Mom died day after class `joke'

By Fred Derf
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Grand Master

Fred Derf Veteran

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Girls guilty of drowning mom

Sisters created `perfect prosecution'

Next step: Adult or youth sentence?

Dec. 16, 2005. 05:32 AM

BOB MITCHELL

STAFF REPORTER

Two Mississauga teens who thought they had committed the "perfect crime" instead created the "perfect prosecution," a packed courtroom in Brampton heard yesterday.

In handing down a guilty verdict against the two sisters who drowned their mother in the bathtub, Justice Bruce Duncan said the evidence provided "probably the strongest case I have ever seen in over 30 years of prosecuting, defending and judging criminal cases."

Duncan said the teens' "chilling" conversations on the Internet with friends would have been enough to convict them of killing their mother, even if there hadn't been any other evidence presented by crown prosecutors Brian McGuire and Mike Cantlon during this sensational eight-week trial.

"The two defendants set out to commit the perfect crime, but instead they created the perfect prosecution," Duncan said in convicting both teens, now 19 and 18, on first-degree murder charges.

"The case against them is overwhelming."

The girls showed no emotion when hearing the verdict, but were visibly upset when they returned to the courtroom about 45 minutes later, this time clutching tissues and sitting in the prisoner's box. They had been allowed to sit directly behind their lawyers throughout the trial.

The teens were 16 and 15 when they drowned their alcoholic mother in their bathtub on Jan. 18, 2003 after getting her drunk and nearly unconscious with Tylenol 3 pills.

They later told friends that they "had gotten away with murder."

Duncan rejected the notion offered by the defence that their mother got drunk and accidentally drowned herself.

The defence had suggested it was just a tragic coincidence she died after her daughters talked about killing her with friends, and that the girls were "compulsive liars" who wanted to gain attention.

In delivering his verdict before a standing-room only courtroom, Duncan pointed out the teens discussed with friends in great detail, during online conversations and in person, how and when they were going to drown their mother, how they were going to meet afterwards at Jack Astor's restaurant with friends as part of a pre-arranged alibi, and what they were going to say during a 911 call after they found their mother dead in the tub.

Duncan said he was "satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt" that the defendants were "the authors" of the chat line conversations, taken from a hard drive of a computer seized by police.

He described the chats as being evidence of the planning of a "deadly serious enterprise." He said the fact the teens discussed murder in "such a casual and open way" suggested their conversations weren't part of "a game or a lark" and demonstrated the "moral vacuity" that existed in their lives.

"By far the most important feature was (the teens' mother) died in the manner, in the place, on the day, and at the approximate time discussed by the defendants in their chats," Duncan told the court.

"Unless her death was an astonishing macabre co-incidence, the inference is unmistakable that the Internet discussions represented a real plan that was carried out in accordance with its terms."

The teens, now in custody, are to return to court on Monday when defence lawyers Jack McCulligh, Eugene Bhattacharya and Robert Jagielski are expected to set the stage for the next phase of the case, which involves whether they'll be sentenced as adults or youths. A possible bid for bail could also be started.

The defence has suggested the sentencing hearing will reveal another side of the girls' story, yet to be told, dealing with the life they lived in their household.

During the trial, the teens' home had been described as "party central" for the friends who, like them, regularly smoked pot and drank booze while their mother was passed out on the sofa, often half naked.

If sentenced as adults, the teens could face a maximum life sentence with no parole for a minimum seven years, and their names could then be published. If sentenced as youths, their identities will remain protected by law, and they would face a maximum sentence of 10 years in custody and six years of parole ineligibility.

Moments after the verdict was delivered and the courtroom emptied for a brief recess, the girls stood and hugged several family members who had been sitting directly behind them.

Relatives allowed in the courtroom for the first time included their father and aunt, whose sister they murdered and in whose home they had been living since being released on bail and under house arrest on March 18, 2004.

Although prosecutors didn't have to prove motive, it has been their theory ? based on the girls' own words from on-line chats, in person communications and secretly recorded conversations ? that they murdered their mother because her alcoholism was ruining their lives and the life of their 6-year-old stepbrother.

They also stood to inherit their share of their mother's $200,000 life insurance policy, which they told friends they were going to use to take them on a European vacation.

For now, their identities remain protected by the Youth Criminal Justice Act, as are the identities of all civilian witnesses and their deceased mother, whose death was initially ruled by a coroner as an accident due to excessive alcohol consumption.

The teens were arrested more than a year after her death, on Jan. 21, 2004, after an older friend went to Peel police with information suggesting the woman's death was part of a murder plot, which the girls not only planned for several weeks but talked about with a close inner circle of friends.

It was the Crown's theory that the older sister actually committed the murder by holding their mother's head under the water of their bathtub for four minutes while the younger sister watched from the doorway of the second-floor bathroom, unable to help her sister, because the room was too small for both of them.

The younger sister's former boyfriend, who testified at this trial, was charged in August 2004 with conspiracy to commit murder.

It's alleged he supplied the Tylenol 3 pills to the teens. His trial has yet to be held.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentSe...ol=969483202845

Grand Master

Fred Derf Veteran

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It gets better (worse actually)...

