Ottawa Citizen

If there is a normal way to act after your wife is found slashed and bludgeoned to death on the living room floor, this wasn’t it.

It was Jan. 29, 2014, and just hours after Jagtar Gill was killed in her Barrhaven home. Scott Fewer, a family friend, paid a visit to Gill’s husband after hearing the news. The scene wasn’t what Fewer expected, he testified Friday at Bhupinderpal Gill’s first-degree murder trial.

“I was struck by the lack of concern. There was nobody saying ‘I wonder who did this?’ No one was crying,” Fewer told court about the conversation with Jagtar Gill’s husband and relatives hours after the killing.

Gill and his mistress, Gurpreet Ronald, are on trial for killing his 43-year-old wife. The accused killers — both OC Transpo drivers who booked the same shifts — sat in silence as they listened to Fewer recount what he branded as odd behaviour hours after the slaying.

He recalled asking Gill how he found his wife. Gill answered in a low-tone and said she had been slashed, the witness testified.

Then he recalled that Gill, a man of few words, motioned with his hand across his neck. (His wife’s throat had been slit.)

“And nobody’s asking ‘Who did this?'” Fewer recalled. There was no one running home and locking their doors, he said.

The neighbour, who became a family friend, was one of the last to see Jagtar Gill alive on the morning of her death, when he dropped by for coffee with her husband. Bhupinderpal Gill insisted he stay for breakfast, and started chopping up ingredients for an omelette.

Jagtar Gill was in the living room watching a Bollywood movie. She was laid up and recovering from surgery.

Jagtar Gill was killed on her anniversary.

“She was doing good and recovering,” Fewer said.

He had met Bhupinderpal Gill about seven years ago when he helped him clear snow from his driveway so he could make his OC Transpo shift.

He said when he’d visit Gill at home, his mistress was usually around.

“To me it always appeared like they were a couple. They were playful, joking,” Fewer recalled.

They were spending a lot of time together, and it made Fewer uncomfortable so he tried to “minimize my contact with him.”

Fewer, who teaches at Algonquin College, didn’t want to be seen as “promoting” or “allowing” the affair, he said.

He spent enough time with Gill and Ronald that they both shared details about their marriages, with Ronald saying hers had hit rock bottom.

“She said their marriage was over and wanted to move on,” Fewer said.

Gurpreet Ronald

He recalled the day he went on a trip with Gill and Ronald to buy a motorcycle. Gill bought his mistress a pink helmet and she posed for the camera on the bike. She later posted them online, and Gill, upset, demanded she take them down.

“He was not to happy about her posting those,” Fewer said.

Gill was also upset that his mistress was making plans to buy the house directly behind his family home.

“He said: I’m trying to convince her not to,” Fewer recalled.

Gill and Ronald have both pleaded not guilty. They are accused of killing Gill’s wife so they could finally be together.

Jagtar Gill was killed on the anniversary of her arranged marriage.

The jury has heard about key DNA evidence against the mistress, Gurpreet Ronald. Her DNA was all over the murder weapons and the bloody gloves. Police say when Gill came home with his daughter on the day of the killing, he went to the kitchen and started washing the bloody knives.

The jury has heard that Gill also dumped one of the weapons outside, and that Ronald dumped the bloody gloves in a park, according to police.

Gill is expected to testify in his own defence at the trial before Ontario Superior Court Justice Julianne Parfett. The trial continues Monday.

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Det. Chris Benson was finding it hard to believe Bhupinderpal Gill’s story because it kept changing every time he told it.

It was the accused wife killer’s third police interview, but this one was the show as the detective spent hours peeling away the layers of lies.

“You sit and lie to my face,” Benson pressed.

Bhupinderpal Gill lied about his affair, lied about when he dumped a murder weapon and lied about washing the bloody knives used to kill his wife, Jagtar Gill.

“And your story changes every time I give you a little piece of more information,” Benson said.

OC Transpo drivers and secret lovers Bhupinderpal Gill, 40, and Gurpreet Ronald, 37, are on trial for the Jan. 29, 2014 killing. Jagtar Gill, 43, was slashed and bludgeoned to death as she lay in a weakened state recovering from surgery a day earlier. It was the 17th anniversary of her arranged marriage. Gill and Ronald have both pleaded not guilty.

The video of the April 13, 2014 police interrogation of Bhupinderpal Gill was shown at the trial on Wednesday.

In the hours-long interview, Gill maintained he had nothing to do with the killing of his wife. She after all, was the mother of his children, he noted.

The police theory is that Gill’s mistress killed his wife while he was out running errands with his daughter at a prescribed time so he would have an alibi. They figured the only way to be together was to kill his wife, police say.

The court has heard that Gill didn’t want to divorce his wife for fear he’d lose his children.

Either way, the detective noted he couldn’t afford a divorce.

“Jagtar wasn’t working anymore. You knew if you got a divorce you have to work even harder ’cause you would have to pay for her. You’d have to pay for another house for Jagtar. Have to pay for a house for you. Have to pay for your kids, right? You couldn’t afford to get divorced,” Benson charged.

Gill denied ever wanting a divorce.

Benson said it would have been so much easier to just walk out the door.

“Why did you do all this? All of this is a hell of a lot worse than just grabbing a suitcase and walking out of the house,” Benson declared.

The line of questioning rattled out this sensational answer.

“If what you have got enough to take me to the court, put me in the jail so that’s what I deserve,” Gill said in a thick East Indian accent.

The detective played to the target’s integrity as a family man.

“I think you need to be honest as a man, as a father. Right. Man to man, father to father, I think you need to be honest for your children,” Benson said. “I wouldn’t want my kids to find out that I’m not truthful and this is your opportunity. It’s the one thing a man has is his integrity. You can take everything else away but in the eyes of his kids he has this integrity. Everything else is just material.”

“Well, that’s fine sir. I think I’m deep enough to making these mistakes so deserve to go to jail. So that’s fine,” Gill said.

The detective then pressed him again and again to come clean about his role in his wife’s murder.

The accused killer, tired from hours of questioning, stood his ground on that main point and repeated that he had no involvement in the deadly plot.

The trial continues Thursday.

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Bhupinderpal Gill hid the bloody murder weapon not because he killed his wife, but rather out of fear he’d be blamed for it, court heard on Friday.

It was just before 1 p.m. on Jan. 29, 2014, when Gill and his daughter returned home and made the horrifying discovery that his wife, Jagtar Gill, had been slashed and bludgeoned to death in their Barrhaven home. His daughter was screaming. Her father picked up one of the weapons — a bloodstained weightlifting bar — to arm himself as he went upstairs and down looking for an intruder, his lawyer said.

“His terror was magnified because he thought the killer, the intruder, might still be in the house,” defence lawyer James Harbic told the jury at Gill’s first-degree murder trial on Friday.

