Pamela Kosmack may have known her accused killer, but they were anything but friends.

Both Kosmack and Marc Leduc were regulars at the rough-and-tumble Royal Britannia Pub, a since-closed watering hole on Richmond Road.

They were also members of the same chat group, and the jury at Leduc’s first-degree murder trial has heard from prosecutors that when another user posted a message asking about Kosmack’s absence on the site, it was Leduc who posted a nasty response saying, “You don’t need to know, she’s probably out whoring herself.”

In a chilling detail, prosecutors have told the jury that the accused killer was thinking about going to Kosmack’s funeral but no one has testified about it yet.

Kosmack, a 39-year-old mom, was strangled off a bike path near Britannia Park in 2008. Her body was found half-naked and severely beaten about the head, and had bite marks on it. 

She fought for her life, the jury heard. Leduc is also on trial for the 2011 sex killing of Leeanne Lawson, whose body was found early Sept. 2, 2011 in a parking lot off of King Edward Avenue, not far from the shelter she called home.

She, too, was found half-naked and beaten. Her body, like Kosmack’s, had bite marks on it.

Both women were vulnerable and worked as prostitutes to feed their hard drug habits.

The jury is first hearing details about the Kosmack homicide, and on Friday it heard about her last hours of life and the exhaustive police investigation that followed.

Marc Leduc sketch in the Ottawa courthouse Feb. 7, 2013.

The night before her body was found, Kosmack showed up at a friend’s place. She was on edge and looking for a fix, according to a witness who testified that her boyfriend went on a drug run to hook her up.

That same night, she hit the pub around 10 p.m., according to the bouncer who worked the June 3 shift.

Mohamad Abdallah testified that she tried to bum money off him for a drink and described her as a “nice lady” with good humour. He told court he had to ban her from the pub a month earlier for downing drinks from other tables. Abdallah also said he once had to physically subdue and remove a “strong” Leduc from the pub. It wasn’t explained why he was bounced.

The bouncer couldn’t recall ever seeing Kosmack with Leduc at the pub. But the jury has heard that Leduc and Kosmack knew each other because she asked him for toonies so often he nicknamed her “Toonie.”

Abdallah also testified that when he was interviewed by police he was not asked about Leduc, a regular at the pub.

Sgt. Pamela Scharf, the lead indent officer, guided the jury through the crime scene, a grassy clearing off a bike path.

Under examination-in-chief by Crown attorney James Cavanagh, the officer detailed graphic photographs and collected evidence, ranging from Kosmack’s bloodstained clothes to a bracelet to a piece of paper with someone’s phone number on it. The jury has heard that police collected DNA evidence from the scene and that the chances of it matching someone other than Leduc are one in the quadrillions. 

The identification officer also testified that a review of the scene suggests Kosmack, at some point, may have been dragged.

The jury has been told that Leduc also knew Lawson from the shelter, where he was known for calling sex-trade workers “dirty whores who ruined families.”

The Crown has told the jury that Leduc had both the motive and opportunity to kill.

The trial, presided over by Ontario Superior Court Justice Hugh McLean, continues.

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A convicted killer serving a life sentence for murder who asked Ontario’s highest court to overturn his conviction and stay the charge against him has had his appeal dismissed.

Robert Sarrazin has been convicted three times of second-degree murder in the shotgun slaying of gang rival Apaid Noël in 1998, but twice had his conviction overturned as a result of legal errors and new trials ordered. He was convicted for a third time in February 2013 and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years.

Noël and his older brother, Aschley Noël, were handing out flyers in front of the Theatre Nightclub in the ByWard Market on Feb. 19, 1998 to promote a March break party when Sarrazin, Darlind Jean and a third man, Wolfson Cétoute, left the club and ran into the brothers at 2:45 a.m.

Sarrazin and Jean were members of a Montreal street gang, the Crack Down Posse, while there was evidence at trial that Apaid Noël was a member of a rival gang called the Dope Squad.

Aschley Noël testified that following a confrontation, Sarrazin emerged with a 12-gauge sawed-off shotgun and fired twice, including once at close range into Apaid Noël’s abdomen. Apaid Noël survived the initial shooting and was discharged from hospital on March 13, 1998, but died five days later. The cause of death was determined to be a blood clot, likely brought on by complications from the surgery.

Sarrazin and Jean were both charged with second-degree murder. Jean was also twice convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but had the convictions overturned on appeal. He eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received a sentence of time-served after spending 15 years in prison.

Sarrazin’s lawyer argued during his most recent appeal that the judge made a mistake responding to concerns from members of the jury about their safety, gave improper instructions about identification evidence and when he failed to grant a mistrial when the prosecutor made what Sarrazin’s lawyer claimed were prejudicial closing submissions about the strength of the case against him relative to the other two trials.

Sarrazin’s lawyer argued that if the appeal were to be successful, a fourth trial would be an “abuse of process” and violate Sarrazin’s rights to life, liberty and security.

In a decision released last Thursday, the court of appeal rejected Sarrazin’s arguments and dismissed the appeal.

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Days after her son was knifed to death at a birthday party, Holly Briere has broken her silence in her darkest hours, saying she’s praying for justice and, remarkably, has forgiven the young man accused in the killing.

“He’s a broken person. He’s hurting and desperately needs help, and I hope that even in jail, he’ll come to know God and have a personal relationship with him,” Holly Briere said in an interview Wednesday night.

“I’m not wanting hard justice. I don’t long for those things. I don’t ever want to hold bitterness against him.”

Briere, 54, has spent the last few days sobbing in a “whirlwind” of mourning.

Her son Joshua Briere, 26, collapsed outside his Clyde Avenue apartment just before 3 a.m. Saturday. He succumbed quickly from several stab wounds to his torso. Paramedics tried to revive him, but they were outmatched by the viciousness of the deadly crime.

Brandon Ethier is charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing death of Joshua Briere.

Brandon Jack Ethier, 27, is in jail awaiting trial, charged with second-degree murder in the city’s 16th homicide this year.

On Wednesday night, the grieving Holly Briere issued this moving statement:

“Our world has been viciously shaken as we walk this tragic nightmare.

We are trying each day to accept this heart wrenching reality, that our son, whom we loved so much, is totally gone, cruelly ripped from our lives.

Josh had a personality that was larger than life; outgoing, vivacious, dynamic personality.

He had an infectious laughter and joyful spirit and he would brilliantly light-up the room like a shining star.

Josh was an incredibly loving and caring man, so sensitive to the needs and situations of others.

It is so evident that God’s love is being poured-out through so many family members and friends surrounding us, that we know, wholeheartedly, it is God’s love that is carrying us through this.

I am praying that justice will be served down the road however, I don’t personally feel any hatred or bitterness towards Ethier.

I see him as a man that desperately needs help and healing. 

Josh will live on in our hearts forever and we will keep his memory alive through his precious and beautiful daughter.”

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Kodey Carisse’s last memories of her brother, Brandon Volpi, are of him laughing and smiling in his prom night photos.

Now, there is just an emptiness that comes with the sorrow of a life taken too soon, she told a judge in an emotional victim impact statement Thursday.

Carisse fought back tears as she told a packed courtroom how she never got to say goodbye to Volpi, who was stabbed and slashed to death outside of Les Suites Hotel following his grad on June 7, 2014.

In February, a jury found Devontay Hackett guilty of second-degree murder. He’ll receive an automatic life sentence for the crime, although what remains to be decided is how many years of the prison sentence he must serve before he’s eligible to be considered for parole.

Crown prosecutors asked for 12 to 13 years; his defence lawyer, along with 9 of the 12 jurors who found him guilty, recommended the minimum of 10 years. Ontario Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland intends to deliver his sentence on Monday.

“It doesn’t get any better. The pain never goes away. It’s there to haunt me forever,” said Volpi’s father, Danny, in his own victim impact statement, which was read by the prosecutor.

“I lost a part of me. I lost my only son. I cannot describe the pain, but I would not wish it on my worst enemy,” Volpi wrote. “He was only 18. He had his whole life ahead of him.”

Assistant crown attorney Mike Boyce said Hackett was “agitating for a fight” the night he killed Volpi, who went to St. Patrick’s High School.

