Ex-wife of admitted killer testifies he threatened to have sex with her corpse

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/05/2024 (480 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Jeremy Skibicki’s ex-wife told court Thursday the admitted serial killer would have sex with her while she was asleep and once threatened to have sex with her corpse “if anything happened to (her).”

The testimony was part of a “similar fact” motion prosecutors say will show Skibicki’s treatment of his ex-wife and another woman shared “strikingly similar” characteristics with his subsequent killings of four women.

The 44-year-old woman, whom the Free Press is not naming at her request and because she is a sex assault survivor, told court she met Skibicki in February 2018 at Siloam Mission at a time when she was homeless and struggling with a meth addiction.

The woman, testifying in a soft monotone, said she was sitting alone when Skibicki and two friends approached her and, after some time talking, suggested she accompany them to Skibicki’s Sherbrook Street apartment.

At the apartment, Skibicki’s friends went to another room, leaving Skibicki and the woman alone together, she said.

“I remember him saying to his two friends: ‘I really like this one,’ meaning me,” she said.

“I remember him saying to his two friends: ‘I really like this one,’ meaning me.”

The woman said she stayed with Skibicki for a few weeks, during which time he became abusive. The woman moved out, to an apartment on Colony Street, but was kicked out after a few months due to Skibicki’s disruptive behaviour, she said.

“He had caused a lot of problems for me,” she said. “He got in a fight with my neighbour and after a few different things like that they asked me to move out.”

The woman moved back in with Skibicki in the spring of 2018 and the two married in September.

Asked by prosecutor Chris Vanderhooft why she agreed to Skibicki’s proposal, she said: “I was stuck.”

Skibicki, 37, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in the May 2022 slayings of three Indigenous women — Rebecca Contois, Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran — as well as a fourth unidentified woman police believe was slain in March 2022 who is known as Buffalo Woman (Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe).

Skibicki has admitted to killing the women but his defence argues he should be found not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder. In a police interview videotaped after his arrest on May 17, 2022, Skibicki admitted he had strangled or drowned the victims in his apartment on McKay Avenue in North Kildonan, and then disposed of their remains in nearby garbage bins. Skibicki said he dismembered Contois and Myran in the bathtub with a combat knife.

Skibicki told police he had sex with their corpses.

Skibicki’s ex-wife told court she took sleep medication to cope with post-traumatic stress disorder and that Skibicki would have sex with her while she was asleep or unconscious.

“Jeremy liked when I took my meds,” the woman told court. “Sometimes, I didn’t take my meds just to see what was happening and I noticed that there was intercourse.”

The woman said she would often wake up sore or bleeding from unwanted vaginal or anal intercourse.

Skibiki told the woman what he was doing and would get “very angry, violent almost,” when she didnt take her medication, she said.

Skibicki told her “he had a fetish for ‘Sleeping Beauty syndrome,’ he called it,” the woman said.

“I had no idea what that meant at first and if it was a real thing or not, but I guess it is for him,” she said.

In September 2019, the woman entered drug treatment and obtained a protection order against Skibicki.

The woman said she spent about a year in treatment, but returned to live with Skibicki when she “had nowhere else to go.”

“There was a lot of fighting, a lot of arguing, a lot of abuse,” including more sex assaults as she slept, she said.

“That’s when he told me that if anything happened to me, he would keep me in the closet and (sexually assault) me, even as I was dead for weeks on end until my body started to stink too bad,” she said.

“That’s when he told me that if anything happened to me, he would keep me in the closet and (sexually assault) me, even as I was dead for weeks on end until my body started to stink too bad.”

The woman said she started taking “safety measures” to protect herself, including letting family and friends know where she was at all times.

The woman said she left Skibicki for the last time a few weeks after she moved in when he came at her with a knife.

“He didn’t stab me at the last minute, but he intended to, I think,” she said.

The two renewed contact through Facebook Messenger, beginning in March 2022.

“Please forgive me if I end up going to prison for life,” Skibicki told the woman in a May 9 message. “But I may not be caught. But I could be doing three life sentences.”

The woman called Skibiki back and asked what had happened.

“He said that he couldn’t tell me what he did, but if he did admit what he did, he would have to be on the run and that he wouldn’t see me again until we were in heaven,” the woman said.

Skibicki’s last message to the woman was sent at 11:45 a.m., May 17, the same day he was arrested for Contois’s murder. “Lots to do today, take care baby,” it read.

Under questioning from defence lawyer Leonard Tailleur, the woman agreed when applying for a protection order she had described Skibicki as “demented,” as having three personalities, that he used the Bible to justify his treatment of her, and claimed to have “a direct line to God.”

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca

Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter

Dean Pritchard is courts reporter for the Free Press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 2019. Read more about Dean.

Every piece of reporting Dean produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.