Convicted girls sought sex online

Dec. 24, 2005. 01:00 AM

BOB MITCHELL

STAFF REPORTER

Two Mississauga teenage sisters convicted of murdering their mother talked about their arrest and sought sex from an operator of an Internet chat site based in Chicago before they went on trial, the Star has learned.

The girls, whose identities are protected by law, also sent pictures to the website, including several shots of the older sister posing naked.

As well, they reportedly provided information that had never before been revealed until their trial began Nov. 7, including that police had secretly videotaped conversations where they confessed to killing their mother.

"One guy had a camera hidden in his car, so he caught my bull----," a person identifying herself as the older sister tells the website operator in an online message board posting on Oct. 7 ? a month before their trial began. "Now I'm under arrest. If I'm not convicted, I'll fill in the specifics."

She said their trial would start at the end of October. "It will be in the papers so I can't give any good details until it clears up. I'm looking at a life sentence over stories that were told by me and believed by kids.

"Someone died in an accident and I'm getting blamed. I am in awe of my stupidity. Regardless of the verdict, my story will be posted somewhere. The trial will take a few months though."

Peel police said they were unaware of the site or that the online conversations even existed until yesterday.

"But we're now going to be investigating this and having our tech crimes experts look into it," Peel homicide Insp. Jennifer Evans told the Star yesterday.

"I can't get away for a few more weeks because I'm under house arrest," a person claiming to be the older teen wrote on Nov. 25, after the trial was underway. "I have too many secrets."

The information comes after the sisters, now 19 and 18, were convicted of first-degree murder in the Jan. 18, 2003, drowning of their 44-year-old mother, who died in the bathtub of their Mississauga townhome.

They pleaded not guilty, with defence lawyers suggesting their alcoholic mother had drowned accidentally, as a coroner initially ruled.

Their crime went undetected for almost a year until one of their friends, who later agreed to be secretly videotaped with the sisters, went to police with information suggesting they had planned a deliberate murder of their mother, making it look like an accidental drowning while intoxicated.

The teens will undergo psychiatric examinations before they are sentenced in March. None of the newly discovered Internet chats revealed details about the murder, but they do provide further insight into their mental state.

Several Internet conversations presented as evidence during their eight-week trial showed the two girls, then 16 and 15, told several friends they were planning to murder their alcoholic mother by drowning her. They also talked with friends, online and in person, before and after the crime, about meeting at a restaurant afterward to establish an alibi, then making a well-rehearsed 911 call after coming home.

In another message board posting in September, the older teen tells the website operator she wants to have sex with him "when my legal issues clear up and I can leave the country." She promises to send picturesThe younger sister later asks if he's into threesomes.b>

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentSe...ol=969483202845

Veteran

migo

Posted
Posted

If you take away life from the person who gave you life, then you're not worthy of life yourself.

I'm more of the opinion that alcoholic parents shouldn't be allowed to keep their kids, if they risk ruining their children's lives because of substance abuse, then they had it coming.

Neowinian

rapscaLLion

Posted
Posted

Hi,

I went to school with these girls, I was in a few classes with the younger one.

I won't tell you what school or their names, but I will tell you that the younger

sister was studying at an "enhanced" level, which means above the usual crowd.

I also was in this stream. The school was a regional center for enhanced, and

just recently became IB certified. Anyways, she was always a little wierd, and

I wasn't really her friend, more like an aquaintance. Anyways, from what I could

gather from her close friends their mother was a real piece of work when she was

drunk, and she was always drunk. The parents where split, and the younger brother

lived with the father, the sisters with their mother. The day their mother died the

entire school basically found out in five minutes, word spreads fast. The next school

year, in my english class the younger sister was telling a bunch of us (we where doing

so group assignment) about her life plan:

She was going to wait until she was 18, at which time she would recieve her mother's

insurance money (a good chunk of change from what I remember), and then she was

going to blow it all in about 6 months, travelling with friends, getting wasted, etc. Once

the money ran out she was going to commit suicide.

I'm telling you, she was 100% serious about her plan, kinda disturbed me. Mostly I was

sad for her, at that point we thought her mother's death was accidental. The day they got

charged the administration instructed all the teachers to not tell anyone, no one was to find out.

Of course everyone knew in five minutes, that's highschool for you. I heard the news while on my way to school on the radio, and though they didn't mention any names I knew at once who it was.

In retrospect, no one was really surprised, although we certainly didn't expect it. Knowing

those girls, we probably should have suspected something, but of course we where just

worried about how they would cope with their mothers death up until we found out it

wasn't an accident. They where quickly whisked away of course, but once they posted bail

(with $100 000 courtesy of their mother's life insurance money) they occasionally where

around the school, visiting with old friends I assume. Of course they maintained their innocence.

I also know a friend of theirs who has been charged with being an accessory, although they

don't mention it in the news. I don't know the informant though.

These girls have had a sad life, divorce and an alcoholic mother for one. The younger one

was very intelligent, and had potential. I didn't really know the older one except by sight

and name, but I gather she was pretty much the same.

Brandon, I don't know if I'm allowed to give any specifics regarding the school because

of the Young Offenders Act, but what school do you go to?

Yes indeed the girls are Polish.

I don't know the website, I don't want to know :s

Anyways, I was just looking at the latest news involving them, and ran into this site. I wanted

to provide an insider's perspective :) so I signed up and there you have it.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
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