EDMONTON – An Edmonton man plead guilty Friday to two counts of first-degree murder for the strangulation deaths of his two young sons less than a week before Christmas in 2010.
Court heard that the relationship between Jason Bruce Cardinal, 33, and the boy’s mother, Andrea Badger, had deteriorated, when he killed the boys, aged three and six, on the night of Dec. 19, 2010.
That day, Badger was scheduled to pick up the boys from Cardinal’s home. When no one answered the door all day, police were called.
Inside, they found Cardinal on his bed suffering from self-inflicted wounds to his forearms, with one dead child on either side of him. One of the boys had a towel wrapped around his neck and the other a pillowcase. Later, tests showed that Cardinal had sedated the boys with morphine before strangling them.
Cardinal’s intent was to kill himself along with his sons, court heard. Investigators found handwritten notes in Cardinal’s Abbottsfield Road home that showed he planned for weeks to murder his two boys.
“The accused breached the ultimate trust relationship, that of parent and child,” Crown prosecutor Allison Downey-Domato told court. “A suicidal mind can be as devastating as a homicidal one.”
In court, Badger called Cardinal “the weakest coward I have ever known.”
She hopes the guilty plea will now give her and her family some sort of closure.
“We’re still lost, we’re still trying to find our way,” Badger said adding, “I’m just glad it’s done with, and I’m glad he’s going to be gone for 25 years, at least, and he can’t harm us.”
Badger says the only comfort she has is knowing that her sons can no longer be harmed.
“They were very opposite in personalities, but they completed each other, and they loved life, and we have a very large family and they’re deeply missed, everyday.”
Cardinal chose to say nothing when given a chance to address the court.
Cardinal will now serve a life sentence with no chance of parole for at least 25 years.
“The public needs to know that he is not automatically, or going to be released in 25 years. That is something that is reviewed at that time, and he could spend considerably more time than that in jail, and potentially the rest of his life,” said Downey-Domato.
With files from Vinesh Pratap, Caley Ramsay, Global News.
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