OC Transpo drivers and secret lovers Bhupinderpal Gill, 40, and Gurpreet Ronald, 37, are on trial for the killing. Police found incriminating DNA evidence against Ronald but the Crown’s case against Gill is absent of any physical evidence linking him to the killing.

On Friday, after six weeks of trial, his lawyer finally revealed Gill’s side of the story: Once he checked the house for an intruder, it dawned on him that he was holding the bloody weapon used in the killing of his wife, at the scene of the killing.

It was at this point in time, Harbic told the jury, that Gill was overcome with an intense fear that “they’d put this on me.”

His mind raced back to 2004 when his in-laws had accused him of threatening to kill his wife, the lawyer said, adding that it haunted Gill, and here he was, 10 years later, now holding a weapon used in the killing of his wife.

He hid the weightlifting bar in the basement in a box and then started washing the bloody knives, Harbic said, adding that Gill had used them that morning to make an omelette and feared his fingerprints were still on them.

“It was the worst mistake of his life,” his lawyer told the jury.

The lawyer also told the jury that Gill never threatened to kill his wife and was falsely accused, as he was on Friday as he sat in the prisoner’s box next to his mistress on trial for his wife’s killing.

The lawyer tried to dismantle the police theory that the secret lovers plotted to kill Jagtar Gill so they could be together. The theory has Ronald killing Jagtar while Bhupinderpal and his daughter ran errands at a prescribed time.

The reality is that Gill’s affair with Ronald ended four months before the killing, Harbic told the jury. The lawyer also suggested that, in fact, Ronald was having another affair with another OC Transpo driver in the weeks leading to the killing.

Gill took the stand on Friday afternoon and testified that just two days after his arranged marriage to Jagtar, his in-laws branded him as a no-account street rat.

“I was not worthy of Jagtar,” Gill said through an interpreter.

It was Jagtar Gill who sponsored Bhupinderpal so he could leave India for a better life in Ottawa.

He came to Ottawa with next to nothing in 1997. He delivered newspapers in the morning and pizza at night. He worked on an electronics assembly line, drove a cab and later an OC Transpo bus. By 2014, Gill’s assets were worth $1.5 million.

“Our married life was good but she had chronic medical problems,” he recalled.

They stopped sleeping together in 2008 but he told the jury: “I loved her as the mother of my three children and I love her as a wife.”

Gill has always maintained that he had nothing to do with his wife’s killing. His testimony continues on Monday morning at the Elgin Street courthouse in Room No. 34.

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Days after finding his wife dead on the living room floor, he confronted his mistress, asking if she was the one who slit his wife’s throat on their 17th wedding anniversary, Bhupinderpal Gill testified Monday.

Testifying at his murder trial on Monday, Gill, an OC Transpo driver, said rumours were swirling after the Jan. 29, 2014 killing. One of the rumours, he told court, was that Gurpreet Ronald, his secret lover, had killed his wife so they could finally be together.

When Gill confronted Ronald, she denied any involvement and said she had an alibi, he testified.

Gill and fellow bus driver Ronald are on trial for the killing, accused of plotting to kill and later executing it with Ronald slashing and bludgeoning her to death while Gill was out running errands with his daughter.

Gill recounted another rumour that had him as the killer.

“Were you involved in the killing?” his defence lawyer James Harbic asked him.

“No,” Gill replied.

“Did you hire a hit man to kill your wife?” Harbic asked.

“No,” Gill said.

He also gave the jury a play-by-play about the day he found his wife dead.

Even Gill himself says he looks guilty. After all, he hid a bloody weapon used in the killing twice.

Monday was Gill’s second day on the stand, and he gave the most detailed account so far on why he hid key evidence in the killing of his wife.

His mind was frozen, he was in shock, he said. He picked up a blood-stained weightlifting bar from the living room floor, saying he needed to arm himself in case the killer was still in the house. He ran upstairs and down.

“I went running everywhere,” he recalled. “I checked all the bedrooms, there was nothing there.”

Then he said he realized he was holding the blood-stained weapon at the scene of the crime. He first hid it in the basement.

Days later, he said, his fears grew that nobody would ever believe him if he started telling the truth.

“If I tell anyone about this, the blame will come to me. So I threw it away,” he said, recalling his thoughts at the time.

The police did find the weapon he hid in the basement. In fact, they secretly replaced it with another weightlifting bar they soaked in goat’s blood. They set up video surveillance in the basement to see what, if anything, he’d do with it. The police trick worked, as a surveillance crew caught him removing the bar and dumping it in a wooded spot near Cedarview Drive, not far from his Barrhaven home.

He also told the jury: “I didn’t want to keep it in my house.”

Gill, 40, also tried to explain away all the lies he told police in a series of interviews after the killing.

He said he lied about his affair with Ronald, 37, because he was ashamed and didn’t want his children to find out about it. He said the affair lasted three years and ended four months before the killing.

He also admitted that he tampered with the other weapons (two kitchen knives) used in the killing.

“Being nervous, I picked up the knives, threw them in the sink,” he testified.

He feared his fingerprints were still on them from chopping onions that morning, he told court.

The jury has heard incriminating DNA evidence against Ronald but the Crown’s case against Gill is absent of any physical evidence linking him to the killing. The incriminating evidence against him is from what he did after the killing, when he returned home.

These mistakes were the worst mistakes of his life, his lawyer told the jury.

Gill also told the jury that he would never have let his daughter make such a horrifying discovery if he knew what awaited them on their return home after running errands.

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The last accomplice on trial for the 2010 execution-style killing of Barrhaven teenager Michael Swan was found guilty Thursday as the so-called mastermind behind the botched marijuana and money robbery.

Sam Tsega, 24, had been on trial for second-degree murder, but Ontario Superior Court Justice Catherine Aitken spared him a murder conviction and instead found him guilty of manslaughter.

Tsega was the Ottawa connection for his hardened gang-banger friends, known as the Toronto 3. He told them they could find money and marijuana at Swan’s home and helped them case the house before the killing.

Without Tsega, the police and later prosecutors theorized, the Feb. 22, 2010 murder would never have happened.

The judge said the Crown failed to prove an essential element of second-degree murder, namely that Tsega, who was not at the scene of the crime, knew the robbery plot would end in murder.

“It was a tragic and senseless killing that has forever changed the fabric of the Barrhaven community,” the judge told court.

The judge said she wished society had the ability to turn back time on “the recklessness of youth” that has left the victim’s family “forever scarred.”

The manslaughter conviction follows six years of legal proceedings for Swan’s family and friends. His parents — admired by both the Crown and defence — have withstood a painfully long trip through the criminal justice system. They have sat quietly in court, across four convictions, listening to horrifying details about their 19-year-old son’s last moments in life. At best, they say, they felt like spectators, victimized by it all.

