with them… And I thought that nobody was ever going to see me again… And I thought… Oh God, I thought…
Miceli: Let’s take a break…
Hisaka: No. No, I don’t want to I just want to… I just want to finish it…
Miceli: Alright. Then take your time.
Hisaka: [Pause] Okay… I… I remember passing out again… At least I think I do. Second time that day, and I thought I was dying… But I woke up. I woke up… Surrounded by c-cold bodies… Smelling them rotting… The smell… Christ… I… I could taste it… But I wasn’t dead yet so I just… Everything hurt. My entire body hurt. I was bleeding but I made myself move because I wasn’t dead yet and I just wanted to keep moving because if I was still moving, it meant that I wasn’t dead. The pit was at sort of an incline… So I was able to climb out by sinking my fingers into the dirt. It wasn’t easy but… I could climb out.
Miceli: And when you got out?
Hisaka: I went for the door. It was locked, but his construction was still pretty shoddy. He’d insulated the walls, but he hadn’t put up more drywall so I could just sort of tear out the insulation. It stung but… Well… I had bigger problems… Once I got it out, I was able to get to start kicking my way through the drywall. Paul must’ve been back upstairs because he didn’t hear it and from there, I was able to get down the hall…
Miceli: You walked?
Hisaka: It wasn’t easy… My legs felt like jelly. I had to lean on the walls for support, but I made it. He hadn’t locked the basement door this time. I think he thought I was already dead, so he wasn’t that worried about me escaping. Then from there, I could hear the sounds of the TV up in his apartment…
Miceli: So he was distracted, and you were upstairs. You could have made a run for it.
Hisaka: I could have… But while I was listening to the TV, I figured… I don’t know if I was even thinking straight. I just… I wanted to hurt him. After everything I’d seen, I just felt so sick and the only thing I could think about was Paul and what he’d done. So… I headed up the stairs to his apartment.
Miceli: What happened next?
Hisaka: The TV was loud. So he didn’t hear me… I’d never been up in his apartment before but I didn’t think it’d be so… So bizarre… It wasn’t dirty. He kept it really clean but there were these dolls everywhere…
Miceli: Dolls?
Hisaka: Yeah… Sex dolls… He had like, 4 or 5 of them that I saw. There were some at the kitchen table, there was even one sitting beside him in the living room he was… He was cuddling it, like it was his wife or something… Then there were the clothes… Some of them were wearing the dresses that I’d worn… They had hair that looked like mine, and… Christ… Half of them looked just like me…
Miceli: I see…
Hisaka: Yeah… I made the same face you’re making right now… One of ones that didn’t look like me looked like that girl I’d seen in the basement… Carly. The others I didn’t recognize… I don’t know if they were other girls he’d killed or what… I don’t know…
Miceli: So, you were able to enter his apartment unnoticed, correct?
Hisaka: Yeah… And I got up right behind him too. He was watching TV on the couch. He didn’t notice me and I was still wearing the handcuffs from when he’d cuffed me to the bed… So… I took the dangling cuff in my hand and then I pulled the chain right across his throat. I pulled… I pulled as tight as I could.
Miceli: You attacked him.
Hisaka: I did. I pulled the chain as tight as I could and he fought and he tried to grab me. He got me by the hair and started trying to pull me over the couch. I just crouched down, trying to stay out of his reach. And I stayed there until he stopped grabbing at me and… And he finally stopped moving.
Miceli: Was it after that, that you left the scene?
Hisaka: Yes… Once I thought he was dead I went back downstairs and out through the front door. I made it out onto the street, and I could see some cars outside passing by. One of them was at a stoplight so I went up to that one and just started pounding on the window. They saw I was covered in blood and crying and that’s when they called the police, and the ambulance… Everything…
Miceli: Did you believe that you had killed Paul Farrington when you left the building?
Hisaka: Yes. Yes I did.
Miceli: Are you upset that he survived your attempt to kill him?
Hisaka: I… I don’t know… I really don’t know…
Miceli: Alright. Thank you for your time, Felicia. No further questions.
[Transcript ends]
The following emails are also being included in reference to the Felicia Hisaka interview.
To:RonMiceli@******.com
From: BillFord@******.com
Subject: RE: Farrington Case
Hi Ron.
Thanks for sending me a transcript of your interview with Hisaka. I’ve spoken with Farrington. Shocker, his version of events states that Hisaka attacked him unprompted… No mention of the pit of bodies in his fucking basement. Christ…
Did you see the fucking books he had in his basement? Real weird occult shit. Seems like he believed he could bring one of those mannequins to life as some sort of sex slave, after he put some real skin on them. Fucked up, isn’t it? With Hisakas statement and all the bodies, it should be a pretty open and shut case. Scares the shit out of me to think that this fucking guy was right under our noses though! My wife used to shop at that guys store. I’d seen him around a few times. I never thought he was that much of a sicko, he seemed like such a nice guy…