WINNIPEG — Seventy-three-year-old grandmother, Elizabeth Lafantaisie was attacked, sexually assaulted and strangled to death five years ago inside the Summerland Apartment parkade on University Crescent.
It’s alleged she was stuffed in the trunk of her car, and the suspect then drove the vehicle to an Osborne Street car wash before ditching it on Lewis Street in Osborne Village.
“I didn’t kill anybody, I didn’t killed anybody man, that’s the furthest thing from my mind,” Thomas Brine said when detectives asked him who killed Lafantaisie.
Brine has pleaded not guilty to first degree murder. His two week murder trial began Feb. 8.
READ MORE: Murder trial underway for man accused in murder, sexual assault of Winnipeg grandmother
READ MORE: Suspect in Winnipeg grandmother’s murder admits to being in parkades around her murder
In police interview that was played to the jury on Thursday, Brine agreed to take officers to where he ditched a car he stole from a parkade on Pembina Highway.
Brine then told detectives to take him to the rear of the Racquet club on River Avenue, where he claimed he threw the car keys in the snow near a garbage bin.
“Somewhere between there,” Brine said in the interview. “I’m not sure how close to the building.” He then pointed officers between a staircase and BFI garbage bin.
Detective Sgt. Wesley Rommel said he went to look where Brine told him the keys were.
“I got out and looked for the keys and couldn’t find any,” Rommel said.
Rommel said Brine told him, “It looks like it snowed since, maybe they’re covered.”
They drove down River Avenue and Brine told officers to “turn right here.”
They turned onto Lewis Street.
“I think it was one of these streets man, I was so high I can’t remember,” Brine said.
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