It was just after midnight when three masked men, dressed in black with handguns drawn, stormed Michael Swan‘s home and forced him and his friends to their knees at gunpoint.

The teenage marijuana seller had been watching hockey with his friends when the men from Toronto came to rob him. The three asked him where he kept his dope and his money, but Swan wouldn’t give it up. He even refused after they pressed a gun into his back.

“I don’t know,” Swan told them.

Those were his last words.

They shot him. The bullet pierced his heart. He was dead in less than a minute.

The next in line for questioning was his girlfriend.

On her knees, at gunpoint, and having just seen her boyfriend executed, she told them everything they wanted to know.

The men forced the survivors into a basement sauna and told them to stay put as the three fled with their stolen loot, including video games.

Swan‘s girlfriend could be heard screaming for help as police arrived. They tried in vain to revive Swan but there was nothing they could do to save him.

The men left for Toronto with almost two kilograms of weed and $3,000, and they would have got away if not for a cellphone that police were able to track. Police arrested them hours later on the 401.

Sam Tsega, though convicted in the killing Thursday, walked out the front door of the Elgin Street courthouse. He’s still on bail awaiting sentencing but prosecutors are expected to argue that he belongs in jail until then.

Michael Swan’s family is devastated. His parents don’t celebrate Christmas anymore even though it used to be his mother’s favourite time of the year. She used to spend weeks decorating but these days they don’t even put up a tree. They skip birthdays, too. They say it’s been too hard to celebrate anything since their son’s death.

Tsega is the final accomplice to be convicted. Kristopher McLellan, the shooter, was convicted of first-degree murder, and the other two masked accomplices, Kyle Mullen and Dylon Barnett, were convicted of second-degree murder.

At the sentencing hearing last year for Dylon Barnett, Michael Swan’s father, Dale, stood up in court to finally put a human face on his family’s tragedy.

Swan, a private man, told court: “I take exception that I have to do this in open court and before one of the very individuals responsible for my son’s death. This, in itself, I consider a form of victimization, but I realize this will be my only opportunity to try to put a human face on what has been, up to now a very cold, clinical, detached legal process.”

It was a moving victim-impact statement.

He told court: “As a father, I consider myself a failure. Ultimately, it was my job to protect my child, to identify the dangers and do whatever was required to deal with them. I thought I was doing this, but it proved not to be enough. I must live with this guilt for the rest of my life.”

At the same sentencing hearing last year, the victim’s tearful mother, Rea, told court her life will never be the same.

“Just enjoying a beautiful sunny day, a good meal or even a laugh at a good joke brings with it a feeling of guilt,” she said. “How can I enjoy these things? My son is dead … I have been robbed of my son and the joys of life. … There remains a large hole in my heart that will never go away.

They described their dead son as a natural athlete who could make you laugh. And, they said, he never held a grudge.

Swan sold only marijuana, and loved to smoke it while watching hockey in his bedroom like many suburban teens.

He spent the last night of his life with his girlfriend, watching Olympic hockey.

And so for money and weed, young Michael Swan was executed in his own bedroom.

Tsega, wearing a suit, walked out of court Thursday a free man for another day, awaiting his sentence.

The maximum penalty for manslaughter is life in prison.

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Graffiti artist Drone and his girlfriend worked for 10 nights to create this tribute to slain Barrhaven teen Michael Swan.

In a surprise alibi that silenced Court Room 34, Gurpreet Ronald’s defence team said Tuesday that their client was out having tea with a doctor when her lover’s wife was killed.

In a brief yet strong opening address for Ronald’s long-awaited defence, Jessica Abou-Eid revealed the alibi and told the jury her client didn’t kill Jagtar Gill, but that she found her body and feared she’d be blamed for it.

“She genuinely believed that the finger would be pointed at her, and here we are,” Abou-Eid told the jury.

The defence lawyer then started dismantling the Crown’s case, noting it took 27 days and 33 witnesses to present it. Ronald’s legal team is going to call two witnesses, and the first, Gurpreet Ronald, took the stand briefly on Tuesday in her own defence.

“The Crown will tell you all the pieces of the puzzle fit,” in a murder plot hatched so they could “selfishly be together,” the lawyer told court.

“Gurpreet Ronald is not here before you because she killed Jagtar Gill. She stands before you because she was the mistress,” Abou-Eid declared.

She wasn’t the mistress who wanted more, she said.

Ronald, 37, and her secret lover, Bhupinderpal Gill, 40, are on trial for the Jan. 29, 2014 killing of his wife, Jagtar. The 43-year-old woman was slashed and bludgeoned to death in her Barrhaven home as she recovered from surgery.

According to Ronald’s version of events on the day in question, she only discovered the body after the killing. She is expected to testify in detail about how her blood got on the carpet and on the baseboards upstairs. She is also expected to explain other incriminating evidence, notably why she dumped a murder weapon and bloody glove along an NCC trail. She’s also to offer an explanation as to why she didn’t call 911.

Her lawyer asked the jury to pay close attention to Ronald’s testimony.

“While you carefully listen to Gurpreet Ronald, ask yourself, ‘For what benefit would this woman kill Jagtar Gill?'”

Ronald spoke from the stand about her new life in Ottawa after growing up in India. She said she had drifted away from her religion for a bit, and married “out of culture” because an arranged union wasn’t for her. She told court that she worked hard, styling hair by day and driving an OC Transpo bus at night. She said she was clocking 80 hours a week at OC Transpo (the equivalent of about 12 hours a day, seven days a week).

Ronald recalled the time she met her husband. “It was love at first sight,” she told court.

“He was my Prince Charming,” she recalled.

They fell in love quickly and married in secret three months later. They later told their families, and Ronald said hers was upset. Still, her family later presented her with a long-bought bridal gown, with all the gold and “bling bling,” she said.

She said Jason Ronald was a man who had big dreams, loads of ambition and charisma.

But their love, as the court has heard, didn’t last long. Jason Ronald, who’s now awaiting a divorce, testified earlier this week that Gurpreet came at him with a knife at least three times. That they were both having affairs and sick of fighting over money, the trial has heard.

In fact, one of Gurpreet’s lawyers, Michael Smith, hammered at Jason Ronald’s credibility for hours during his time on the stand, accusing him of treating his longtime wife as nothing more than a paycheque.

The police theory is that lovers Bhupinderpal Gill and Gurpreet Ronald, who are both OC Transpo drivers, plotted to kill Jagtar Gill, 43, so they could be together because divorce was not an option. But court has heard that divorce is very much a reality in the Sikh community, with one of Bhupinderpal Gill’s sisters testifying Tuesday that some 23 people in her family are divorced.

Ronald’s DNA was found at the scene of the murder, and police believe she slashed and bludgeoned Jagtar Gill to death while Bhupinderpal was out running errands at a prescribed time.