Volpi, who was sober and unarmed, was escorting his friend to a neighbouring hotel out of fear he’d be attacked by the then 18-year-old Hackett, who was drunk.

“He saw a friend who was in trouble and did the honourable thing and tried to assist him,” said Boyce of Volpi. “He didn’t bring any of this on. There is no motive for this. There is no explanation for what happened. This is senseless.”

The attack took only moments, but Boyce said Hackett already had the knife out and recklessly used it. After the killing, Hackett fled and hid from police for a month.

Hackett’s lawyer, Joe Addelman, said his client had a rotten upbringing. Both his parents had substance abuse problems and spent time in jail, Addelman said. Hackett was both a victim and witness to violence. 

Hackett once told police that he carried a knife because his brother had himself been stabbed and killed.

But Hackett was also the first of his nine siblings to finish high school, Addelman said. He started working when he was 14 years old to provide for his own basic needs and intends to work hard in jail to rehabilitate himself so he can one day return to society.

“We’re not talking about whether Mr. Hackett serves 10 years or 13 years or 15 years in jail,” said Addelman. “He will serve a life sentence. Whether he gets parole or not will not be determined today.”

Following his lawyer’s submissions, Hackett rose in the prisoner’s box and turned toward Volpi’s family.

“I would like to take this opportunity to say I am genuinely sorry for the loss and emotional suffering this entire ordeal has caused to the Volpi family,” Hackett said in a steady voice, even as many of those he spoke to broke down in tears. “A young man lost his life on prom night. It was a very tragic turn of events.”

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The so-called mastermind in the 2010 killing of Barrhaven teen Michael Swan was sentenced Thursday to nine years in a case the judge called a deadly betrayal of friendship.

Mike Swan’s parents had waited seven years for Sam Tsega to apologize, but when he did they were offended by it, and even the judge noted on Thursday that it was too little, too late.

Tsega spoke about himself, said he was still young at 25, and hoped to one day get married — all the things Mike Swan would never get to do.

Dale Swan thought Tsega was “rubbing it in.”

Swan was shot in the back after being forced to his knees at gunpoint by three masked intruders from Toronto. The Barrhaven teen, a popular athlete, was executed in his own bedroom over a bag of weed, some money and NHL video games in what Ontario Superior Court Justice Catherine Aitken said was a “tragic and senseless” killing driven by greed. 

It was Tsega, now 25, who conspired with a group of friends — known as the Toronto 3 and all since convicted of murder. Tsega wasn’t at the armed home invasion, but he helped to plan it, from giving the trio Swan’s address, the layout of the house and, finally, the masks used in the botched robbery. Tsega even billed his onetime friend as an easy target, the court had heard.

                          Michael Swan

Tsega had originally been on trial for second-degree murder, but the judge spared him a murder conviction and instead found him guilty in June of manslaughter. The judge said the Crown had failed to prove an essential element of second-degree murder, namely that Tsega, who was not at the scene of the crime, knew the robbery plot would end in murder.

It was just after midnight on Feb. 2, 2010, when three masked men, dressed in black with handguns drawn, stormed Swan’s home and forced him and his friends to their knees at gunpoint, court heard. They demanded to know where he kept his dope and money, but Swan wouldn’t give it up. He even refused after they pressed a gun into his back.

“I don’t know,” Swan, 19, told them.

Those were his last words.

They shot him. The bullet pierced his heart. He was dead in less than a minute.

They then ransacked the home and stole two kilos of weed and $3,000.

In sentencing Tsega to nine years in prison, Aitken said he didn’t have the foresight to know someone would end up dead. The judge called him a young naive man who made a foolish decision, but reminded the court: “But for Tsega, this home invasion and killing would never have occurred … He got the ball rolling by giving the information and had the power to put the brakes on the operation.”

She added: “It was a tragic and senseless killing that has forever changed the fabric of the Barrhaven community.”

The manslaughter conviction and sentencing come after six years of legal proceedings for Swan’s family and friends. His parents withstood a long trip through the criminal justice system, sitting quietly in court across four convictions, and listening to horrifying details about their 19-year-old son’s last moments. At best, they say, they felt like spectators, victimized by it all.

“You have been living a parent’s worst nightmare for the last seven years,” Aitken said.

She said the justice system failed the Swans by taking so long to prosecute the young men who killed their son, and she blamed the delays on the complexity of the evidence, a lack of resources, and decisions by both the Crown and defence lawyers.

Tsega, who was expelled from Carleton University after he was charged, was credited with 17 months for pre-trial custody. 

Aiken said she hopes the family can move forward and not be defined by the tragedy, but it’ll be hard for them to put it behind them, what with parole board hearings down the road.

To Dale and Rea Swan, the number of years Sam Tsega got “really matter at this point.”

The Swans didn’t have a problem with the sentence, but they were beside themselves by Tsega’s apology.

“It never ends for us,” Dale Swan said moments after the trial. He said he’d like to leave it in the past “but his loss is with us everyday.”

Alex Swan said no number of years will bring his brother back. 

Tsega is the final accomplice to be sentenced. Kristopher McLellan, the shooter, was convicted of first-degree murder, and the other two masked accomplices, Kyle Mullen and Dylon Barnett, were convicted of second-degree murder.

At Barnett’s sentencing hearing last year, Swan’s father, Dale, a private man, stood up in court to finally put a human face on his family’s tragedy: “I take exception that I have to do this in open court and before one of the very individuals responsible for my son’s death. This, in itself, I consider a form of victimization, but I realize this will be my only opportunity to try to put a human face on what has been, up to now a very cold, clinical, detached legal process.”

Aiken said on Thursday that listening to the Swan family’s victim impact statements marked her saddest time in 20 years on the bench. 

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Carson Morin says he killed out of fear, not greed. 

The Orleans man, just 20 at the time, was running strippers and one of them had left his grip and cut him out of the profits. When he went to collect his money, he found Michael Wassill standing at the front door, trying to protect the young dancer.

Morin, now 24, says he killed Wassill in self-defence, and on Tuesday the jury at his first-degree murder trial started hearing his side of the story.

In opening statements by defence lawyer Natasha Calvinho, court heard that Morin had a plan on May 15, 2013, but that murder wasn’t part of it.

Morin was afraid to go collect his money. He went just the same because he needed the money. He had been shot at in the past and was afraid he’d be attacked again, particularly after talking to Wassill on the phone when he asked if he could come over to his home, where the stripper was living. During the call, Morin said, he heard voices in the background that sounded like the same guys who tried to kill him in the past. 

His lawyer told the jury that Morin will testify about the deadly fight between him and Wassill.

Michael Wassill had his throat slit at his home on May 15, 2013.

“Carson will tell you that he was scared and that he took the knife (box cutter) out of the front pouch of his hoodie to get Mike off of him, not to kill him. Carson was just trying to get Michael Wassill to release the grip he had on him — he was just trying to fend off the person who had ahold of him,” Calvinho told the jury. 

“He was scared for his life. … He was scared and just wanted out. That’s why he took the X-Acto knife out, pushed the blade up and swung blindly behind him. To escape. To free himself. To run in fear,” Calvinho said.

Then, when Morin saw Wassill grab at his bleeding neck, he panicked and ran.

Morin later turned himself in to police, but not before dumping the bloody knife, gloves and changing his clothes.

The defence lawyer told the jury that Morin has been wracked with remorse since the killing.

“He’ll tell you about the shame, the remorse, the fear and the heartache he lives with everyday, knowing that his actions caused the death of another. And he will tell you about how he has cried, how he is alone, scared and in jail,” Calvinho told the packed court.

Morin took the stand in his own defence, and in examination-in-chief, his lawyer guided the jury through his troubled life story to establish that the “moment-of-panic” killing was in part due to the “paranoia and fear” that have cordoned him.

Morin testified he had a difficult childhood. He was raised by a drug-addled father and a mother who had to work long hours to raise him alone after divorce. Her job took her to Detroit, where, as a teen, Morin ended up in jail for weed possession and stealing a set of golf clubs. He thought the streets were “violent and unpredictable” but his four months in county jail proved far worse.

“I had a very hard time in there. I was young, I was small and I was white. I had a really hard time. … I just wanted to survive so I did what I had to do,” Morin told the jury.

