Families and supporters of four murdered women react outside the Manitoba Law Courts after the guilty verdict of serial killer Jeremy Skibicki is read in a courtroom in Winnipeg on July 11.JOHN WOODS/The Canadian Press
A Manitoba superior court judge has sentenced a serial killer to life in prison for the first-degree murders of four First Nations women in Winnipeg after hearing from the victims’ families and community leaders on Wednesday.
Jeremy Skibicki, 37, will not be able to apply for parole for at least 25 years – a punishment that King’s Bench Justice Glenn Joyal told the packed courtroom, overflowing with supporters, is the harshest in Canada. The four life sentences will be served concurrently.
After a weeks-long trial, which began in early May, Justice Joyal decided last month that Mr. Skibicki’s killings in 2022 were deliberate and planned. But the judge stopped short of a formal sentencing at the time to provide the people most affected by his crimes an opportunity to address the court before his final ruling.
More than a dozen people spoke about their heartbreak over the murders of 24-year-old Rebecca Contois, 26-year-old Marcedes Myran, 39-year-old Morgan Harris and a yet-to-be-identified woman whom Indigenous elders have named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, meaning Buffalo Woman.
“Make no mistake, Mr. Skibicki: because of the current state of the law, the only available sentence that I can impose today will regrettably not adequately reflect the gravity of these offences,” the judge said at the close of nearly four hours of deeply emotional statements.
Just moments prior to announcing the four sentences separately, Justice Joyal had asked Mr. Skibicki to stand up. “No, thank you,” he replied, sitting in the prisoner’s dock, his ankles shackled, wearing a grey T-shirt and jail-issue sweatpants.
“Ask him to stand up,” the judge told the sheriffs next to the convict, who eventually rose to be queried about whether he had anything to add before his sentencing.
“No,” he said, emotionless, staring straight ahead.
A serial killer was sentenced to four concurrent life sentences with no chance of parole for 25 years for the 2022 slayings of four First Nations women in Winnipeg. Relatives and supporters of Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran, Rebecca Contois and an unidentified woman Indigenous community members have named Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, packed the courtroom as multiple victim impact statements were read. (Aug. 28, 2024)
The Canadian Press
These were the only words Mr. Skibicki has uttered before the judge. His defence lawyer, Leonard Tailleur, who did not provide any remarks in court Wednesday, told The Globe and Mail he felt any cross-examination of the victims’ families would be inappropriate.
The impact statements in court were coupled with paintings and handmade posters showing red-dress emblems and handprints, displayed at the front of the room, underscoring the trauma of the families and the Canada-wide crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
“We seek healing, your honour,” said Grand Chief Cathy Merrick of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, which represents more than 60 First Nations in the province. “The reverberations of his actions will be felt for generations.”
The mother of Mr. Skibicki’s former wife, who in May testified how she escaped their abusive relationship, spoke on her behalf. On top of the postconcussion migraines, seizures, depression and other effects from his sexual violence, she said he also stole her daughter’s smile.
Jeremy Contois, who read his sibling Stephanie Contois’s statement on Rebecca Contois, said their sister’s murder has handed them a life of constant anxiety. “I can’t walk alone, I’m paranoid,” he said, trembling, his voice muffled by tears. “I worry about my loved ones every day.”
Cambria Harris said her every waking thought is spent aching for her mother, Morgan Harris, and the life she was robbed of. “I will scream her name at the top of my lungs until my last breath,” she said. “I will bring her home out of that landfill he put her in.”
Ms. Harris concluded her statement with a four-letter profanity directed at Mr. Skibicki, the same final words of Buffalo Woman, as revealed in the trial. The gallery erupted in cheers and applause.
Mr. Skibicki had pleaded not guilty for two years after his arrest. In a last-minute reversal on the eve of his trial, he agreed with the Crown that he caused the deaths of the women, for which the defence argued he could not be held criminally responsible because he was suffering from undiagnosed schizophrenia.
Justice Joyal dismissed those claims. The judge said Mr. Skibicki preyed on the four women at shelters for vulnerable people, inviting them back to his home to sexually assault them before killing them by strangulation and bathtub drowning, or both, then engaging in further sexual acts on their bodies. He then dumped their dismembered remains in garbage bins, such that they ultimately ended up in Winnipeg-area landfills, for which he had searched collection dates on the internet.
Winnipeg police had located some remains of the last victim, Ms. Contois, at a landfill in the outskirts of the city in June, 2022, a month after Mr. Skibicki was first interrogated. But the remains of the other three victims – two of whom, Ms. Myran and Ms. Harris, are believed to be buried at a separate landfill – have never been found.
A $40-million search is now under way, an effort Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew reiterated Wednesday.
“The justice system has sent a message that Indigenous women are as loved and valued as everyone else,” Mr. Kinew said.
Donna Bartlett, Ms. Myran’s grandmother, who had read a statement along with her granddaughter, Jorden Myran, said the possibility that Mr. Skibicki could potentially walk out of prison in his 60s scares them.
“He should have gotten consecutive life sentences. He said himself he wanted to kill again,” she told The Globe outside the courthouse.
Although previous amendments to the Criminal Code allowed courts to stack multiple periods of parole ineligibility – effectively creating consecutive life sentences of more than 25 years without parole – those provisions were deemed unconstitutional in a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2022.
Justice Joyal emphasized Wednesday that releasing Mr. Skibicki after the maximum 25 years in prison would require vigilance: “My hope is that any eventual parole panel will take very, very careful note of the evidence in this case, my reasons for the decision, the voices you heard today, and now my comments in closing this sentence.”