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Post by Sher on Jun 15, 2005 15:30:54 GMT -5
PETERBOROUGH, Ont. -- A 41-year-old man was found guilty of first-degree murder yesterday in the stabbing and beating death of a boarder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
John Robertson was found guilty of murdering Kent Knights, 35, who lived at Robertson's farmhouse.
Jurors deliberated for four hours before reaching their verdict.
As Robertson was led into a provincial police van outside the Peterborough County Court House, defence lawyer Dirk Derstine said an appeal was imminent.
During the three-week trial, jurors heard how on Dec. 2, 2001, Robertson plunged a knife into Knights's neck at the kitchen table after being told Knights assaulted Robertson's nine-year-old daughter in her bed the night before.
Knights denied touching the girl, but the daughter of a family friend told Robertson she witnessed the assault, Superior Court of Justice heard.
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Post by Sher on Aug 5, 2005 8:44:04 GMT -5
THUNDER BAY, Ont. -- A man charged in the death of an elderly woman smiled and waved at his fiancee as he was brought into a courtroom to face murder charges.
Douglas Shepherd, 43, had originally been charged with aggravated assault in March after 86-year-old Blanche McCooeye was beaten so severely that her broken arm had to be amputated. McCooeye died four days after the operation. The charge was upgraded to second-degree murder on Wednesday after a police investigation.
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Post by Sher on Nov 9, 2005 8:19:52 GMT -5
BRAMPTON, Ont. -- Two teenage sisters accused of drowning their mother in the bathtub three years ago exploited her weakness for alcohol in planning and carrying out the alleged murder, court heard yesterday through chilling videotaped evidence.
Nearly a year after her mother's death in January 2003, the younger sister recounted the events of that night to a family friend, unaware the conversation was being surreptitiously videotaped by police.
"I was the one who mixed our mom's drinks that day," says the younger sister. Neither girl can be identified because they were teens at the time of the crime.
Their 44-year-old mother had taken pain relievers containing codeine the night she died, but it wasn't added to her drinks, the girl says on the recording, one of three taped conversations played yesterday in court.
"We didn't put anything in (her drink). She took (the codeine) herself ... once we told her to. She was already too drunk to know."
It's alleged the sisters, who were 15 and 16 at the time, planned their mother's death by making sure she was drunk and drugged before she took a bath at the family home in Mississauga, Ont., a suburb west of Toronto.
Both sisters have pleaded not guilty to charges of first-degree murder.
'WE USED HER WEAK POINTS'
"We used her weak points against her," the girl says on the tape as she tells her friend their mother suffered from chronic alcoholism and that the two girls, along with their younger brother, were better off without her.
"It was kind of like a building rage ... that was just mounting our whole life," she says. "If you look at it one way, I don't regret it because now (our little brother) has ... a better chance. If you look at it another way, I'm completely devastated."
On the night of the drowning, the brother was staying with his father, who had been separated from the mother for some time.
The tapes came on the heels of similar evidence presented Monday in which the older sister described in detail how she held her mom's head under the water for four minutes.
RECOUNTED INCIDENTS
She also recounted a number of incidents involving her mother, including driving while drunk with the kids in the car, threatening to plunge the car off a bridge and her habit of masturbating naked in plain view of the children while intoxicated.
The family friend who worked with police to capture the conversations testified that he was "shocked" when the younger sister outlined her role in the death.
On the tape, the 21-year-old friend asks the younger sister if she helped push her mother's head under the water.
"No," comes the reply. "There just isn't enough room (in the bathroom) for another person to be helping ... I was, like, two feet behind."
At one point, the friend asks if the two sisters planned the crime.
"Yeah, we're not stupid," the girl replies. "If we were stupid we would have gotten caught." The girl then goes on to say the codeine was supplied by her boyfriend.
The defence went to lengths to portray the sisters as teens prone to telling tall tales, citing remarks the girls make on the tapes about lesbian fantasies, their desire to skydive and their own drug and alcohol abuse.
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