Cormier trial now up to jury

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This article was published 19/02/2018 (2256 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Is Raymond Cormier a man who killed a 15-year-old girl and threw her body in a river, expecting it never to be found? Or is he a man who felt guilty he did not protect Tina Fontaine from a tragic death?

Two versions of the accused killer were presented Tuesday, as Crown and defence lawyers summed up their theories of the second-degree murder case for the jury: Cormier, the “haunted” killer with a guilty conscience who had sex with an underage girl and hurt her because he didn’t want to be known as a pedophile; and Cormier, the “convenient scapegoat,” because he was one of the last people to see her alive, left trying to make sense of how and why police suspect him of murder.

“The words he speaks are admissions of murder, plain and simple,” Crown prosecutor James Ross told the jury during his closing arguments at a Winnipeg courtroom.

“Mr. Cormier, obsessed with and haunted by what he did, but not knowing the recording device was in his apartment, has revealed himself. Believe what he says, and convict him for what he did.”

However, the 56-year-old has maintained his innocence from the beginning, defence lawyer Tony Kavanagh said — and he flat-out denied killing Tina in the same secret recordings the Crown said form the most damning evidence against him.

“Mr. Cormier has indicated that he’s guilty of not protecting her,” Kavanagh said, adding “threadbare” evidence doesn’t prove Cormier’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

“Mr. Cormier has been carrying the burden of being the accused for a long time in this case. He did not hurt Tina. He did not cause her death. When her body was found, he was saddened because he knew and liked her.”

Even though Cormier may have been sexually attracted to Tina, that’s no reason to convict him of murder, the lawyer said.

“We say that justice for Tina Fontaine does not rest in creating an injustice for Raymond Cormier.”

The 11 jurors will be given legal instructions today from Court of Queen’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal before they are sequestered for deliberations. After two full weeks spent hearing from 46 witnesses during Cormier’s trial, the jurors know there is no DNA evidence against the accused and no known cause of Tina’s death in the summer of 2014.

The Crown’s theory is Tina was either smothered or drowned. Her cause of death is still unknown, as an autopsy conducted on her decomposing body couldn’t uncover how she died.

Drowning and smothering were two possibilities, pathologist Dr. Dennis Rhee testified during the first week of Cormier’s trial in late January. Neither would have left any signs on her body and there were no obvious injuries found, he said. Tina had no broken bones and there was no evidence she suffered an assault, Rhee testified.

The alcohol and drugs the teen consumed before she died would not have killed her, Ross argued, dismissing any suggestion otherwise as “fanciful.”

However, it’s just as possible, Kavanagh argued, the teen died accidentally — overdosing on a mixture of gabapentin and alcohol, the lawyer suggested, or from “self-smothering” while passed out.

Rhee classified Tina’s death as suspicious because of the way her body was found in the Red River: wrapped in a duvet cover that was tied with simple knots, weighing down her 72-pound body along with 25.5 pounds of rocks.

While “highly suspicious,” Kavanagh said, “that’s all you can say. It created suspicion. But the forensic science cannot find the cause of death.”

Tina was last seen alive Aug. 8, 2014, nine days before her body was pulled from the river.

She was reported missing to the Winnipeg Police Service four times that summer, after she didn’t return from what was supposed to be a weeklong visit to see her mother in the city. Tina’s great-aunt, Thelma Favel, who raised her as a member of Sagkeeng First Nation, asked Child and Family Services and police for help finding the teen.

Tina was taken into care, but she ran from her placements, sold marijuana and cocaine to make money and was sexually exploited. She and her boyfriend met Cormier, a homeless meth addict, on a North End street a few weeks before Tina died.

The day she was last seen, she was expecting her friend “Sebastian” — an alias Cormier was using — would get her a replacement bicycle, after he sold hers for drugs.

“It can only be assumed that she sought Mr. Cormier out to get this replacement bike,” and was never seen again, Ross said. Cormier’s motive to kill Tina, the Crown argued, was she threatened to call the police on him over a stolen truck and he had sex with her — even though she was only 15 — and didn’t want to be known as a pedophile.

Ross argued Cormier is the killer by his own admission, “The truth is not in his denials.”

The Crown’s strongest evidence against Cormier comes from secretly recorded conversations that took place in the accused’s apartment.

However, different interpretations of the same evidence support the defence team’s theory Cormier simply felt guilty he allowed Tina to walk away “into the night,” only to later find out she was dead, defence lawyer Kavanagh argued.

During a six-month undercover investigation that led to Cormier’s arrest in December 2015, the Winnipeg Police Service hid recording devices within Cormier’s Manitoba Housing apartment and intercepted conversations in which he talked about Tina — about meeting her, about his sexual attraction to her, about finding out she was 15, and about arguing with her. And, the Crown argued, about something more sinister.

“It’s right on the shore. So what do I do? Threw her in,” Cormier said, according to one of the covertly recorded conversations that happened Sept. 25, 2015, between the accused and a female acquaintance.

“I did Tina, f—in’ supposed to be legal and only 15. (Inaudible) no going back, too. The cops said if there would have been DNA and then probably they would’ve had enough evidence to charge me you know that, for the murder of Tina Fontaine.”

“That is the way it would have remained, ladies and gentlemen, if Mr. Cormier had kept his mouth shut,” Ross told the jury Tuesday, saying Cormier’s admissions of guilt “ensnared” him in a web of other circumstantial evidence police amassed during the lengthy homicide investigation that began with the discovery of Tina’s body.

Later in the same conversation, in which Cormier also spoke of the terms “means, opportunity and motive” to commit a crime, he said: “I have never murdered anybody, that’s what everyone’s telling them.”

It’s unfair to present the conversation as an admission of guilt, Kavanagh told the jury, urging them to listen to the recorded audio for themselves during deliberations.

“This is a true whodunit,” Ross told the jury during his closing arguments, urging jurors to believe Cormier’s own words prove he’s the killer.

“We don’t convict on a mystery or a whodunit. It’s not an Agatha Christie novel we’re trying to determine here,” Kavanagh replied, during his final submissions to the jury.

Cormier did not testify in his own defence. His defence lawyers, Kavanagh and Andrew Synynshyn, closed their case without calling any evidence.

katie.may@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @thatkatiemay