Both accused killers have admitted that while they hid murder weapons, neither had anything to do with the crime that rocked Barrhaven.

Jagtar Gill was killed on the 17th anniversary of her arranged marriage. She was lying on the sofa in the living-room, recovering from surgery.

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Gurpreet Ronald says she wishes she had just turned a heel the day she found her secret lover’s wife dead.

It was Jan. 29, 2014, and Ronald said she had gone to Jagtar Gill’s house in Barrhaven to pay a visit and pick up some tools. Nobody answered the unlocked door, so she let herself in, took her shoes off and hung up her coat. She called out “Hello,” but all she heard was the TV in the background.

She was walking toward to the kitchen, she said, when she made the horrifying discovery. The body of Jagtar Gill, slashed and bludgeoned to death, lay in a pool of blood on the living-room floor.

“I was shocked. … She was on her back. … I saw her neck cut off, it was wide open. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I was freaking out,” Ronald testified at her murder trial Wednesday.

Ronald, 37, took the stand for a second day to try to explain away the incriminating evidence against her — from how her blood was found at the scene to why she hid the weapon used to kill Gill.

Ronald and her lover, Bhupinderpal Gill, 40, are on trial for the 2014 killing of his wife. The police theory is that the accused, both OC Transpo drivers, conspired to kill her so they could finally be together.

Ronald has insisted she is innocent, but her account of what happened the day of the killing has gone untold until now.

She was running out of breath, she said. She may have screamed or yelled.

She thought she was going to faint, so she steadied herself with her hands and feet on the bloody living-room floor.

“I felt something under my feet. I saw a knife. I think I grabbed it. It was my right hand. I had touched the knife, then I threw it on the floor,” she told the jury.

“I was nervous and scared. I wanted to walk away from it.”

She almost did walk away, but when she got to the front door, she realized she had blood on her hands, she said. And it was the blood of her secret lover’s wife.

She figured she’d be blamed for the killing because she was the mistress, she testified. Shaking in fear, she said she put on latex gloves and wiped her fingerprints off the bloody knife.

She was shaking so much she somehow cut herself. “I don’t know how. I was wiping and shaking. I nicked my hand, my finger … I saw I was bleeding,” she testified.

She thought she was going to faint again so she drank water from the tap in the kitchen sink.

Then, to explain how police found her blood upstairs, Ronald testified that she went looking for a Band-Aid.

Ronald, who has insisted her innocence, gave her account under examination in chief by her lawyer, Michael Smith.

“You don’t call 911? You don’t call for help?” Smith asked.

“No. Because I would be blamed. … I’m standing there with the knife,” Ronald explained.

“I only thought about me — to protect me at that time,” she said.

She left with a bloody glove and knife, and went home.

“I was freaking out. I didn’t know what to do,” she recalled.

She called her lover in a panic. She asked Bhupinderpal Gill: “Do you know what’s going on? What the f—!”

“He just said he was busy and he hung up on me quickly,” Ronald said.

She called him back on his cellphone two minutes later at 12:38 p.m. Gill said he was at Sobeys so she went there after catching her breath.

Gill and his daughter were at the cash. She says she wanted to ask him what had happened at his place, but his daughter was there, and she was “holding back emotions” so all she asked him was if he wanted to go to Ikea with her.

He said no and mentioned he was expecting a guest at his place for 1 p.m.

She ended up dumping the bloody glove and knife along an NCC trail. (That evidence was found by a maintenance man who called police).

She later went home and cooked supper for her family.

It wasn’t long before the police came calling. It was around 9:30 p.m. and her kids were asleep so she asked the officer to whisper.

Then she started lying, telling the officer she didn’t know Jagtar and Bhupinderpal Gill.

“After what I had just seen, I wanted to distance myself from it,” Ronald said.

By the end of the 40-minute chat with the officer, Ronald told a different story, saying she knew them, worked with Bhupinderpal, styled his wife’s hair and that their children played together.

No matter the lies she told police, Ronald insists she had nothing to do with the killing and only happened upon it after the fact.

The court has heard about a surprise alibi that has her having tea with a doctor at the time of the killing.

Jagtar Gill was killed on the 17th anniversary of her arranged marriage. She had been home recovering from surgery.

The trial continues Thursday in Room No. 34 at the Elgin Street courthouse with Ronald back on the stand.

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Gurpreet Ronald said she hadn’t wanted a divorce but was getting ready for one.

She closed the joint bank account, transferred assets, including gold, and talked to a lawyer.

Her husband, Jason Ronald, also an OC Transpo driver, had been threatening to divorce her for the past 10 years, she said. She said she took him seriously this time because he hadn’t been home in days. They were both having affairs, their finances were in chaos and their fights had turned violent, she said.

Ronald, 40, and her secret lover, Bhupinderpal Gill, 41, also an OC driver, are on trial for the Jan. 29, 2014 daytime killing of his wife, Jagtar Gill, 43. The intimate details of Ronald’s marriage leading up to the killing were revealed at her murder trial on Friday under a day-long grilling by assistant crown attorney Brian Holowka.

She was slashed and bludgeoned to death in her living room on the 17th anniversary of her arranged marriage. The police theory is that they killed her so they could finally be together.

Ronald told the jury that she had not seen divorce as an option.

But Holowka charged that she had gone to great lengths to plan for one, pointing to a journal Ronald said she had kept to record facts in case the divorce got messy or, in her own words, extreme.

The prosecutor also noted that a key theme in their disintegrating marriage was their finances, and claimed that Ronald helped her husband get a job at OC Transpo so he wouldn’t be a drain on her if they parted ways.

“It was part of your plan, to make him financially stable. … If he’s financially stable, it would lead to the path of divorce,” Holowka said.

Ronald maintained that she didn’t want a divorce but that everyone was pressuring her “to protect myself.”

She repeatedly told court that she still had hope for her marriage.

The prosecutor answered that by saying, “There’s no going back. You’re so done with him that you’re sending your friends photos of your husband’s girlfriend. … You’re tearing down the foundation of your relationship.”

“I didn’t see it that way but I see what you’re saying,” Ronald replied.

Then, in testimony that popped eyes in the gallery, Ronald told the court, “I don’t mean to be rude … but I’m better looking than her.”

The prosecutor guided the jury through a series of texts Ronald had sent to her friends, including one saying her husband’s mistress was “f—ing ugly.”

Ronald also maintained she had nothing to do with the killing of Jagtar Gill, someone she considered a friend. She said having a years-long affair with Gill’s husband was not her proudest moment.

And she stuck to her story, which explains why her blood was at the scene of the killing and why she ditched a bloody knife and gloves.

She said she had dropped by Jagtar Gill’s Barrhaven home to say hi and pick up some tools. She says she came upon the crime scene after the fact. Shocked at the horrifying discovery, Ronald said she felt like she was going to faint so she steadied herself on the blood-soaked carpet and accidentally stepped on the bloody knife. She says she doesn’t know what she was thinking. Her mind was racing and she was running out of breath, she said, adding that she picked up the knife, then threw it down.

Fearing she’d be blamed for the killing because she was the mistress, she said she started covering her tracks.

In a panic, she said, she put on latex gloves and started wiping her fingerprints off the knife she had just handled. She said she was shaking so much that she somehow cut herself. To explain how her blood got upstairs, she told court that she went looking for a bandage.

Ronald said she went for the front door, and decided to take the key evidence with her, all the way to an National Capital Commission trail where she dumped the gloves and knife.

The prosecutor noted that, through all of this, she never called 911.

“You never think, ‘This is insane, I’ve got to call the police?’ ” the prosecutor asked.

“That would have been the right thing to do, but I didn’t,” she said. “Looking back, there are some things I could’ve done differently, but I didn’t.”

The prosecutor accused Ronald of fabricating her version of events, bringing up what she had said to police when they came calling. She first said she didn’t even know the Gills and originally said she hadn’t been to their home on the day in question, let alone dump the evidence.

Her co-accused, Bhupinderpal Gill, testified last week that he, too, didn’t have anything to do with the killing, and said he found his dead wife after the fact. He, too, dumped key evidence, including a weightlifting bar used in the killing. He also said he hid evidence for fear he’d be blamed in his wife’s killing.

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Gurpreet Ronald was branded a liar on the stand on Monday, accused of changing her story again and again about what she was doing on the day she allegedly killed her secret lover’s wife in a jealous rage.

“You’re changing your story to narrow the window of opportunity you had to kill,” charged assistant Crown attorney Brian Holowka.

Ronald and her secret lover, Bhupinderpal Gill, are on trial for the Jan. 29, 2014 killing of his wife, Jagtar Gill. She was slashed and bludgeoned to death on the living-room floor of her Barrhaven home.

The police theory is that the secret lovers conspired and executed a murder plot so they could be together. The accused killers, both OC Transpo drivers, have raised separate alibis and both say they only, and at separate times, happened upon the murder scene after the fact.

Ronald, 37, admitted on the stand on Monday that she lied to police about her whereabouts on the day in question to distance herself from the murder for fear she’d be blamed because she was the mistress.

Ronald was also grilled about a key meeting she had with Gill at a Sobey’s after the murder. She initially presented it to police as a chance meeting when it was anything but. Phone records show Ronald called Gill three times on the day in question and he told her he was at the grocery store.

She said she went there to ask Gill what was going on at his house. She testified that she had gone to the Gill home to pick up tools and that’s when she happened on the murder scene. The horrifying discovery left her in shock, and she said she felt like she was going to faint, so she steadied herself on the blood-soaked living-room carpet, and accidentally stepped on a knife, one of the murder weapons.

She picked up the knife, she said, then threw it down. Then she put on latex gloves to wipe her fingerprints off the knife for fear of being blamed for the killing, she recounted. She was shaking so much, she somehow cut herself.

The Crown has charged that she in fact cut herself in a violent, deadly struggle with Jagtar Gill.

The prosecution also said that Ronald put on a star performance in “theatre” when she returned to the scene of the crime and cast herself to police as a concerned neighbour, who covered her mouth and repeated “Jagtar” when an officer said she had died.

Ronald has also tried to explain how her blood was found upstairs in the master bedroom, in the walk-in closet, and in the bathroom. She said she went upstairs looking for a band-aid.

The trial continues Tuesday.

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Two and a half years after Sen. Patrick Brazeau was charged with fraud and breach of trust related to living expenses billed to the Senate, prosecutors have abandoned their case against him, the Ottawa Citizen has learned.

Assistant Crown attorneys assigned to the case are expected to officially abandon the case on Wednesday morning in Court Room No. 32 before Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger. The proceedings are scheduled to start at 10 a.m. at the Elgin Street courthouse.

Prosecutors have folded their case after conceding they didn’t have a reasonable prospect of conviction after reviewing the RCMP case against Brazeau.

The fraud and breach of trust charges stemmed from disputed Senate housing expense claims for his primary residence in Maniwaki.

The legal victory for Brazeau, 41, follows the resounding acquittal of Sen. Mike Duffy, who was defended by top lawyer Donald Bayne.

While Brazeau was facing similar charges to Duffy, he was only facing two charges — fraud and breach of trust — stemming from a single alleged crime. The breach of trust charge was added because Brazeau was in public office at the time.

Brazeau was appointed to the Senate on the advice of then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2009. He was suspended in November 2013 over questions about his housing expenses. Brazeau has told the Ottawa Citizen in the past that he provided all requested paperwork and was granted permission for his claims before he submitted them.

Brazeau is still suspended from the Senate but would like to return, he has told the Citizen.

The Senate has withheld Brazeau’s salary since his suspension in an effort to recover the $49,000 in questionable expenses he is alleged to owe the upper chamber.

Reached late Tuesday afternoon, the senator declined to comment.

Brazeau is also facing a charge of refusing a breathalyzer after an incident in L’Ange-Gardien, east of Gatineau, in early April. He next court date in that case is Oct. 26.

Last year, Brazeau pleaded guilty to an assault charge – a charge of sexual assault in the same case was dropped – and he received an unconditional discharge.

If the fraud and breach of trust charges against Brazeau are dropped Wednesday, they’ll be the last at play in the senate expenses scandal. It began in November 2012 when the Senate’s internal economy committee tasked three senators with reviewing Brazeau’s housing allowance.

Charges were withdrawn against former senator Mac Harb in May, the day after the RCMP announced that Sen. Pamela Wallin would not be charged in relation to her travel expense claims and the month after Duffy’s acquittal.

In an exclusive interview with Postmedia during a May canoe trip on the Gatineau River, Brazeau spoke at length about a January suicide attempt, and said that he’s glad to be alive and to have the support of his family. Brazeau, once a rising star as head of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, said that he is in therapy after months in rehab but “I’m still not out of the woods yet.”

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A defining image at the Gill murder trial came when the jury sat statue-still as they watched a young girl recount the day she found her dead mom on the living-room room floor. Jagtar Gill’s throat was slit and she had been bludgeoned with a weightlifting bar.

“There was blood everywhere,” the girl said.

That awful scene of a young girl finding her slain mom was propped up in a no-detail-too-small closing address to the jury on Thursday by Michael Smith, the lawyer defending Gurpreet Ronald, accused of killing her boyfriend’s wife on Jan. 29, 2014, the 17th anniversary of their arranged marriage.

It was revisited to show that Gurpreet Ronald was anything but rational on the day of the killing. She had happened on the scene after the fact, the lawyer said, and then went straight to her boyfriend at a grocery store, where Bhupinderpal Gill and his daughter were buying roses and cake as gifts for Jagtar, at her Barrhaven home recovering from surgery.

