‘He loved her to bits’

A Winnipeg man accused of killing his mother when he was a teenager is facing a jury for the second time.

The 23-year-old is on trial for second-degree murder in the March 2019 slaying at his mother’s Southdale home.

“This case has been tried before,” Court of King’s Bench Justice Ken Champagne told jurors as the trial commenced Monday. “Do not speculate about what happened during or at the end of that trial or why there is another trial. What happened there has nothing to do with your decision in this trial.”

The Free Press is not naming the 51-year-old victim, as it would identify the accused, who was 16 at the time of the killing and cannot be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

Prosecutor Adam Bergen outlined the Crown’s case in an opening address to jurors Monday in which he argued the evidence will show the accused was the only person who had the opportunity to kill the victim.

What may be more difficult for jurors to grapple with is the absence of any identifiable motive, Bergen said.

“But the law does not require the Crown to prove motive, and even when there is evidence of motive, motive without evidence of opportunity or action is not sufficient to convict a person,” he said. “The fact is we are often left without a satisfying explanation why people commit the crimes that they do, up to and including murder, even when we know without a doubt that they did it.”

Jurors were told the accused’s parents had divorced when he was a child and he spent alternating weeks with each parent. The night before she was killed, the victim, her boyfriend and her son shared dinner at her house and watched a Jets game before the boyfriend left for home shortly before 10 p.m.

The victim and her boyfriend exchanged several text messages, with the victim sending a final text at 1 a.m.

“That’s how we know she was still alive then,” Bergen said.

Bergen said the accused left the house with his dog at 9 a.m. and drove to run several errands which were captured on security video.

“We say at this point in time (the victim) was already dead or dying in her bed,” Bergen said.

The teen returned home at 10:37 a.m. and eight minutes later called 911. Police arrived within minutes.

“Inside the home they found the body of (the victim),” Bergen said. “She was laying in her bed, face up, in the middle of a blood-spattered scene. Her face was unrecognizable due to her injuries and her skull was broken in multiple places. Her body bore the signs of defensive injuries: a broken right arm and multiple broken left fingers.”

Bergen said a motion-activated security camera across the street captured no one else entering or leaving the victim’s house during the 90 minutes the accused was away.

“We say the evidence will lead to the conclusion… (the accused) was the person who killed (his mother)… and he was the only person who could have done so,” Bergen said.

The accused — who will testify later in the trial — had a “remarkable” relationship with his mother and had no reason to killer her, defence lawyer James Lockyer told jurors in his own opening address.

“The love he had for his mother would be the envy of any parent,” and is documented in thousands of text messages they exchanged in the roughly two years prior to the woman’s killing, Lockyer said. “There isn’t one bad word said between them, ever… His mother is the last person in the world he would harm. He loved her to bits.”

Lockyer said the defence will argue the victim was killed by a male co-worker and longtime member of the military whom she had accused of harassing her in the past.

“His harassment… was very personal and often sexual in its nature,” Lockyer said. The victim “talked of her fears to friends and family. To a degree, she was obsessed by her fear of him and she has left us a written history of her fears,” including a text to her sister 10 months before her death saying: “If something ever happens to me, it’s him.”

Bergen said the security video shows the man arriving at work at 9:03 a.m. — roughly the same time the accused left the victim’s house — and didn’t leave the building until 11:28 a.m. for his coffee break.

“By that time.. (the victim) had already been pronounced dead in the emergency room of Health Sciences Centre,” Bergen said.

Lockyer agreed the man had a strong alibi but argued his “military skills” allowed him to circumvent workplace security video and swipe card records that tracked his movements.

“We will argue he had the wherewithal to plan and commit (the victim’s) murder,” Lockyer said.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca