The opening day of the murder trial of Jeremy Skibicki heard he targeted vulnerable Indigenous women at Winnipeg homeless shelters and, while being questioned by police in one gruesome killing, blurted out that there were three more victims.
“I killed four people,” Skibicki is heard telling police unprompted in an interrogation video played Wednesday at the trial in Court of King’s Bench.
Skibicki is charged with four counts of first-degree murder for the slayings in the early months of 2022.
The 37-year-old has pleaded not guilty. His lawyers told court earlier this week Skibicki admits to the killings but is not criminally responsible due to mental illness.
“This case is about a man’s hate-filled and cruel acts perpetrated against four vulnerable Indigenous women,” prosecutor Renee Lagimodiere told Chief Justice Glenn Joyal.
She said Skibicki staked out homeless shelters to find his victims then devised a carefully calculated scheme about what he would do with them.
“He preyed on these women in Winnipeg shelters and invited them back to his home, where he assaulted them, often sexually, and killed them,” Lagimodiere told the judge-alone trial.
“He engaged in vile, sexual acts with their bodies. He then disposed of the women as though they were garbage.”
Skibicki is charged in the killings of Rebecca Contois, Morgan Harris, Marcedes Myran and an unidentified woman Indigenous leaders have named Buffalo Woman.
The remains of Contois were found in a dumpster and at a landfill. The remains of Harris and Myran are believed to be in a different landfill. Police have said it’s not known where the remains of Buffalo Woman are located.
GRAPHIC WARNING: The following details may disturb some readers.
Lagimodiere detailed the killings in court.
She said Skibicki forcibly confined Buffalo Woman, believed to be an Indigenous woman in her mid-20s, choked her and drowned her.
Skibicki put Harris, 39, in a headlock, and she collapsed with her head in a tub full of water, said Lagimodiere.
Lagimodiere said Skibicki had sex with Myran and, when it got rough, the 26-year-old tried to stop it. He then put her in a headlock and choked her.
Skibicki assaulted Contois when the 24-year-old told him she didn’t want to have sex. He then choked her, smothered her with a pillow and dismembered her in a bathtub, said Lagimodiere.
Harris and Myran were both members of Long Plain First Nation but lived in Winnipeg. Contois was from O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation, also known as Crane River.
Police were alerted to the killing of Contois by a 911 call, which was played in court, from a man who found a head in a dumpster behind an apartment building.
Family members of Contois later left the courtroom when the Crown began playing the police interrogation video.
A finding of not criminally responsible means an accused was incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of an act due to a mental disorder. The person is detained in a hospital until a review board determines they are no longer a threat to the public.
In an interview earlier this week with The Canadian Press, law professor Brandon Trask said such a defence presents multiple challenges for Skibicki’s lawyers.
Once a mental illness has been established, Trask said, it comes down to whether the diagnosis made Skibicki incapable of knowing the slayings were wrong.
“This is not the sort of a case where there’s a single victim, a single moment in time. This is a situation involving four victims across presumably a lengthier period in time,” said Trask, an assistant professor of law at the University of Manitoba.
“This is going to be very challenging for the defence, very complex and very technical.”
The federal government has a support line for those affected by the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls: 1-844-413-6649. The Hope for Wellness Helpline, with support in Cree, Ojibway and Inuktitut, is also available to all Indigenous people in Canada: 1-855-242-3310.
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