That Gurpreet Ronald’s mind was scrambled after the horrifying discovery is evidenced in the fact that she let that little girl, roses in hand, return to her home knowing full well her own mother was dead on the living-room floor, the lawyer said, adding that she could have simply taken her for a ride to her own home like she had done countless times.

That would make her the “most evil woman on the planet” if she did that after rational thought, Smith told the jury. Ronald, 37, has testified that the grisly discovery left her “freaked out” — her mind was racing, and she kept thinking that she would be blamed for the killing because she was the mistress, she said.

In her account, she felt like she was going to faint so she tried to steady herself on the blood-soaked carpet, and then accidentally stepped on a bloody knife used in the killing. Now she was really freaking out, she said, so she put on some latex gloves to wipe her fingerprints from the bloody knife. She was shaking so much she said she somehow cut her finger and she went to find a bandage upstairs, where police found droplets of her blood.

Her defence lawyer noted on Thursday that not all DNA evidence seized in the case was tested. He noted that the Crown theory is that Ronald cut her finger in a violent, deadly struggle with the weak Jagtar Gill, who had hernia surgery a day earlier. The court has heard that Jagtar Gill had been beaten 20 times with a weightlifting bar and slashed 25 times with knives.

But despite all the blood, Smith noted to the jury that only two droplets of Gurpreet Ronald’s blood were found on the main floor where the killing happened.

Smith hammered away at the Crown theory that Ronald and Gill conspired and executed a murder plot to be together because divorce was not an option in Sikh religion. The jury has heard testimony from Bhupinderpal Gill’s sister, who said that she knows of 23 people in her family alone who are divorced and that it is accepted.

Smith also told court that Ronald didn’t want to make a home with her co-accused. In fact, he said their relationship was no longer sexual. And he said she was having another affair with another OC Transpo driver in the months leading up to the killing. Her relationship with Gill was more of a shoulder to cry on about her rocky marriage, he said.

If you take away the romance of their relationship, the Crown’s case crumbles, Smith said.

The lawyer also said the foundation of the murder case was built on shaky ground and anchored in the “unreliable” testimony of Ottawa psychic Susanne Shields, who had done business with the accused killers. She went to police after hearing about the killing in the news. She testified that the accused killers despised the victim and said they’d do anything to be together.

She also testified that she can speak to the dead. But Smith branded her on Thursday as an opportunist who wanted her “15 minutes of fame.”

He noted that the psychic dropped her business address 11 times at the murder trial.

Smith also told the jury that, after nine weeks of testimony, motive evidence remains absent, because, he said, she had “absolutely no motive to kill Jagtar Gill.”

She didn’t depend on Bhupinderpal Gill, she was having an affair with someone else at the time, and she certainly didn’t want to live with him and his parents in some future, blended family with two sets of children, the lawyer said.

The judge is expected to charge the jury on Friday, and then the jury will be sequestered until a verdict is reached.

Bhupinderpal Gill and Gurpreet Ronald both say they had nothing to do with the killing. Both have admitted to lying to police and both have admitted to hiding weapons used in the killing. Both have pleaded not guilty.

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The judge at the sensational murder trial of Barrhaven’s Bhupinderpal Gill and his secret lover Gurpreet Ronald has been accused of rolling her eyes, tilting her head back and folding her arms while the mistress testified in her own defence.

Defence lawyer Michael Smith levelled the accusations at Superior Court Justice Julianne Parfett on July 5. Smith also complained to the judge that she had stopped taking notes at one point.

The lawyer noted that her reaction to his client’s version of events may have had a “negative impact” on Ronald’s trial in the eyes of jurors who follow instruction and guidance from the presiding judge.

Justice Parfett replied that she was not aware and said she would try not to react to Ronald’s testimony. The lawyer raised his complaints with the judge in the absence of the jury. Because the jury is now sequestered as they deliberate the fate of the accused killers, the lawyer’s complaints about the judge can now be reported.

Everything we've written on the Gill murder trial

The jury began its deliberations on Friday afternoon after hearing nine weeks of evidence. Saturday deliberations ended without the jury reaching a verdict.

Bhupinderpal Gill and Ronald, both OC Transpo drivers, are on trial for the killing of his wife, Jagtar Gill, on Jan. 29, 2014. Jagtar Gill, 43, was slashed and bludgeoned to death on the living-room floor of her Barrhaven home on the 17th wedding anniversary of her arranged marriage.

The accused killers have pleaded not guilty and both have alibis. Gill, 41, and Ronald, 37, both testified in their own defence, telling the jury they separately happened on the crime scene after the fact. Both have presented alibis, with Gill running errands with his daughter, and Ronald having tea with a doctor.

In stories branded as lies by the Crown, Gill and Ronald both say they hid weapons used in the killing after the fact because they feared they’d be blamed for the killing.

The police theory is that Gill and Ronald conspired and executed the deadly plot so they could be together because divorce was not an option in their culture. The jury has also heard testimony that that’s not the case, and in fact Gill’s sister testified that there are 23 people in her family who are divorced.

The jury has also heard that their sexual affair had ended six months before the killing. Smith told jurors in closing arguments earlier this week that if you take the romance out of their relationship, the foundation of the Crown’s case crumbles. In fact, the jury has heard that Ronald was actually having an affair with another OC Transpo driver around the time of the killing.

Defence lawyers for the accused killers have urged the jury to find them not guilty, and noted that in all their hundreds of hours of phone calls and untold texts, there is no evidence of planning a murder.

The lawyers for the accused killers say their clients had no motive to kill, and noted that the Crown’s 33-day case against them lacked evidence that goes to motive.

The jury — five women and seven men — is now sequestered and deliberating the fate of the accused killers.

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Months before Gurpreet Ronald went on trial for the 2014 killing of her secret lover’s wife, her defence lawyer filed a motion asking the judge to recuse herself on grounds of alleged bias after she told court that the accused was “capable of a great deal of deceit and deviousness.”

Ontario Superior Court Justice Julianne Parfett made the comments in bail court, and before hearing any testimony from Ronald.

Ronald and her secret lover Bhupinderpal Gill were found guilty by a jury on Wednesday in the Jan. 29, 2014 killing of Jagtar Gill.

Evidence at bail hearings is covered by a standard publication ban until the end of trial. Now that the trial is over, the motion for the judge to recuse herself can be reported.

Parfett was asked to step down as trial judge in February in an unsuccessful motion filed by defence lawyer Michael Smith.

The defence lawyer focused on comments the judge made during his client’s bail hearing. Ronald’s sister had just testified as a potential surety, and Justice Parfett, in denying bail, said it was unlikely that she could control her sister if she were granted bail.

The judge said the witness’s knowledge of her sister was astonishingly limited given that her evidence was that they spoke on the phone daily and saw one another two to three times a week.