He was deported back to Canada in 2010 and his father picked him up in Windsor, Ont., and Morin got a job in commercial flooring. But he got laid off and hatched a plan to run a network of strippers in Ottawa. (He installed a stripper’s pole and mirrors at his Orleans condo so the girls could practise their trade.)

The jury heard he had a criminal record in Ottawa for theft and assault and served a month in jail. He had one of his strippers sign a contract saying she’d pay the bills and take care of his condo while he was in jail. She let the bills pile up and trashed the place, Morin told court.

The prosecution’s theory is that Morin killed for greed and that Wassill, known as a stand-up guy who never let his friends down, spent his final moments in life trying to protect his friend, the stripper he had encouraged to leave Morin. Wassill had let her stay at his Orleans home and it cost him his life, prosecutors contend.

The trial continues Wednesday in courtroom No. 35 at the Elgin Street courthouse. 

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Ian Bush’s wife didn’t know anything about the toolkit for murder down in the basement.

But she certainly recognized the bag.

“It’s my old briefcase,” she testified at her ex-husband’s triple-murder trial on Thursday.

Ian Bush, 61, is on trial for the savage 2007 killings of retired tax judge Alban Garon, his wife Raymonde, and friend Marie-Claire Beniskos. The seniors were bound, beaten and suffocated inside the judge’s Riverside Drive condo. 

Under examination-in-chief by assistant Crown attorney James Cavanagh, the accused killer’s ex-wife said she didn’t recognize its key contents — including a sawed-off .22 rifle, live ammo and heavy plastic bags marked with suffocation warnings. The dishwashing gloves may have been hers, she said.

She also testified she didn’t know her ex-husband had been writing a crime novel he billed as a sophisticated crime case, and not a “message from another homicidal kook looking for her 15 minutes of fame.”

There was a lot she didn’t know about her ex-husband. “I was always told his business is none of my business,” said the ex-wife, whose identity is shielded by a publication ban. 

She also revealed to the jury that their “up-and-down” union was far removed from perfect.

They fought constantly, and worse, she testified: “He belittled me all the time.” 

She was the breadwinner in the family, while Bush ran a failed consultant firm that listed names of fake associates to make his one-man, home-office company look bigger.

His ex-wife also recalled Bush’s deep hatred for the tax man.

She recalled him saying: “Those rat bastards aren’t going to get any more money out of me.”

“He was against taxation. He was very angry. His voice would rise and I used to say ‘Calm down, calm down,'” she told court.

He owed $17,000 in income tax and Bush borrowed the money from his mother to pay it, she testified.

The prosecution theory is that Bush — enraged over the bitter tax feud — targeted Garon, the former chief justice of Canada’s tax court. The judge, according to prosecutors, was the “focal point of his rage” while his wife and Beniskos were at the wrong place at the wrong time.

The jury has also heard about an “arrogant and insulting” letter that Bush faxed to the retired judge, in which he summoned him to his home for a bizarre hearing. The letter, first reported in the Citizen in 2015, summoned Garon to appear at an address in Orléans — Bush’s home — to review a decision that dismissed his income-tax appeal.

The case against Bush, who has pleaded not guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, is anchored in DNA — his blood and hair found at the scene — and security video of him at a nearby OC Transpo station moments before and after the killings.

Police linked him to the killings in 2015 after DNA evidence from an unrelated violent crime matched profiles found at the 2007 crime scene.

It was his son, Brock Bush, who helped police identify his father in the OC Transpo video that was shown for the jury Thursday. The jury was also shown a 2015 videotaped police interview with Brock Bush, who was asked to review the footage.

“That’s my dad,” Brock Bush tells Sgt. Greg Brown.

He picked him out right away, saying he could tell by his clothes, his bag, the way he walked and his fanny pack (where his father kept his chewing tobacco and money).

There’s no doubt that’s your dad, the homicide detective asks.

“Yeah, like 95 per cent for sure,” Brock Bush says.

Brock Bush also testified against his father Thursday.

He said he’s now 100 per cent sure it’s his father in the video.

Asked by Cavanagh to explain the different answer, Brock Bush told court that back in 2015 he was still in “a state of shock” over his father’s arrest.

The trial resumes Monday at the Elgin Street courthouse.

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 After a 14-week trial, the jury in the first-degree murder trial of Carson Morin is now deliberating the fate of the killer who had dreams of running a stripper network from his Orléans condo.

It wasn’t a Whodunnit? case, with the jury hearing early on that Morin, 24, admitted he slit Mike Wassill’s throat but didn’t plan to, nor did he intend to kill. 

Morin took the stand in his own defence at trial and tried to explain away his deadly path on May 15, 2013. He said a stripper owed him money and he was behind in rent, and needed it badly. The stripper had sought refuge at Wassill’s Orléans home. Wassill spent his last act in life trying to protect his friend from the rage of a cold-blooded killer, prosecutors told the jury.

Morin told the jury he had problems in the past, with him dodging bullets in the streets from rivals, and it was out of fear that he armed himself with a box-cutter when he showed up at Wassill’s house to collect his money, or as he called it, “my paper.” 

And he said he slipped on latex gloves because it calmed his nerves and boosted his confidence, and when it came to recounting the moment he slit Wassill’s throat, Morin wanted the jury to believe that “I didn’t mean to hurt him.”

“It was for my own protection. It was a last resort. I didn’t intend to use it,” he testified.

Morin also made a point of telling the jury that he was “on trial for my life right now.”

In closing arguments earlier this week, his defence lawyer Leo Russomanno urged the jury to convict him of manslaughter, saying the murder case against Morin fell short, and that his client didn’t intend, nor plan to kill Wassill. Russomanno noted that Morin’s post-offence behaviour alone plainly showed that his client did anything but plan out the killing.

The Crown is looking for a first-degree murder conviction and has presented Morin as a lying, cold-blooded killer. His victim, Wassill, was known to friends and family as a standup guy who was always there for his friends, like he was on the last day of his life, court heard.

The jury heard Morin panicked after the killing, and ran at the sight of Wassill grabbing at his bleeding neck. Morin later turned himself in to police, but not before changing his clothes and dumping the bloody knife and gloves.

His other defence lawyer, Natasha Calvinho, has told the jury Morin has been wracked with guilt.

A Gatineau jury on Friday convicted an Aylmer man of murdering his estranged wife and parents-in-law five years ago.

Shakti Ramsurrun was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder.

Anne-Katherine Powers, 21, her mother, Louise Leboeuf, 63, and stepfather Claude Lévesque, 58, were found dead in the family home at 64 Félix-Leclerc St. in May 2012.

Ramsurrun, who was 28 when Gatineau police nabbed him on the killings, faces the rest of his life behind bars with no chance for parole for 25 years. That is the mandatory sentence for a first-degree murder conviction.

In 2012, friends described how Ramsurrun and Powers met on a cruise ship on a trip to the Caribbean in December 2009. They would marry in his native Mauritius and have a son. Powers stayed at home with their son and was writing a book, a friend said at the time.

The relationship soured over time.

Shortly after charging Ramsurrun, police said the victims were killed with a sharp weapon.

Ramsurrun, who in December 2011 received his permanent resident status in Canada, worked at a Gatineau golf course before he was arrested.

A court previously rejected the defence’s argument that there was an unreasonable delay in bringing the charges to trial.

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Shakti Ramsurrun was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder.

In the three years since her daughter was shot and killed, Victoria Lebrasseur makes a birthday cake each year for Amanda Trottier, the daughter who won’t come home.

Each year, Trottier’s little girl blows out the candles.

Lebrasseur and her husband, Claude Trottier, have rebuilt their lives around raising their granddaughter, now seven years old, who can’t be named under a court order.

“We told her the truth. She knows her mother is in heaven and not coming back,” Lebrasseur said Tuesday.

The first Christmas after Amanda’s death, the girl asked Santa Claus to bring back her mother, Lebrasseur said.

And she told Quebec Superior Court that the little girl asked her: “Why did the bad guys kill Travis and Mommy, Grandma?”

Lebrasseur said she has remained strong for her granddaughter during the daytime. “I cried when she was asleep. I told her Mommy is in heaven and can’t come back, but loves you so much.”

And she told of a never-ending feeling of “guilt for not being able to save our only daughter.”

On Tuesday, a man and woman were sentenced for the shooting deaths of Trottier and her boyfriend Travis Votour, both 23, in their townhouse on Eardley Terrace. They were killed in January 2014 while Trottier’s daughter slept upstairs.

René Samson-Vonrichter pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Trottier’s death and second-degree murder in Votour’s death. His girlfriend, Sonia Vilon, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in each death. Both had been charged with first-degree murder.

For the murder, Samson-Vonrichter was sentenced to life with a minimum of 15 years before he can be paroled. He is sentenced to 12 years concurrent to that for manslaughter.

Vilon was sentenced to 12 years on each manslaughter count. Those sentences will also run concurrently.

Both defendants also drew short sentences for drug trafficking. They have been in custody since the spring of 2015.

Court has heard that drug dealer Ronald Brazeau Jr. believed Votour had stolen drugs from him and sent Samson-Vonrichter to rough him up.

“It went terribly wrong,” Samson-Vonrichter said Tuesday, reading an apology. He said he intended only to “scare” Votour and take back the stolen property.

“You lost a daughter and a daughter lost a mother … I think about what I have done and my heart breaks,” he said.

Lebrasseur and Claude Trottier were the ones who discovered the two bodies.

“We walked into a nightmare,” Lebrasseur said in her own statement to the court.

“To find Amanda and Travis in a pool of blood — the worst day of our lives.” She remembers collapsing on the ground, shaking.

The couple spent months in a fog afterward, “still waiting for Amanda to walk through the door and say, ‘Hi guys!'” she said.

Outside the court, the victims’ families weren’t buying the apology, nor the theory that the shootings were in any way involuntary.

“Sonia Vilon should have got the same sentence as her boyfriend, life in prison. That’s what I believe,” Claude Trottier said after the court session. “I’m pissed off. I’m not happy with the outcome.”

He shrugged off Samson-Vonrichter’s apology. “What is ‘sorry’? My daughter isn’t here any more. My daughter’s life was worth more than a small apology after two years (when) they said they were innocent.”

He wore a T-shirt saying “Justice for Amanda.”

Last week, Brazeau pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Votour’s death but not guilty to Trottier’s killing. He goes to trial in the fall.

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Michael Belleus, just 25, could have done anything with his life but he chose to pick up a gun with an eye to so-called easy money in the city’s deadly crack trade.

And on Wednesday, just as most folks were having supper, it cost him his freedom, after a jury found him guilty in the 2012 drive-by killing of rival crack dealer Levy Kasende, 22.

Moments before condemning the killer to life in prison, Ontario Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips told court that, of all the testimony across seven weeks, no truer words were spoken than when a witness said the drug game has only two endings: You either end up in prison or you end up dead.

The judge noted their positions in the violent drug trade have likely already been filled by other young men, and he had a sharp warning for them: “To those young men — get out, get out now, before you meet the same fate.”

The jury found Belleus guilty of first-degree murder after hearing a strong, yet circumstantial case presented by assistant Crown attorneys Fara Rupert and Matthew Guigan-Miller.

Nobody got a look at the shooter who fired from the lowered window of a Mazda minivan that pulled up outside a townhouse in Blackburn Hamlet. There was just the flash from a gun. Kasende was shot in the right thigh, and in the back, that bullet piercing his heart. Though it was a straight identification case, it was stacked with a pile of evidence that all led back to Belleus, right down to the fact that he had borrowed the minivan, the one found abandoned and engulfed in flames on a country road minutes after the killing.

The defence, led by Anne London-Weinstein and Neil Weinstein, said the shooting was anything but planned and it was more likely that a Belleus associate squeezed the trigger then claimed that Kasende was the one who was plotting to kill their client.

Levy Kasende, who was shot and killed in 2012.

But the jury didn’t buy it and instead found that the murder was planned and deliberate and that Belleus opened fire in a revenge killing. Belleus was bent on revenge because Kasende has shot him in the arm on Canada Day in 2010 over a drug-turf feud. After Belleus was shot, police tried to interview him as a victim but he refused to co-operate, saying only that he’d deal with it himself.

Belleus was so hungry for revenge, he offered $2,000 on the street for anyone who could tell him where he could find Kasende. 

And on the night he died, Kasende wouldn’t have been hard to find. His girlfriend, and the mother of child, had just moved into Belleus’s “crack territory,” out on Innes Road, and just a few doors down from one of Belleus’s associates. 

In haunting words recalled in court, Kasende himself told friends: “This neighbourhood is going to be the death of me.”

Kasende knew the east-end streets well and knew Belleus was after him. In fact, when he went to visit his girlfriend and child on the night of Aug. 24, he brought a sawed-off shotgun, the one he tucked under the bed just in case.

Levy Kasende had finally embraced his future as a young father but the crack dealer couldn’t escape his past, and it cost him his life. In a victim-impact statement read in court by a prosecutor, the grieving mother of his young child told court that Kasende never got to hear his child’s first word — Dadda — and never got to see them crawl or walk for the first time.

Belleus did not take the stand in his own defence and when asked if he wanted to finally say something, he said: “I’m an innocent man.”

He will be eligible for parole in 25 years. The successful police investigation was led by Det. Chris Benson and Sgt. Darren Vinet and the trial had heavy police security in its final days.

The judge thanked the jury for taking its duty so seriously.

gdimmock@postmedia.com

http://www.twitter.com/crimegarden

A convicted killer who spent a staggering 18 months in solitary confinement is suing the Ottawa jail for “degrading and inhuman” treatment that, for a time, cost him his mind, according to a $500,000 lawsuit filed Wednesday.

The case of Mutuir Rehman, first brought to light by the Citizen last year, “epitomizes the reason why the whole system of solitary confinement is under review at the current time,” said his lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon.

Rehman was 22 when he found himself in jail after his arrest on murder charges in the 2013 killing of Andre Boisclair.

He’d had a chaotic childhood. By the age of 10, he was getting high. Once good with numbers, he eventually dropped out of school and started selling crack. But no matter his hardened street life, nothing had prepared him for his time at the jail on Innes Road, where he was shown a solitary confinement cell as punishment for fighting with inmates and guards.

He would spend 23 hours a day for 18 months in isolation at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre, with no access to newspapers, TV or radio. They fed him through a hatch, and beyond the odd 20-minute visit with a relative, he spent his days absent of human interaction.

Rehman started hallucinating in his lonely cell and, in the end, might have lost his mind.

“He looks like he’s losing his brains,” his father, Habib Rehman, told the Citizen at the time.

The lawsuit alleges that nobody at the jail recognized or reported the deteriorating mental health of Rehman, now 24. (It was his then-lawyer Dominic Lamb, alone, who flagged it.)

At the request of Lamb, Rehman was transferred for treatment at Royal Ottawa, where he was diagnosed with an acute episode of schizophrenia. According to a mental status examination at the hospital, Rehman expressed some delusion and smiled and grinned while talking about serious matters such as the murder case against him.

A forensic psychiatrist found Rehman unfit for trial and said his mental health worsened in his 18 months in solitary confinement. 

After being removed from the jail and receiving treatment at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, Rehman‘s mental state improved enough for him to plead guilty to manslaughter in the 2013 death of ex-con Boisclair. (Rehman was subjected to what the hospital calls chemical restraining, in which patients are restrained and administered drugs to ease aggression.)

His trial lawyer argued that there should be a legal remedy for Rehman’s claimed charter violations while in solitary, but the judge said it was a case for civil court.

And that’s where the case is now.

According to the statement of claim, the jail failed Rehman miserably and:

• Deprived him of his right to life, liberty and security, to be free from arbitrary detention, and the right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual treatment or punishment;
• The jail owed him a duty of care for his mental and physical health while in custody;
• The jail failed to properly monitor damaging effects of solitary confinement;
• The jail failed to have a regular system of assessment of the impact of lengthy solitary confinement; 
• The jail failed to follow, let alone be aware of, internationally recognized and accepted time limits of solitary confinement that say more than 15 days can cause brain damage;
• That he suffered pain, loss of enjoyment of life and extreme psychological harm.

