WINNIPEG — John Paul Ostamas has just pleaded guilty to three counts of second degree murder to the “homeless homicides” in Winnipeg last spring.
Ostamas pleaded guilty to the homicides of Donald Collins, 65, Stony Stanley Bushie, 48, and Myles Monias, 37 in April 2015.
He faces an automatic life sentence and will be sentenced June 27.
In April, two charges against Ostamas were reduced from first-degree murder to second-degree murder, according to his lawyer Greg Brodsky.
READ MORE: Murder charges against John Paul Ostamas lowered, according to lawyer
On Tuesday in court Brodksy said the accused “has been in and out of mental hospitals for a large portion of his life.”
READ MORE: Winnipeg police charge John Paul Ostamas in 3 ‘homeless homicides’
The three Winnipeg men were homeless at the time of their deaths.
Monias was attacked in a bus shelter at Main Street and Pioneer on April 10, 2015 and left to die. Just over two weeks later on April 25, Collins was attacked in a back lane near Hargrave and Portage. Just hours later, Bushie was killed in a parkade nearby.
Ostamas has been in Winnipeg on and off for 10 years but lives a transient lifestyle, police said. His only previous contact with Winnipeg police was in connection with a domestic assault in March 2015, but he has a record for multiple assaults in the Thunder Bay area dating back to 2002.
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