The judge said that despite their level of contact, the proposed surety knew next to nothing about her sister.

“She was unaware that (Ronald’s) marriage was in difficulties or that (she) was having an affair,” the judge said.

Parfett then noted that while the sister knew that Bhupinderpal Gill was a constant presence in Ronald’s life, “it never once occurred to (her) that she ought to question this relationship.”

Then the judge said this about Ronald:

“(She) lied with impunity to her sister about very significant aspects of her life and her sister was oblivious. I can only conclude that (Ronald) is someone who is capable of a great deal of deceit and deviousness.”

In a March 9 decision, the judge ruled on the motion about herself, and concluded that she was not biased and could continue on as the trial judge, which she did.

During the trial on July 5, the same defence lawyer also complained about the judge’s behaviour during Ronald’s testimony.

In the absence of the jury, Michael Smith complained that the judge had rolled her eyes, tilted her head back, folded her arms and at one point, stopped taking notes while Ronald testified in her own defence.

The lawyer noted that the judge’s reaction to his client’s version of events may have had a “negative impact” on Ronald’s trial in the eyes of jurors who follow instruction and guidance from the presiding judge.

Justice Parfett replied that she was not aware and said she would try not to react to Ronald’s testimony.

Gill and Ronald, former OC Transpo drivers, have been condemned to life in prison with no parole eligibility for 25 years.

Jagtar Gill was slashed and bludgeoned to death on the living room floor of her Barrhaven home on the 17th wedding anniversary of her arranged marriage.

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The civilian watchdog investigation that vindicated Ottawa Police Chief Charles Bordeleau this week has revealed that the department has no policy to guide its officers about what they can and can’t do when their family members find themselves before the courts.

The Ontario Civilian Police Commission has informed the police and City of Ottawa officials that such a policy would help to avoid misunderstandings and protect its officers and their families from accusations of impropriety.

The commission also told city officials that such a policy would help ensure the public knows when officers have met their obligations under actual rules. Such a policy would also support the perception of fairness.

The commission found that Chief Bordeleau did not seek any “special treatment” for his father-in-law in a routine traffic court case. His father-in-law, a former police chief himself, was accused of rear-ending a car and was ticketed for careless driving in September 2015 but the case was withdrawn in city traffic court in January when the other driver didn’t show up for court.

The witness, suffering from an undisclosed illness, had been served a summons but didn’t actually look at it until two days after the court date, the Citizen has learned.

The police union has expressed outrage over the commission’s findings, and claimed that the commission only heard the chief’s side of the story because the ticketing officer, Const. Will Cantin, declined to be interviewed by the watchdog.

In fact, according to senior city staff, the investigating commission did hear the officer’s side of the story in the form of a March 7 interview he gave during a City of Ottawa review on how its traffic court handled the case. The commission reviewed a transcript of the officer’s interview and his notes from the day in question.

In a statement to the Citizen, Deputy City Solicitor David White confirmed the city’s internal review of how the city’s Prosecution Unit handing the case included an interview with the ticketing officer. White said the internal review was launched in February.

The watchdog’s investigation showed that Chief Bordeleau didn’t call court staff, but rather the force’s court liaison officer to ask for the name of the Crown attorney assigned to the case. He was trying to help out his wife, who had reminded him that she was accompanying her father to court because he was stressed, according to the commission’s findings. The information the chief was seeking is available to any member of the public, but it turned out that the chief’s wife had already got the information on her own down at the courthouse.

The commission’s findings also conclude that at no time did the chief’s wife, a lawyer, ever present herself as her father’s legal representative. Her father represented himself, according to the court record.

The commission also found that the withdrawal was consistent with the practice of the city’s prosecution unit when witnesses don’t show up for court.

The civilian police commission also concluded that the police chief’s father-in-law, Lester Thompson, did not get any “special treatment” in his traffic court case.

In a perfect world, the commission reported, it would have been better if the police chief had taken no steps of any kind in light of the “mistaken” appearance that he had involved himself in the case — which he did not.

The vindicated police chief declined to comment on the commission’s investigation, which was launched after a Citizen report.

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Ottawa jihadi Ashton Larmond was so bent on joining the Islamic State that days after authorities revoked his passport he started making secret plans to leave Canada undetected, crossing first into Alaska, then travelling to Russia by boat, and ultimately to Afghanistan.

Larmond had originally booked a flight for Istanbul to later join ISIL in Syria but authorities invalidated his passport three days before his scheduled Sept. 20, 2013 departure.

Increasingly frustrated about his travel ban, Larmond confided to an undercover RCMP agent that he was making plans to “escape Canada completely off the radar,” according to court filings from Larmond’s surprise guilty plea on Friday. He’s now serving 17 years in prison for counselling a person to carry out a terrorist activity.

In secretly recorded conversations with the undercover agent, Larmond said he wasn’t afraid of going to prison, and noted that by the time he got out, he’d be a “very bad, well-versed person.”

In a search of his apartment on the day of his arrest — Jan. 9, 2015 — the RCMP found a book of handwritten notes, including co-ordinates for a location near a Russian Arctic port town off the Siberian sea.

Larmond started selling all his belongings and began assembling a survival kit for his jihad journey. At the time of his arrest, he had gathered the following gear: a red waterproof bag, a Zippo lighter, a magnifying glass, a master lock, a Canada Goose patch, “Middle Eastern clothing” with scarves and blanket, all stuffed in a green backpack. He had also purchased a black winter coat and was making inquiries about buying a winter tent, bag liners, camouflage gear, a backpacking frame and a snowmobile.

The Mounties found a list of the items he still needed, including orientation supplies, medical grade stitches, water filtration, orientation equipment, a fishing rod, bear bow (20 arrows), an AR-15 rifle (1,000 rounds), a buck knife, snare trap kit, throwing axe, combat shovel, hacksaw, clothes and camping gear.

The Mounties intensified their sights on Larmond after they intercepted online messages between him and fellow Ottawa convert John Maguire, a one-time hockey-playing punk rocker who radicalized before leaving Canada on Dec. 6, 2012 to join ISIL in Syria. Maguire, believed to have been killed in Syria, appeared in a highly publicized ISIL recruitment video released on Dec. 7, 2014. In the video, Maguire declared a religious war on Canada and urged other Muslims to either go fight for ISIL overseas or launch attacks on Canadian soil.

In Facebook and Skype conversations, Larmond said he longed to join his friend and the fight in Syria but visas and permits were a hassle, and the RCMP and CSIS were shaking him down.

“I didn’t worry about any of that, just hopped on a plane. This country is very unstable so there was (no) need to worry about a visa or working permit,” Maguire messaged in August 2013.

Larmond and Maguire are said to have met at a lecture in 2012 and built a friendship based on their extremist views of Islam, with a shared desire to wage terrorism abroad.