None of the allegations has been proven in court and the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services has yet to file a statement of defence. Spokesman Brent Ross said it would be inappropriate to comment on a case before the courts.

Rehman’s parents have said they have no family history of mental illness.

The statement of claim is also seeking damages and legal fees. Rehman is now serving eight years at Millhaven Institution, a maximum-security prison in Bath, Ont. 

gdimmock@postmedia.com

www.twitter.com/crimegarden

In the spring of 1868, an eminent Father of Confederation was assassinated outside his boarding house. The man convicted of killing him was hung the following year in what would be Canada’s last public execution. This is one of 15 Canadian stories we present as part the Citizen’s Canada 150 coverage.

—

It was shortly after 2 a.m. on April 7, 1868 by the time debate in the House of Commons closed and the day’s session adjourned.

Montreal West MP – and Father of Confederation – Thomas D’Arcy McGee had earlier in the evening delivered an impassioned plea urging Nova Scotians not to reject Confederation, an address that, according to Hansard, commanded “great” applause and which many in the House said was among the finest ever given by the man regarded at the time as the young nation’s most gifted orator.

In a celebratory mood afterwards, McGee reportedly bought three cigars at the House’s bar, lighting one with his Liberal-Conservative party’s leader, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald. He then spoke with Nova Scotia Anti-Confederation MP Dr. James Fraser Forbes while waiting for Liberal MP and friend Robert MacFarlane to finish his whisky. (McGee himself was no stranger to strong drink, but had recently sworn himself to abstinence.)

MacFarlane helped McGee on with his overcoat and the two spilled out into the cold, clear Ottawa night.

Despite the hearty applause that had followed his speech, McGee knew his words would not be welcomed in all quarters, and particularly not by members and sympathizers of the Fenian Brotherhood — militant Irish nationalists who viewed McGee, a onetime Irish revolutionary who in his 20s described himself as a “traitor to the British government,” as a turncoat to the Irish cause. More recently, however, McGee had advocated for a strong British North America and was a vociferous proponent of a uniquely Canadian spirit, independent of residents’ current geography or past provenance.

This very evening, in fact, he had closed his speech by noting “I … speak here not as the representative of any race, or of any Province, but as thoroughly and emphatically a Canadian, ready and bound to recognize the claims, if any, of my Canadian fellow subjects, from the farthest east to the farthest west, equally as those of my nearest neighbour, or of the friend who proposed me on the hustings.”

This was not the sort of talk that the Fenians, whose plans included taking over parts of Canada to hold ransom for Irish independence from Britain, liked to hear.

Thomas D’Arcy McGee.

McGee put on his gloves and white top hat and, passing doorkeeper Patrick Buckley, left the Centre Block with MacFarlane, the pair slowly ambling down the Hill’s central path towards Wellington Street. With one bad leg, McGee walked with the aid of a silver-handled bamboo cane, also leaning occasionally on MacFarlane’s arm. A full moon lit their way. 

They passed through the Hill’s front gate, then turned left on Wellington, walking the short distance to Metcalfe Street. From there, they crossed Wellington and continued a block south on Metcalfe to Dwyer’s Fruit Store at the corner of Sparks Street, where they parted ways — MacFarlane heading east on Sparks towards his home in Lowertown; McGee turning west towards his lodgings in the Toronto House, better known as Mrs. Trotter’s Boarding House, barely 100 metres away.

As he turned, MacFarlane noticed the parliamentary doorkeeper’s brother, John Buckley, and three other men following behind. McGee crossed to the south side of Sparks and heard Buckley call out, “Good night, Mr. McGee.”

“Good morning,” McGee replied, “It is morning now.”

These are his last known words.

The first of the three doors to Mrs. Trotter’s led to the public bar. McGee passed that entrance and took out his key for the second, the guests’ entrance. As he opened the door, he was approached from behind. His attacker pressed a cold Smith & Wesson revolver to the back of his neck and pulled the trigger.

An Ontario auction house is selling what it claims is the gun used in the killing of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, the fiery Father of Confederation whose 1868 murder remains the only assassination of a federal politician in Canadian history.

Mary Ann Trotter, the widow who owned the boarding house, was still up, waiting for her 13-year-old son, Willie, who worked as a House of Commons page, to return home. She later remarked that she had heard “quick steps passing the dining room window” and “a noise as of someone rattling at the hall door.” As she opened the door, she heard what sounded like a firecracker going off. A figure lay slumped in the doorway, his face unrecognizable. The white top hat, cane and cigar, however, gave him away. It was McGee.

***

Later that day in the House of Commons, John A. Macdonald paid tribute to his friend and colleague: “He has lived a short life, respected and beloved, and died a heroic death; a martyr to the cause of his country. How easy it would have been for him, had he chosen, to have sailed along the full tide of popularity with thousands and hundreds of thousands following him, without the loss of a single plaudit, but he has been slain, and I fear slain because he preferred the path of duty.”

Thomas D’Arcy McGee funeral in Montreal 1868.

McGee was given a state funeral. On a freezing cold April 13 – on what would have been his 43th birthday — upwards of 80,000 people lined Montreal’s Rue Saint-Jacques to watch his funeral cortège, a procession that consisted of 15,000 mourners in a city of just 105,000, as a half-dozen horses drew his hearse to St. Patrick’s Basilica. It was, at the time, the largest funeral yet held in British North America. McGee was interred at Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery.

Meanwhile, the Ottawa constabulary had found its man, they believed, in one Patrick James “Jim” Whelan, 28, a recent immigrant, tailor and alleged Fenian sympathizer. The evidence eventually gathered against Whelan was profuse but circumstantial: He was in attendance in the spectators’ gallery at the House of Commons that evening; he had earlier been seen there with a gun; his gun had recently been fired (for which an innocent explanation existed); he had previously threatened McGee’s life; boot prints discovered in the snow opposite Mrs. Trotter’s matched his; a lumberjack who claimed to have witnessed the murder identified Whelan as the culprit; and detectives hiding near Whelan’s cell in the Carleton County Gaol on Nicholas Street testified that they heard Whelan admit to the killing. “I shot that fellow,” he purportedly bragged to his friend John Doyle, who had also been arrested. “I shot him like a dog.”

As editor James Moylan wrote in Kingston’s Canadian Freeman newspaper during the Police Magistrate’s Inquiry immediately following the murder, “The evidence, thus far, though barely circumstantial, is so well knit, so convincing, and so minute in all its details, that it is exceedingly difficult to divest the mind of the impression that Whelan has been connected with the perpetration of the dreadful crime.”

By today’s standards, the eight-day trial, held in September, and subsequent appeals were hardly impartial. The jurors were all Protestants, while Whelan was Catholic. McGee’s good friend, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, took in the proceedings from a chair beside Chief Justice William Buell Richards, who not only presided over the trial but also cast the deciding vote in two appeals, each time upholding the original verdict and his ruling sentencing Whelan to death.

Throughout, Whelan maintained his innocence. “I am here standing on the brink of my grave,” he said following the announcement of the verdict, “and I wish to declare to you and to my God that I am innocent, that I never committed this deed, and that, I know in my heart and soul.” He did, however, eventually concede that he was present when McGee was shot and knew who pulled the trigger, but that he would prefer a hanging death than to be remembered as an informant.

On Feb. 11, 1869, Patrick James Whelan was hanged in front of a crowd of more than 5,000 spectators. His death was not quick: the drop from the gallows did not break his neck. Instead, it took about five minutes for him to strangle to death. “The prisoner,” reported the Citizen, “died very hard.” His was Canada’s last public execution. He was buried in the courtyard of the Nicholas Street jail where the hanging took place.

***

In life, McGee was a champion of Canada and Confederation, of minority rights, and one of the first to publicly favour jettisoning such qualifying descriptions as Irish-Canadian, French-Canadian and English-Canadian in favour of simply Canadian. “By Herculean labor, he succeeded to a large extent in tearing up, root and branch, senseless and inveterate prejudices,” wrote Halifax Archbishop Thomas-Louis Connolly, “and blending all hearts in one common effort for one common weal.”

This cast brass plaque, acknowledging the assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, was mounted on the Ottawa Evening Citizen building at 142 Sparks Street until the building’s demolition in 1974.

For many, his assassination helped coalesce that effort, as even his enemies distanced themselves from and condemned the act. In his two-volume biography of McGee, David A. Wilson notes that the nationalist Canada First movement of 1868 sprang from its founders’ admiration of McGee and his principles. “It was in some respects,” Wilson wrote, “a Canadian version of Young Ireland in its pre-revolutionary incarnation — a group of poets, intellectuals, writers who set out to replace a colonial mentality with a sense of pride and self-worth, who employed history and literature for the cultivation of national sentiment, and who stood for self-government within the empire.”

Its manifesto’s description of McGee might best sum up his contribution to Canada. He was, it claimed, “one who breathed into our new Dominion the spirit of a proud self-reliance, and first taught Canadians to respect themselves.”

Mohamad S. Barkhadle looked confused Thursday as he appeared in an Ottawa court on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of the woman whose toddler son spent 10 days fending for himself after her death. 

Barkhadle, 31, winced and shook his head repeatedly as the charge was read. At one point, the justice of the peace told him to pay attention.

But this wasn’t Barkhadle’s first trip through the Elgin Street courthouse. 

READ: Two-year-old Ottawa boy fended for himself in apartment for 10 days after mom was killed

In fact, he was last set free on Oct. 26 after Justice Heather Perkins-McVey denied a Crown application to brand Barkhadle a dangerous offender, which would have kept him behind bars for an indeterminate sentence. The Crown also brought an application to designate Barkhadle a long-term offender, which would have come with strict supervision once he was released into the community. Perkins-McVey also denied that application. 

Instead, the judge set Barkhadle free after giving him one and a half times credit for the time spent in pre-trial custody at the Innes Road jail. The judge said that conditions at the jail were “difficult” and noted that there were no rehab programs available for the addict there. 

Before setting him free in October, the judge said: “Hopefully this has been a wakeup call to Mr. Barkhadle, as he will be closely monitored in future.”

Months later, in May, Barkhadle was again arrested for more serious crimes, including charges of attempted murder for allegedly choking another woman. In that alleged attack, Barkhadle was also charged with aggravated sexual assault, forcible confinement, overcoming resistance by choking, uttering threats, breach of probation and failure to report as required.

Those crimes are alleged to have happened months after police now say Barkhadle killed the woman in March.

Condo, who successfully spared Barkhadle a dangerous offender label back in October, is again representing the now-accused killer. 

Barkhadle has been on the police radar for awhile. In 2012, police obtained an arrest warrant for him and circulated his picture to the public as they hunted for a suspect who had choked a woman during a robbery. The police have also told the press that they fear there may be more victims.

In 2010, Barkhadle was arrested and charged with pimping a 17-year-old girl. He was charged with procuring, living off the avails of prostitution, living off the avails of a juvenile prostitute using violence and breach of probation. 

Major crime detectives are asking the public to help them identify a man who may be a witness in the stabbing death of teenaged Zakaria Iqbal in the Vanier district last month.

The man is described as black, 25 to 30 years old, five feet six inches tall with a slim build and wearing baggy jeans, a Nike hoodie and a black baseball cap. At the time, he had a cast on his left hand and wrist.

Iqbal, who had just turned 18, was stabbed to death Nov. 27 behind a building on Montreal Road at Lajoie Street known as a trouble spot to police and to residents. Iqbal and his friends were believed to have visited a unit to smoke marijuana purchased at a nearby dispensary before the stabbing, this newspaper reported last month.

Police photo shows cast on wrist of possible witness in Zakariah Iqbal homicide.

Iqbal had recently graduated from Gloucester High School, where he played basketball, and was taking university courses with an eye to studying business. A cousin called him a loyal friend and loving son and said his family was heartbroken.

His killing was Ottawa’s 14th homicide of 2017.

Anyone with information regarding this investigation is asked to call the major crime section at 613-236-1222, ext. 5493. Anonymous tips can be made to Crime Stoppers toll-free at 1-800-222-8477  or by downloading the Ottawa Police app.

A man wanted on a Canada-wide warrant for 18 months has been arrested in Toronto and charged with second-degree murder in the ByWard Market shooting death of Omar Rashid-Ghader, one of the original members of Ottawa’s most notorious street gang.  

Mustafa Yusuf Ahmed, 30, was arrested by the Toronto repeat offender parole enforcement squad. He has been wanted on a Canada-wide warrant since the death of Rashid-Ghader on Aug 14, 2016.

Omar Rashid-Ghader was shot multiple times on Aug. 14, 2016.

Rashid-Ghader, 33, was at the Sentral Night Club where Brooklyn hip-hop artist Maino was scheduled to perform. Around 3:20 a.m., Rashid-Ghader was shot multiple times, sending patrons scattering. Police tried to resuscitate him before paramedics arrived, but Rashid-Ghader was pronounced dead at the scene.

The incident was one of four shootings around the city that day, but it was the only fatal incident.

That day, police said Ahmed, a known associate of the victim, was wanted in Rashid-Ghader’s death, and warned that Ahmed was considered armed and dangerous. Since then, police have said that they believed he was in the Greater Toronto Area.

Rashid-Ghader was an original member of the south-end Ledbury-Banff Crips.

Known as “Esco” — short for “Escobar” — he had multiple dealings with the law dating back at least to 2003, and was convicted of two counts of criminal harassment relating to a home invasion in 2005. He was also an aspiring rapper and hip hop performer.

Ahmed is to appear in court in Ottawa on Friday.

Accused killer Adam Picard is expected to file a fresh application for another stay of his first-degree murder case on grounds that it took too long to get to trial. 

Picard, 34, in fact, had won a stay back in 2016 for unreasonable delay after spending four years in jail awaiting trial for the June 2012 killing of Fouad Nayel, 28.

The stunning decision that saw Picard walk out of court a free man devastated Nayel’s family. Even the judge said the justice system had failed everyone. But Ontario’s appeal court disagreed with the trial judge’s interpretation of the Jordan decision and reinstated the murder charge against Picard. The former military man surrendered in September, was sent back to jail and scheduled for trial in April.

But now there’s another delay in a case once stayed for too many delays.

Nicole and Amine Nayel are photographed in their Ottawa home on Wednesday June 14, 2017. Their son, Fouad Nayel, was killed in 2012.

The so-called Jordan decision was issued in July 2016, when the Supreme Court of Canada, in a 5-4 ruling, said unreasonable delay was to be presumed if proceedings topped 18 months in provincial court or 30 months in Superior Court.

Picard’s legal team, now led by Michael Crystal, has been granted an adjournment for more time to prepare. So the first-degree murder case scheduled for April will now unfold in September.

Picard’s defence team believes he is innocent an intends to vigorously defend him.

It is unclear if Picard will pursue his notice for leave to appeal the reinstatement of his murder charge.

Picard’s murder charge was reinstated after the appeal court said the case deserved more latitude since charges were laid well before the Jordan ruling, and that the delays would have been acceptable under the previous legal regime.

The appeal court also said Justice Julianne Parfett made mistakes in her trial delay calculations.

The appeal court found that, properly analyzed, the Crown could be held responsible for only 14 months of the four-year delay, which would keep the case well within the bounds of previous Supreme Court guidelines.

On the day the trial judge set Picard free, she told court:

 “I cannot but emphasize that the more serious the charges, the more the justice system has to work to ensure that the matter is tried within a reasonable time … the thread that runs through the present case is the culture of complacency that the Supreme Court condemned in Jordan.”

Nayel, a 28-year-old construction worker, had been missing for five months when his decomposed remains were discovered in the woods near Calabogie in 2012.

Police say Nayel knew his accused killer through drug deals.

Assistant Crown attorneys Dallas Mack and Louise Tansey declined to comment on their long-awaited prosecution of Adam Picard.

Picard’s defence lawyer also declined to comment.

gdimmock@postmedia.com

twitter.com/crimegarden

It was a shocking murder case from the Ottawa Valley: a son accused of hiring a hitman to brutally kill his wealthy father.

Now, nearly 20 years after Kenneth Dick was left to die in a Renfrew County field, the final chapter in the story may have been written.

This week, convicted killer Leroy Baumhour died from natural causes in a Kingston prison, age 66.

Nonetheless, the crime and the questions that haunted the victim’s family for years remain, mostly because the man accused of plotting his father’s death never had his day in court.

