A supporter of the families stands outside the Manitoba Law Courts during the trial of serial killer Jeremy Skibicki in Winnipeg on May 8.JOHN WOODS/The Canadian Press
Crown prosecutors rested their case on Wednesday against a man who admitted to killing, dismembering and disposing of the bodies of four First Nations women, prompting a Winnipeg superior court to adjourn his trial until early next month.
Jeremy Skibicki’s defence lawyers are scheduled to present their arguments before Court of King’s Bench Justice Glenn Joyal on June 3. His attorneys intend to demonstrate that he was too mentally ill to be held criminally responsible of first-degree murder.
“This case is about a man’s hate-filled and cruel acts perpetrated against four vulnerable Indigenous women,” prosecutor Renée Lagimodière told the court repeatedly.
On Wednesday, just before she said the Crown was resting its case, Ms. Lagimodière submitted the prosecution’s final pieces of evidence: nine handwritten letters by Mr. Skibicki to his pen pal in a women’s prison in Truro, N.S.
Winnipeg Detective Sergeant Michael MacDonald testified about the letters’ veracity. He told Justice Joyal that he and another officer travelled to the East Coast in May, 2023, to interview Crystal Hunt, the woman to whom Mr. Skibicki had addressed the letters from the Milner Ridge Correctional Centre in rural Manitoba.
Det. Sgt. MacDonald said some of the letters were destroyed by Ms. Hunt and she turned over the others to police. He was not asked any questions about the letters’ content by the defence or the Crown, and they were not read out in court.
According to an agreed statement of facts by both the Crown and defence, in 2022, Mr. Skibicki killed a yet-to-be-identified woman whom Indigenous elders have named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, meaning Buffalo Woman, on or about March 15; 39-year-old Morgan Harris on or about May 1 of that year; 26-year-old Marcedes Myran on or about May 4; and 24-year-old Rebecca Contois on or about May 15.
Since his trial began this month, the Crown has been arguing that Mr. Skibicki murdered the women in a thought-out and calculated scheme, for which they believe he should be found criminally responsible.
Starting with a shortened video of his 20-hour police interrogation, during which he confessed to the crimes with graphic details, prosecutors have submitted evidence to show that Mr. Skibicki stalked his victims at shelters for vulnerable people, inviting them back to his home to drug them, sexually assault them, then kill them before engaging in further sexual acts on their bodies, only to dump their dismembered remains in garbage bins that ultimately ended up in Winnipeg-area landfills.
The Crown has also provided testimonies from more than a dozen witnesses, including Mr. Skibicki’s former wife, his neighbours, forensic experts who found the victims’ DNA inside his apartment, staff members at shelters, pathologists, computer analysts, and several investigators who helped piece together his crimes.
Flanked by two sheriff’s officers, his ankles shackled, Mr. Skibicki walked into and out of the courtroom each day never making eye contact with families of the victims and other observers. Wearing a grey T-shirt and jail-issue sweatpants, he sipped on water from a small plastic cup as evidence was presented.
Some relatives of the victims would leave upon hearing graphic details about the killings. Others would pass around boxes of tissues, crying and whimpering in the gallery. The provincial and federal governments announced $500,000 and $200,000, respectively, to provide culturally sensitive mental-health support for the families. A therapy dog named Glossy was present during the hearings.
Over the past weekend, Mr. Skibicki was assessed by a forensic psychiatrist arranged by the Crown. Justice Joyal had ordered the clinical assessment last week after the Crown was provided with a recent medical report by the defence, formally making Mr. Skibicki’s mental state at the time of the killings a trial issue.
(In Canada, a court can order a psychiatric assessment at any stage in the trial if an accused person makes their mental capacity for criminal intent an issue for the court.)
When asked after the hearing on Wednesday, Ms. Lagimodière would not provide details about the results of that assessment and when it would be entered in court. She said she was only at liberty to say the assessment has been conducted successfully.
Mr. Skibicki’s lawyers had objected to the Crown’s assessment, calling it unnecessary because they had already conducted one with their own expert, who is expected to testify when they present their case in June.
“Is that the best argument you have?” Justice Joyal had asked defence lawyer Leonard Tailleur. “That’s not a good argument.”