It’s been more than three years since a young Armstrong, B.C., woman was found dead in her own home.
Now court proceedings are shedding more light on 27-year-old Jillian McKinty’s mysterious death.
On Tuesday, a Vernon court heard Logan Scott, the Salmon Arm man who is accused of killing her, describe to police the circumstances around her death.
Scott has entered not-guilty pleas to charges of manslaughter and theft under $5,000.
McKinty’s obituary described her death, in November 2013, as a “sudden passing.”
However, what police originally thought of as a sudden death turned into a Major Crimes Unit investigation.
Around nine months after McKinty’s body was discovered, police interviewed Scott in custody.
Some of those recorded interviews were played in court on Tuesday. In the interviews, officers speak with Scott at length using various tactics to get him to open up about what happened the night he went over to McKinty’s house. The interviewers repeatedly bring up the married father’s family.
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“You have a one-year-old son… Fast forward 10 years when your son knows more about the world… what is he going to think?” an officer asked Scott in the interview.
On the tape, Scott eventually breaks down. He puts his arm over his face and appears to cry. What he indicates to police in that recorded statement and in a more detailed follow-up interview is that during a sexual encounter, McKinty choked herself with a shirt.
The proceedings are part of an ongoing voir dire in the case. The voir dire will decide whether Scott’s police statements, among other things, can be entered as evidence at trial. The judge’s ruling, at the end of the voir dire, on whether or not the evidence is admissible in the trial is expected to have an impact on how the case proceeds.
During the voir dire, lawyers are expect to make arguments about whether the accused’s Charter rights were breached and whether his statements to police were voluntary.
McKinty and Scott originally met years earlier on an online dating website. When McKinty died, they had recently reconnected. Scott told police he went over to McKinty’s home that night to help her install some computer software, and the pair had sex.
McKinty’s body was discovered after her twin sons’ cries alerted a neighbour that something was wrong.
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