In fact, Lois Dick, sister-in-law of the slain Kenneth Dick, said Friday she believes Baumhour has taken a secret to his grave, one she says “tore the family apart.”

•

Baumhour confessed to killing Kenneth Dick, the well-liked and well-to-do 81-year-old cattle rancher.

He testified in 2000 that he had been promised $8,000 in cash for doing the deed on Aug. 24, 1999.

A career criminal who often boasted he had spent nearly his entire adult life in jail, Baumhour claimed he was drawn into the scheme when an associate in Picton introduced him to Peter Dick — the only child of the Renfrew cattle rancher.

Peter Dick offered the man cash to kill his father and “make it look like an accident,” Baumhour would later testify.

However, Peter Dick died in July 2001 while out on bail awaiting trial. He left behind five daughters, and at the time his widow, Eileen, vehemently denied his involvement in his father’s death. 

Murder victim Kenneth Dick.

“It was a very difficult time for the family, and the sad part of it was that Ken’s son was accused (of contracting the man to kill his father) and charged, but he died before he ever got to court,” Lois Dick said Friday.

Lois, Peter’s “favourite aunt,” said she, for one, believes to this day her nephew was framed.

Peter Dick suffered from diabetes, and shortly before the murder he learned he had only two years to live, Lois Dick said. 

“I have my doubts. Peter may well have said something like, ‘I’ll have lots of money when the old man’s gone.’ And that might’ve planted the seed in someone else’s head,” she said.

Baumhour pleaded guilty to killing Kenneth Dick and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 14 years. He stuck by his story in a jailhouse interview following his sentence, where he claimed Peter Dick met with him a week after the killing and handed him a bundle of folded bills, “his hand to mine. And that was it.”

The night of the alleged exchange, police in Picton stormed into both men’s homes and arrested Baumhour and Dick at gunpoint. An accomplice, Roger Reavie, was picked up two weeks later in Saskatchewan on a Canada-wide arrest warrant.

“(Peter Dick) said his dad had screwed him around,” Baumhour claimed in the 2001 jailhouse interview with this newspaper. “He wanted to pay and I wanted the money. … Within 10 days, his father was dead.”

He said he felt pity for the Dick family, but said, “They’re never going to get any closure until they accept the fact of (Peter’s) involvement.”

Peter Dick is seen leaving his father’s funeral with his wife, Eileen.

Baumhour and Reavie were spotted around town on the day of the killing. A witness testified the two “seemed out of place” at the Cobden Sale Barn — the famed cattle market owned by Harry and Lois Dick, where Harry’s brother, Kenneth Dick, was known to take his regular seat, front-row centre.

Baumhour later admitted he stalked the elder Dick for a week before he and Reavie lured him from his retirement home into their car, telling him they were businessmen scouting for a source of fresh spring water to bottle and sell.

They drove down a gravel road and pulled over near the property where the Dick family has roots dating back to the 1850s. As Dick bent down to fill his Thermos with fresh water, Baumhour plunged a knife into the man’s heart, slit his throat and left him in the roadside stream, his pockets out-turned to make it look like a robbery.

The farmer who found the body was a lifelong friend of Dick’s, and would later testify to seeing the “strange green car” driving down the road with three people inside, only to pass by again driving the other direction, only now with two people inside. He took note of the licence plate.

Baumhour claimed he met Peter Dick a week later in Picton, where he said the slain man’s son forked over $4,300 in cash, on top of the $1,000 he had paid in advance.

The associate in Picton who had introduced the two men, a man identified in court as Gerry Lawton, entered the witness protection program, a fact confirmed at the time by Crown prosecutor Peter Barnes.

Another man, Norman Lawe, testified the same associate, Lawton, had approached him offering $10,000 for the contract killing in the summer of 1999. Lawe didn’t want the job, but passed the contact along to his friend, Leroy Baumhour.

•

Born in Ottawa, Baumhour never knew his father. His mother died in a car accident shortly after his birth, and he was adopted by a family in Picton, according to a friend. He dropped out of school at age 15 and soon spiralled into a life of crime.

He was weeping as he cradled his newborn daughter, named Adara, as he was led away to spend the rest of his life in prison. At the time of his arrest, at age 48, he was engaged to 18-year-old Christy Woodward.

A relative of the woman declined comment Friday.

Lois Dick, all these years later, still believes Peter Dick was innocent.

“He never got a chance to clear his name,” Lois Dick said. “I considered taking it further, but the family, most of them would just like to forget it and get past it.”

ahelmer@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/helmera

Brandon Ethier waved goodbye to his supporters in court Friday as he was led away to serve a minimum 11 years in prison, as Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips delivered withering remarks in sentencing Ethier for the October 2016 murder of his friend and roommate Joshua Briere.

“You should spend every day of the rest of your life remembering Joshua Briere,” the judge said. “You owe it to him, to the community and to yourself. You have a life to live, Joshua Briere does not.”

Ethier, now 29, stabbed the 26-year-old Briere twice as he argued with his “good friend” and roommate at their Clyde Avenue apartment during a birthday party fuelled by “copious drinking (where) a variety of drugs were consumed,” the judge said in a summary of the facts.

Ethier had testified he spent that day and night drinking heavily while using the eventual murder weapon, a 15-cm swivelled hunting knife, to cut cocaine into lines in his bedroom.

During a late-night argument, described by the judge as a disagreement over a perceived debt of $40 or $60, Ethier stormed out of his room, walked “directly” toward the unsuspecting Briere and stabbed him twice. One blow struck Briere in the arm and chest. The fatal blow went hilt-deep through Briere’s rib cage, piercing his heart.

“He reacted with a degree of violence that is shocking in the circumstances,” Phillips said, calling the killing “disturbingly senseless.”

Joshua Briere

Briere was unarmed and taken by surprise. Ethier “sprung the knife attack on him (and) gave him no prospect of a fighting chance.

“His decision to murder was so out of line with what was going on, and it is the unpredictable, irrational aspect to the violence that is troubling.

“The senseless nature (of the killing) just makes Joshua Briere’s death all the more tragic,” Phillips said. “It was clear that Joshua Briere was a man of many fine qualities who was well-loved. No sentence can truly recognize the extent of his loss on those who loved him most.”

The judge said he was “very struck” by the victim impact statements read into the record by Briere’s family, who described the void Briere’s death left on his parents, brothers and his young daughter.

Phillips also said he believed Ethier feels “genuine remorse.”

Ethier’s “judgment and mind were clouded by alcohol and drugs” at the time of the killing, Phillips said, and noted Ethier attempted suicide by taking fentanyl hours after killing Briere.

“In fact, I would go so far as to say that without alcohol or drugs this murder would not have happened.”

A jury found Ethier guilty of second-degree murder at the close of his four-week trial. He had previously pleaded guilty to manslaughter and claimed the killing was accidental, though witnesses to the killing testified it was deliberate.

Phillips considered arguments from the Crown, which had sought an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 12 years, and from Ethier’s defence team, which sought the minimum of 10 years.

Jurors also made recommendations, with seven suggesting a 10-year period of parole ineligibility, while others suggested a term between 12 and 14 years.

Ethier’s sentence, a minimum 11-year penitentiary term delivered Friday, will include credit for nearly one year for time Ethier served in pretrial custody.

While the prospect of Ethier’s rehabilitation was “not to be ignored,” the judge said, denunciation of the crime and deterrence of others like it were the principal goals of his sentence.

Phillips said Ethier’s lengthy criminal record, including violent crime convictions in 2008 and 2010 for robbery and assault with a weapon, and a 2012 breach of court conditions, has demonstrated a “persistent unwillingness to learn from his mistakes.”

After serving time for those crimes, the judge said, Ethier continued using and selling drugs.

“He still felt the inclination to possess a knife that by its design would have no other purpose than to be used as a weapon,” Phillips said of the murder weapon.

Phillips said the murder showed a “spontaneous loss of self-control and an abject failure by Mr. Ethier to keep his emotions in check. … He learned essentially nothing from his many involvements in the criminal justice system.”

ahelmer@postmedia.com

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Jennifer Teague’s murderer had taken his mother’s car and prowled around Barrhaven for three consecutive nights in September 2005, patiently searching for a victim.

