It was June 21, 2008, the longest day of the year and Whitehorse was full of revelers.

Camp cook Denise Pegg was in town for a weekend of fun after eight weeks at camp. She was staying at the Stratford. "At around noon, I got bored,” she told a courtroom packed with friends and family of murdered Carmacks woman Evangeline Billy and accused murderer Alicia Murphy. "So I headed down the street here, to that bar – the 98, I think it is – to see if I could get some pot.”

Outside the 98, Pegg met Alicia, she told Yukon Supreme Court Justice Ron Veale and the 12 jurors hearing the charge of second-degree murder. The two women went inside where Pegg bought them a couple rounds of drinks and Alicia said she'd try to find some marijuana.

Warren Edzerza, a sometime friend of Alicia's, said she approached him at the bar and said she had a friend who wanted some crack.

On the stand this morning, Edzerza described his relationship with Alicia as rocky, saying: "We were friends, but not the best of friends.”

He was closer to Billy, he said, having dated her on and off about six years ago.

Once Edzerza found some crack, the three were joined by his friend Jack Ollie and the foursome went down to the river where they spent a couple of hours smoking crack and drinking. Pegg paid for everything. They sat at a spot just behind the roundhouse at the foot of Wood Street, right on the water; the exact spot where Billy would be found dead in the water 24 hours later.

Pegg – a big, jovial woman – hid her face in her hands and went a deep red when talking about her afternoon spent with Alicia and her friends. She said she rarely smoked crack or drank as much as she did that day and was embarrassingly drunk, though her recollection of names and events was clear.

After two or three hours on the river bank, the group headed to Pegg's suite at the Stratford where she had a bottle of vodka. From there, Alicia called her sister and asked if she could get Pegg some pot.

The group was eventually joined by Tanya Murphy, her partner and another couple. The party got loud and they decided to move to Tanya's house so Pegg wouldn't get kicked out of her suite.

"Tanya was dead set against” smoking crack, Pegg testified, so no more was smoked at the party that night. But there was pot and more alcohol consumed back at Tanya's.

Shortly before midnight, Pegg, Alicia and another woman left to get off-sales, Pegg and Edzerza recalled. According to Pegg, Alicia wanted to buy more crack so the women drove to Riverdale. Alicia took another $100 from Pegg and went into a house. After waiting about 45 minutes, the woman who was driving got sick of waiting and the two returned to Tanya's.

At around 2:30 a.m., Alicia came back. "She was cranky, saying she got ripped off for that hundred bucks she'd stolen from Denise,” Edzerza said. He was mad at Alicia, he told the court, because he didn't believe she had lost the money. To make matters worse, she came back to the house and was rifling through Pegg's purse before taking off with the case of beer Pegg had bought.

Edzerza was heading out to Tag's for chicken wings as Alicia left again, beer in hand. She asked him to come back to her place to keep drinking, and he refused.

"I asked for the beer back,” he told the court. "... I was upset with her for trying to rob that woman who had been treating us so good all night.”

Alicia was "three sheets to the wind,” Edzerza said, and acting aggressive. He said she gets angry and violent when she drinks.

Edzerza returned with the wings, and passed out at Tanya's. In the morning, he and Ollie went back to the Stratford with Pegg. She left them sleeping on the floor at the hotel and went to airport to catch a 12 p.m. flight back out to camp, Pegg said.

Edzerza and Ollie got up shortly after, finished the beers Pegg had left behind, got takeout at the Westmark and ate it on the fire hall lawn across from the 98 Hotel.

Inside the 98, the two men panhandled enough for a couple of beers and a rock of crack and went down to their usual spot behind the roundhouse to smoke, they testified.

As they walked off the paved trail down to the water, Ollie was the first to see "this huge pool of blood,” Edzerza recalled.

"I told him, ‘F---, that's a lot of of blood; there's probably somebody in the river. Don't look,' 'cause I didn't want him to see that.”

Edzerza walked to the edge of the water.

"What did you see?” Crown prosecutor Noel Sinclair asked.

"Native woman, long hair, black coat, white shirt.” Her pants were off, he said, and he couldn't see her face because she was floating face down.

Edzerza went straight to the Riverview Hotel, he said, and asked the front desk clerk to call the RCMP. Officers arrived shortly after and Edzerza took them down to the river. He said he was alone when he found the body "because Jack (Ollie) told me he didn't want to be involved.”

Once the police were finished asking him questions, Edzerza said he went back to the 98. "We were very upset, both of us,” Edzerza said. They told people in the bar what they had found and pretty soon everyone was trying to figure out who it was in the river.

"Eventually we came to the conclusion it might have been Evan (Billy) 'cause no one had seen her around that day,” he said.

Alicia tried to talk to him that afternoon, Edzerza recalled, but he pushed her away. "I was still mad about the night before.”

He said he hasn't spoken to Alicia since then but that she has tried to contact him from jail.

An officer came back for Edzerza the next day and he made his first statement to police. Some time later, he was brought to the station again, this time as a suspect.

"I gave them my DNA, scraped my fingernails, stripped my clothes, gave them everything I had,” he said.

When asked if he had anything to do with either Billy's death or putting her body in the river he said no.

"I was raised to respect women and treat them decently,” Edzerza said before stepping down.

Billy's body was found floating in the Yukon River on June 22, 2008. She had suffered major wounds to her head as well as significant bruising to her body, the court learned earlier this week. She had a blood alcohol level that an expert pathologist described as near fatal. The head wounds and alcohol intoxication, however, were not what killed Billy; she died of drowning, the pathologist concluded.

The court also heard from the accused's sister, who said Alicia told her "that she beat (Billy) up – went too far. Something went wrong and they propped her up to make it look like something else.”

Alicia Murphy has pleaded not guilty to a charge of second-degree murder.

Her trial is set to continue for another two weeks.