Months later, in November 2013, Larmond texted Maguire, saying he was finding it hard to cope in Canada.

“I love Canada, but don’t want to live here. I need to get my passport back.” (It had been revoked after he purchased a ticket to Turkey, the same route Maguire used.)

“I’m struggling here,” Larmond said.

“Like I think the government here thinks I’m a criminal/terrorist or something just cause we talk and we friends. Its messed up. Just because I support those who fight against those who kill innocent people,” (sic) said Larmond.

Larmond, a one-time Vanier drug dealer, helped radicalize his less-dominant twin brother Carlos, who pleaded guilty on Friday to trying to leave Canada to commit terrorism abroad. He was arrested at a Montreal airport on Jan. 9, 2015 after checking in for a flight bound for Frankfurt en-route eventually to Syria.

Carlos Honor Larmond, 25, is now serving seven years in prison, along with accomplice Suliman Mohamed, 23, who pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit terrorism.

The sentencing judge said homegrown terrorism is a virulent form of cancer and that the terror trio’s plans were a betrayal of the teachings of Islam.

The RCMP informant who infiltrated the Ottawa terror cluster was paid at least $800,000, including $250,000 in advance to testify at preliminary hearings that never happened.

The informant, a Muslim convert originally from New Brunswick, went from working at an Ottawa paintball shop to wearing a wire against jihadis — including the Larmond twins, their friend Suliman Mohamed and suspected ISIL fighter Khadar Khalib.

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The Ottawa teacher’s aide who sexually exploited a vulnerable high school student for two years was jailed on Tuesday for 14 months in what the judge called a significant breach of trust.

Ontario Court Justice Celynne Dorval didn’t buy Katherine Kitts’s defence that it was just an awful lapse in judgment and noted the planning and duration of the sexual exploitation was anything but spontaneous. Kitts, 46, would sometimes furnish her minivan with an air mattress for planned sexual encounters in parking lots and parks near the boy’s home.

“Had there been one or two sexual encounters before she ended the relationship, I would be prepared to accept that the emotional turmoil of her own separation could lead to a terrible lapse in judgement. That is not the case. The relationship was fostered through repeated text messages. Ms. Kitts wasn’t questioning her judgment during 15,000 text messages?” the judge asked aloud.

Moments after a shaken Kitts was handcuffed and led to the cell blocks, her victim’s mother said she was relieved the painful case was finally over and expressed thanks to Ottawa police.

“My son is also glad it’s over and he’s looking forward to moving on with his life,” his mother told Postmedia.

“I would also like to say that I believe that justice has been served. Hopefully the strength of our judicial system in this ruling will spare others from suffering through future, similar crimes,” she added.

Her son had always struggled in class, so when he met Kitts, he was grateful, court previously heard. She would, he felt, guide him through to graduation day. She helped him with his homework and he trusted her. But a year later, Kitts was stalking him and he felt like he had to have sex with her for fear she’d fail him. His secret haunted him and he became distant, tired and withdrawn.

Kitts, who has expressed remorse, will be on probation for two years after she completes her jail sentence.

The court heard that the disgraced teacher’s aide will never work with children again, and will try to build a new career in the construction business.

Kitts’s sex crimes were exposed in 2014 when the boy’s mother found sexually graphic text messages on his phone. Kitts was charged in October 2014. She pleaded guilty last March to one count of sexual exploitation by someone in a position of trust.

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A mentally ill Ottawa woman with the emotional age of a 13-year-old was sentenced to federal prison for two years on Thursday for using teenage girls as sex slaves in her parents’ basement.

The victims, both 16 at the time, testified at trial and gave horrifying accounts, with one saying she had been bound and gagged only to be repeatedly raped by Caroline Budd, 22, and her ex-boyfriend Anthony Comunale, 33, on the Victoria Day weekend in 2014.

One of the girls testified that she screamed in pain and begged them to stop, but the couple just laughed.

Budd and Comunale had plied the girls with booze until they were falling-down drunk. They were convicted of several counts of sexual assault and forcible confinement last September.

At Budd’s sentencing hearing Thursday, defence lawyer James Harbic urged the judge to spare the young woman a jail sentence in light of her emotional capacity, her list of mental disorders and a court-appointed psychiatrist’s conclusion that the “vulnerable” woman is “most at risk of being taken advantage of by other offenders due to her tendency to depend on others.”

The court also heard that a psychologist said Budd may have been coerced by her ex-boyfriend.

However, in his last decision before retiring, Ontario Court Justice Kent Kirkland said any notion that Budd was a male-coerced female sex offender would be little consolation to the two young victims whose pleas for mercy were ignored as they were terrorized in the basement.

Harbic, who was hired after Budd’s conviction, told court that her lifelong sex offender “tattoo” is punishment enough, saying “there’s not a worse label to have.”

“Our society does not benefit from crushing emotionally challenged youths (with jail terms),” Harbic told court, adding that it would be harmful to send a vulnerable young woman with no criminal record to federal prison.

The judge also noted that Budd’s comments about how the crimes made her a better person seemed “hedonistic.”

A doctor’s report highlighted in court says that Budd seems unaware of the extreme impact on her victims and has poor insight into her crimes. Budd has always maintained her innocence and once wished her victims the best of luck, court heard. The doctor concluded that Budd “has a limited appreciation of the fact that what she had done was wrong.”

Budd sat in court with her head in her hands, rocking back and forth and chewing the insides of her cheeks as the judge condemned her to prison.

Moments after the judge passed sentence, Budd seemed unaware of the process, and asked if she could go outside to have a cigarette before going to prison. The police officer assigned to bring her to the cell blocks politely told her that’s not how it works.

The shores of Caroline Budd’s childhood were chaotic. It wasn’t until she was in Grade 2 that Ottawa teachers realized she couldn’t read or write. She didn’t speak outside of school until she was 9. She ridiculed for her weight and school officials noted that she appeared so “odd” they directed her parents to get her medical help.

She was bullied and teased so much in elementary school that she would often feign illness to miss class. By the time she reached high school, she lashed back by cyber-bullying her tormentors in posts designed to instil fear.

In interviews with a forensic psychologist, Budd detailed her long-term goals: to wait for advances in biotechnology so she could design wings, and to die young with $500 billion in the bank.

Budd, who has a long history of self-cutting and several failed suicide attempts, is on suicide watch at the Innes Road jail until she is transferred to federal prison.

Her defence lawyer is appealing the federal sentence and Budd’s co-accused ex-boyfriend, Comunale, is expected to be sentenced later this year.

During the trial, lawyers for the defence branded the teen victims as “pretty little liars” who concocted the sex-attack stories to keep out of trouble with their parents.

But Justice Kirkland believed the girls’ testimony, and described them as “compelling, credible and reliable.”

“They did not conspire to fabricate their stories,” the judge told the court.