On Sept. 8, 2005, Kevin Davis found his victim. He abducted the 18-year-old girl as she walked home from working the late shift at Wendy’s and later killed her in his bedroom while his mother slept in the next room. Davis had felt slighted by women. He wanted to kill a vulnerable young woman — and he didn’t particularly care who it was, says Greg Brown, the Ottawa police detective who was the lead investigator in the case that gripped Ottawa for almost 10 months.

“He had planned this out for some time.”

Brown will retire from the Ottawa Police Service early in the new year and is finishing up his PhD in criminology at Carleton University. He remains certain to this day that Davis didn’t feel any remorse for his actions and would likely have killed again. When Davis gave himself up to an off-duty police officer almost 10 months after he killed Teague, he was plagued by paranoia stirred up by the relentless attention on the case, not a guilty conscience.

“The motive he gave was that he planned to apprehend, sexually assault and murder a young woman,” says Brown, who took Davis’ confession on the day he turned himself in.

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• From the Archives: Jennifer Teague —There will never be closure' until the truth is known, father says

The Teague case will be featured Thursday night on the CBC crime series The Detectives, which combines interviews with the real detectives, file footage and scripted drama. Producer Petro Duszara says The Detectives’ team of researchers looks for cases that affect their communities profoundly, but at the same time the show offers an empathetic perspective on the victim and a look inside the process of detective work.

“This had all of those things,” he said. “One of the tricky things is that every one of these stories is very tragic. We need a compelling reason to reopen those wounds for the community.”

Teague’s father, Ed Teague, now 75, often tells his story at victimology conferences. Seeing the story on the screen will not reopen those wounds, he says.

“At first I was kind of hesitant. But then I thought, “Why not?” Let people know what happened. If people don’t know, maybe they can glean something from it,” he says.

“You’ll never forget the hurt, but there’s a point when your life has to go on.”

In September 2005, it appeared there could be a serial killer on the loose in Ottawa and the city was on edge.

Ardeth Wood, a PhD student visiting her family in Ottawa, had disappeared while riding her bicycle two summers earlier. Her body was found on Aug. 11, 2003 in Green’s Creek, but her killer had not been apprehended.

When Teague went missing, a fearful city hung on every new development, thinking the two cases might be linked.

About two months after Teague disappeared, police arrested Chris Myers and charged him in Wood’s murder. But he was not Teague’s killer. Myers had been in North Bay when Teague disappeared.

Jennifer Teague

For police, the pressure was piling up from the public and the media, and every tip found a dead end. Investigators tried a number of unorthodox moves in the hope of flushing out the killer. Police officers went door-to-door in Barrhaven, asking residents if they could look around their homes. It was impossible to get search warrants for every home in the area, and police relied on the co-operation of residents. The backlash over invasion of privacy was very minor, says Brown. “It was extraordinary how the community rallied.”

Teague’s decomposing body was found two days after the canvassing started, near a hiking trail at Stony Swamp. And this was when Brown tried another ploy. He asked police to set up a decoy tent across the road from where the body had been found, a suggestion to the media and the general public that the body was found there. Only the killer would know where he dumped the body.

It was what Brown calls a “valuable holdback in the investigation” and would prove to be valuable later. Extensive forensic tests found not a trace of DNA on the body. Despite a $100,000 reward for information, there was still no break in the case.

On May 24, 2006, police took another unusual step, releasing photos of “potential witnesses’ taken from a security camera at the Mac’s Milk store at the corner of Jockvale Road and Tartan Drive on the night of Teague’s disappearance.

And then, on June 9, 2006, came a bizarre twist to the story. Kevin Davis, a 24-year-old pizza-maker who lived in Barrhaven with his mother, stripped naked under the influence of magic mushrooms and rushed onto Fallowfield Road, screaming, “I killed Jennifer Teague.” He was taken to hospital to be treated for an overdose and late recanted, claiming he was under the influence of drugs and didn’t know anything about the murder.

Kevin Davis.

Davis was released. And then, another twist. On June 26, he walked up to an off-duty police officer at a beer store near his home and turned himself in.

Brown, who had been a witness in another case at the courthouse that day, was called to take Davis’ confession. The confession had to be “absolutely ironclad,” he says. Davis was read his rights several times, police ensured that he was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs and the entire proceeding was videotaped.

Brown’s strategy was to keep him talking.

Davis confessed to putting together a kit including a knife, ropes and a gag, and staking out the convenience store where Teague chatted with a friend before leaving for home. Davis made sure the car was safely out of range of the store’s video camera. He was simply looking for the girl who would take the most vulnerable route.

Greg Brown, the detective who headed the investigation, is now finishing his PhD in criminology at Carleton University.

Brown took Davis to the swamp and asked him where he left Teague’s body. Davis placed a pen in the exact spot, far from the place where police had pitched their decoy tent.

Davis recanted again while in jail, saying that he was overwhelmed with fatigue when he confessed. “I don’t get angry very often,” says Brown. “But I was absolutely furious. I think he was just an evil monster who deserved to be locked up for the rest of his life.”

Davis admitted his guilt in court on January 25, 2008 and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole for 25 years.  Brown remembers sitting in the front row that day. Everyone in the courtroom had tears in their eyes, except for Davis, he says. It’s one of the reasons why he still believes that Davis felt no remorse.

“He sat there with a smug look on his face.”

Brown continues to have a close relationship with Teague’s family. He would only agree to participate in The Detectives if Teague’s family agreed and the producers portrayed Teague and the Ottawa police in a positive light.

Ed Teague also thinks of Brown as a friend.

“We were always kept abreast of what was going on. We were never in the dark,” he said of the investigation.

While Brown was leading the investigation, his wife was pregnant with the couple’s first daughter, who was born about six weeks before Davis turned himself in to police. It made the case all the more poignant for him.

“When an 18-year-old girl is viciously murdered and dumped in a swamp, it hurts us,” says Brown.

He has worked on a number of assignments in his 30-plus years as a police officer, including drug and organized crime. In 2006, Brown was awarded the Police Exemplary Service Medal by the Governor General.

“Every case is tragic. I know it sounds like a cliché, but they all have human consequences, even those with unsympathetic victims,” he says. “This was a much different kind of case. It was so much more emotional. This could be your daughter, your wife.”

The Detectives premières on Thursday, Sept. 20 at 9 p.m. on CBC, the CBC TV streaming app and cbc.ca/watch.

The Jennifer Teague investigation: A timeline

Sept. 8, 2005: Jennifer Teague, 18, disappears while walking home from her night shift at Wendy’s in Barrhaven.

Sept. 16, 2005: Ottawa police canvass door-to-door in Barrhaven neighbourhoods, requesting entry to homes to assist in the search. Most residents comply with the request.

Sept. 18, 2005: Teague’s body is found by an off-duty Ottawa police officer near the head of the Stony Swamp hiking trail, about five kilometres from where she disappeared.

Sept. 29, 2005: The body is released from a Toronto crime lab after extensive forensic testing. There is no DNA evidence recovered that might aid in the investigation.

Oct. 6, 2005: Former police chief Vince Bevan says two people had claimed to be Teague’s killer, but were discounted by police

April 5, 2006: Ottawa police release a sketch of a suspect and ask for the public’s help. Some of Teague’s friends and relatives say they do not recognize the person, suggesting the suspect was not an acquaintance. Police receive 85 new tips.

May 24, 2006: Ottawa police post photos of ‘potential witnesses’ taken from a surveillance camera in a Mac’s Milk store In Barrhaven.

June 9, 2006:  Kevin Davis consumes magic mushrooms, takes off his clothes and runs out onto Fallowfield Road in the middle of speeding traffic, screaming that he killed Jennifer Teague. He is rushed to hospital. When questioned by police, he says he doesn’t know anything about the case.

June 26, 2006:  Davis walks out of his house on Orr Street, telling neighbours he killed Jennifer Teague. He walks up to a an off-duty police officer at a nearby shopping plaza and turns himself in.

June 27, 2006: Davis is charged with first-degree murder.

Nov. 28, 2007:  Davis is committed to stand trial.

Jan. 25, 2008:  Davis pleads guilty and is sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.