Manitoba man, 24, found guilty on national Red Dress Day of first-degree murder in slaying of Indigenous woman

On national Red Dress Day, a crowd of about 100 looked to the sky outside the Winnipeg Law Courts Tuesday morning and shouted “We love you Mackaylah!” minutes after Mackaylah Gerard-Roussin’s killer was found guilty of first-degree murder.

King’s Bench Justice Candace Grammond found Josh Benoit guilty before a packed courtroom.

“Justice won’t bring her back, but we got justice and that’s all we wanted,” said Gerard-Roussin’s grandmother, Irene Roussin.

“I wouldn’t wish this on anybody because it’s been such a tragedy,” she said. “It will never be over.”

Red Dress Day, marked annually on May 5, honours missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people in Canada. The crowd gathered outside the law courts Tuesday to remember Gerard-Roussin.

Benoit, 24, will be formally sentenced July 3 following the completion of victim impact reports.

The mandatory sentence for first-degree murder is life in prison with no opportunity for parole for 25 years.

Gerard-Roussin, 20, was found buried in a storage tote on an ATV trail near Woodridge, about 60 kilometres southeast of Steinbach, on Aug. 28, 2022. She had been beaten and stabbed to death.

“But for the convergence of unusual circumstances,” including witnesses who say they saw Benoit digging the hole where Gerard-Roussin’s body was later unearthed and the chance sighting of her body in Benoit’s car, “this case could have ended up very differently,” Crown attorney Renee Lagimodiere told court in a closing argument earlier this year.

Court heard Benoit and Gerard-Roussin had known each other previously and lost touch before they reconnected in the summer of 2022.

Benoit’s plan to kill Gerard-Roussin began on Aug. 22 with a trip to a Canadian Tire store in Steinbach, where security video captured a man wearing sunglasses and latex gloves, purchasing a heavy-duty tote, three bags of concrete, a baseball bat, a tarp and rolls of duct tape.

The man paid in cash. A later analysis of Benoit’s cellphone revealed it had been turned off at the time the purchases were made.

Three days later, Benoit messaged Gerard-Roussin at about 2:30 p.m. to ask what time she finished work. She told him 8:30 p.m.

Benoit turned his cellphone off for nearly five hours, during which time prosecutors say he drove to a rural property near Provincial Road 58 East and Highway 210 and dug a “clandestine grave,” its dimensions exactly matching those of the tote Benoit purchased three days earlier.

Witnesses testified seeing a man digging the hole that evening and a grey Mazda, later confirmed as belonging to Benoit.

That night, Benoit messaged Gerard-Roussin, asking if she wanted to “hang out.” When Gerard-Roussin suggested picking him up in her car, he quickly rejected the offer, telling her he was already in the vicinity of her Winnipeg apartment and it would be a “waste of gas.”

The afternoon of Aug. 27, Benoit drove to his mother’s home in Steinbach. He had a flat tire and called his father for help fixing it.

Alexandro Ronaldo testified he went to the garage and finished installing a new tire when Benoit’s mother called out and told him to look in the trunk. He opened the trunk and saw a hand peeking out from a bin covered with a tarp.

Ronaldo said that while he was on the phone with 911, his son fled in the car.

Benoit was arrested that day following a police chase that ended with him setting fire to his vehicle. Police retrieved the charred end of a baseball bat from the car.

Grammond said the wealth of circumstantial evidence in the case left her no doubt Benoit killed Gerard-Roussin.

“I have considered all of the evidence logically and in light of human experience and common sense, and I have concluded that there is no alternative, reasonable inference available to me other than that the accused killed the deceased,” she said.

Grammond said the “nature and extent” of Gerard-Roussin’s injuries, including blunt force injuries and puncture wounds to her head and evidence of strangulation, as well as evidence of planning, pointed to Benoit’s intent to kill.

The trial heard no testimony as to what might have motivated the killing.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca