The older sister of a Toronto man on trial for the first-degree murder of their mother testified that her brother Colin Hatcher was involuntarily hospitalized less than three years before their mother Kathleen Hatcher was killed after he openly discussed a plan he had to kill both their parents.
On Feb. 26, 2021, Kathleen Hatcher, 69, was found lying face down in a wooded area of King’s Mill Park, near Old Mill Road and Bloor Street. She had been stabbed to death.
Laura Hatcher took the stand Wednesday in a downtown courtroom and recalled how her brother Colin, who is two years younger, was a constant concern for her family due to his mental health issues.
She recalled Colin was depressed as a teenager and was taken to St. Joseph’s Health Centre for observation when he was about 14.
“I don’t believe that was a great experience for him. That probably set in motion resentment towards my parents and resistance to treatment,” said Laura.
Laura testified Colin began skipping class in high school, was believed to be using drugs, became withdrawn from the family and eventually moved out when he was about 16.
She said after Colin left home, she had little contact with him.
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“I know my parents were both very concerned, making efforts to look for him or trying to track him down,” she said.
Laura said she believed he got involved with drugs, had some mental health issues and was living on the streets.
She recalled running into Colin in 2003, when he was about 19 years old, on Yonge Street near Wellesley Street, where he appeared to be panhandling.
“He was just sitting on the sidewalk. I was surprised. We said ‘hello.’ It was strange meeting him because he was sort of happy to see me, but also dismissive,” Laura told the court.
Laura testified that Colin got into some “brushes with the law” where his mother would come to his aid. She said Colin eventually enrolled in a program for alcohol abuse and moved home with his mother, who was now divorced. She said Colin seemed to be doing much better and, after going to George Browne College for culinary arts, began working full-time as a chef.
Laura said things began to deteriorate in 2017 when her youngest brother Terence, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia around age 20 and was being treated with medication, walked out of the emergency room of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH).
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Laura testified that after Terence was reported missing, police came to Colin’s apartment looking for Terence, and Colin seemed more concerned about the police than his brother’s disappearance.
She recalled in an email, Colin wrote to her, “Who gave them my address? I caught those f—– looking through my window. Kicked them out.”
Laura said in March 2018, their mother took Colin to Niagara Falls for a few days for a mother-son getaway, and on the way home while stopped at a coffee shop, Colin nonchalantly told his mother about a plan he made with his paternal grandfather to kill her.
In an email that Kathleen sent to her therapist read out in court, Kathleen asked for advice after having an upsetting conversation with her son.
She wrote that Colin told her, “Grandpa Hatcher and I had an agreement that I would work as a chef for 10 years and at the end of that time, I would throw you over Niagara Falls.”
Kathleen wrote to the therapist that Colin told her, “You were there when grandpa made this deal. You knew about it.”
Kathleen said to her therapist that she told Colin, “there was no deal to throw me over Niagara Falls.”
She then wrote that Colin believed his mother knew about the deal, which is why he thought they went to Niagara Falls.
Laura said that her grandfather, who lived in Cambridge, Ont., was a retired schoolteacher who died in 2015, three years earlier.
“He was around 90 when he passed away. He was a very law-abiding and proper person to the idea that he created a pact to kill other people makes absolutely no sense,” Laura testified.
Laura said around the same time, she learned that Colin discussed a plan to kill their dad.
“My dad called me one evening in early March to say that Colin had dropped by his girlfriend’s workplace,” said Laura, adding that Colin had little to no relationship with her father’s girlfriend.
“Colin spontaneously dropped by and met with her. He wanted to talk about the plan to kill my father, our father. I think it came out in that conversation that this was a plan our grandfather had put in place and Colin was going to be executing this plan,” Laura said.
Laura said she and her parents were very concerned and weighed their options about what to do before eventually getting a court order to have Colin involuntarily hospitalized.
Laura testified that Colin was released from hospital a few weeks later, but refused to take an anti-psychotic in an injection form, which Laura said would have been their preference.
She explained an anti-psychotic injection is administered monthly in a doctor’s office, which would have been flagged if Colin was not being compliant.
While in hospital, Laura recalled that Colin was asked if they could bring him food but he replied he only wanted food from the vending machine because he was concerned about being poisoned.
She testified she believed his concern with poison, which became a central theme, was “a sign of some paranoia on Colin’s part.”
Laura said in March 2020, her mother called her and was “uncharacteristically upset” because Colin had called her workplace and left a voicemail. In the voicemail played in court, Colin can be heard saying that his mother has become addicted to a substance and “is badly taking advantage of people who don’t deserve to be taken advantage of.”
He asks to be contacted by email and leaves his email address on the recording.
In another instance, just a month and a half before her death, Laura testified she overheard her mother on a phone call with Colin.
“He showed up in the lobby of her apartment,” she said. Laura then explained that the call came through because Colin had buzzed her mother’s apartment and it went directly to her mother’s phone.
“There hadn’t been much contact between mom and Colin and then he shows up at her place,” Laura testified. She said she told her mother not to let Colin into her apartment, not to get into the car with him and to use the “COVID excuse” to keep him a good distance away.
Colin told detectives during his police interview after his arrest that he met with his mother in the parking lot at King’s Mill Park on Feb. 26, 2021 around 10 a.m. so he could give her a quilt that she had made for him about 10 years earlier.
In the police interview played in court, a detective asks Colin to confirm a story he had told him earlier in the day that he and his mother had parted ways on a path near the creek. The detective asks him to confirm what he had earlier told them about having nothing to do with his mother’s death. Colin responds that he just wants to listen to what the detective has to say.
When the detective asks Colin about injuries on his hands, Colin says he got a few minor scratches from cooking in the last few days at home, while cooking chicken and sweet potatoes from “peeling and chopping.”
Crown prosecutor Paul Zambonini told Superior Court Justice Shaun Nakatsuru the central issue is not who killed Kathleen Hatcher, but what was Colin Hatcher’s state of mind at the time of the killing and was he criminally responsible.
During cross-examinastion, defence lawyer Mary Cremer asked Laura Hatcher if her brother was upset about being admitted to hospital in 2018. Laura agreed he was. She also agreed with Cremer who suggested Colin was in denial about his paranoia and delusions and lacked insight into his mental health issues.
Colin Hatcher has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.
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