No parole for 16 years after killer’s ‘violent rampage’

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This article was published 13/06/2024 (450 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Justin Robinson will have to serve at least 16 years in prison before he can apply for parole in the murder of his on-again, off-again partner, Tessa Perry, but grieving family members say no amount of time behind bars will ever be enough to relieve the pain of their loss.

Robinson previously pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the May 16, 2022 beating death of the 31-year-old mother of four outside her Maples-area home. On Thursday, King’s Bench Justice Shawn Greenberg sentenced Robinson to life in prison and ordered that he be ineligible for parole for 16 years.

“Is 16 years enough? Definitely not,” Perry’s aunt Hilda Anderson-Pyrz said outside court, minutes after the ruling. “Tessa’s children have to grow up without a mother and her family has to grow up without their daughter, granddaughter, aunt, niece and cousin in their family. They will have a lifetime of trauma to recover from based on how violently and cruelly Tessa was taken from us.”

Family members previously told the Free Press Perry had recently relocated to Winnipeg from Thompson to build a better life for her children.

“She was a beautiful girl,” her grandmother Muriel Perry said outside court Thursday. “She was a comedian, always happy, always laughing. And such a good mother.”

Robinson and Perry weren’t a couple at the time of the killing, but Robinson was staying with her, court heard. Perry had gone out grocery shopping and when she returned, Robinson, for reasons unexplained, became enraged.

Robinson assaulted Perry in front of two of her young children — one his daughter, the other Perry’s son from a previous relationship. When Robinson noticed there was blood on Perry’s face, he put the children in an upstairs bedroom before resuming the attack.

Greenberg rejected an argument by defence lawyer Mike Cook that removing the children from the assault scene was a mitigating factor in his favour.

“In my view it is aggravating,” Greenberg said. “He had the presence of mind to realize the brutality of the assault and instead of stopping, he took a brief pause to put the children out of sight and then continued his violent rampage.”

Robinson hit Perry with a frying pan and stabbed her several times with a paring knife. Perry ran outside where witnesses saw Robinson strike her 15 to 20 times in the head and face with a table leg that had an exposed screw.

Perry suffered stab wounds, a crushed skull and a shattered arm in an attack that lasted 45 minutes from beginning to end.

Robinson dropped the table leg and was described by witnesses as “casually walking away from the scene,” court previously heard. Police arrested Robinson a short time later and he passed out in a police cruiser.

According to a pre-sentence report provided to court, Robinson claimed both he and Perry had been consuming cocaine prior to the attack. Robinson, who said he only remembered hitting Perry with the frying pan and hitting her once with the table leg, offered little explanation for the attack, saying only that she was “pushing his buttons.”

Between 2015 and 2022, Robinson racked up 10 assault convictions, six of them involving domestic partners, and three of them involving Perry. At the time of the fatal attack, Robinson was on probation for stabbing a man who intervened in his attack on another woman.

Court was told Robinson had a troubled, unstable upbringing, during which he experienced bullying and sexual abuse, and fell into drug and alcohol abuse.

In a victim impact statement previously provided to court, Robinson’s now seven-year-old daughter — one of two children who were home at the time of the attack — said she is scared he will find out where she lives.

“I’m scared that my dad will find out where I am,” the girl said. “I am scared that my dad will hurt me, and I don’t want to pass away like momma Tessa.”

Greenberg said it was to Robinson’s credit that he pleaded guilty to the killing, sparing the children from having to testify at a trial.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca