ST-JEROME, Que. – Guy Turcotte’s thin shoulders heaved in front of a packed and hushed courtroom Thursday as he struggled through his sobs to recount a night that will torture him forever.
"Olivier said ‘Nooooo’ and he moved," the cardiologist said, barely able to get each word from his mouth. "I realized I was hurting him. I panicked and I stabbed him more.
"I was standing next to Anne-Sophie’s bed. She was sleeping.
"The same thing happened. The same thing."
Turcotte, 39, recounted how, on Feb. 20, 2009, he’d taken the children Olivier, 5, and Anne-Sophie, 3, to the home he rented a month earlier after his ugly separation with his wife, Isabelle Gaston.
He fed the children spaghetti, watched TV with them, helped them into their pyjamas, and then sang them songs while putting them to bed at about 7 p.m.
Saddened by the turn his six-year marriage had taken, Turcotte read an email exchange between Gaston and her new lover, Martin Huot.
"It was clear they loved each other," he said, leaning on the lecturn at the witness stand. "I’d never been loved that way and it hurt."
Turcotte then surfed the net for ways to kill himself. He searched the basement for something toxic, but found nothing.
"At one time I had a big knife in my hand and was sharpening it and I took it in both hands and wanted to plunge it into my heart," he said, making a gesture as if to stab himself.
But he stopped because he remembered Gaston, an emergency room doctor, telling him that a patient had tried that once, but didn’t die.
Throughout an hour of excruciating testimony recounting the children’s final hours, the children’s mother struggled to maintain her composure.
Finally, when a break in the proceedings was announced, Gaston fled the room and collapsed in tears.
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