Jury finds estranged partner guilty of first-degree murder

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Two days after he brutally murdered his ex-partner Marie Gabriel, Jean “Berno” Fenelon went back to the crime scene and sent a text message to her older brother.

David Gabriel read parts of that exchange in an Ottawa courtroom late on Friday night after a jury returned with its verdict and found Fenelon guilty of first-degree murder following three full days of deliberations.

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“Something happened to Marie!” was the beginning of the text her brother received on March 28, 2022 as Fenelon spun a fabricated tale to Gabriel’s family — then to Ottawa police.

“I keep texting her since Saturday after I left, then today I went to drop the kids off, I knock I knock and no answer… I went to the basement she was lying down there… she didn’t breathe at all.”

Fenelon continued lying as he claimed he had left Gabriel alive and well on the morning of March 26 when his car was seen arriving at her Heatherington Road townhouse at 11:42 a.m. and casually leaving 10 minutes later.

He told detectives he stumbled upon her lifeless body two days later in a pool of dried blood in the basement, where police would find Gabriel’s body, her bloody footprints and obvious signs of a violent struggle.

When David Gabriel sent the tragic news to his father, Andy Stone, who had been separated from his children for years and living in the U.K., Stone immediately responded: “That f—ing Berno did it.”

Stone and his son attended each day of the six-week trial in Ottawa and he took the witness stand to testify about the desperate messages his daughter would send from overseas.

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She sent one chilling text to her father in November 2021 after fleeing Fenelon’s threats and verbal abuse.

“I just wanted to let you know just in case something happens to me or my kids, just know that I tried,” she wrote.

“Last night I took the kids and left their father’s home as I was fearing for my life and theirs as he started saying things that make someone fear for their life. I’m at a safe place right now, just letting you or anyone know.”

Stone called Fenelon a “bully” and a “coward” in the courtroom as he read his own victim impact statement following the verdict.

“I pray that no other parent has to read a text message like that,” he said.

Gabriel had fled the Gatineau home she shared with Fenelon and stayed with her two young children in an Ottawa shelter, then a hotel before finding subsidized housing at the Heatherington townhouse.

Fenelon “manipulated” his way back into her life when their daughter got sick, according to the Crown’s timeline, but Gabriel soon ended the relationship and kicked him out again.

Prosecutors presented texts Gabriel sent to Fenelon weeks before she was killed when she told him: “I want nothing to do with you.”

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Fenelon was enraged, according to the Crown’s theory of the case, because she had finally ended their relationship and had recently started seeing another man.

The violence that erupted inside Gabriel’s home at 1485 Heatherington Rd., on March 26, 2022, was the “culmination of seven years of conflict” as Gabriel was trying to flee the “tumultuous, toxic” relationship and to cut ties with the “controlling, aggressive, verbally abusive” Fenelon, Crown attorney Dallas Mack told the jury during his closing address last week.

Gabriel was on the phone with her best friend that morning when Fenelon showed up at her front door, then forced his way through the back entrance. The last words her friend heard from Gabriel was her screaming at the intruder: “Get the f— out of my house!”

Fenelon cornered Gabriel in the basement, struck her in the back of the legs with a piece of wood, chased and grabbed her and dragged her across the concrete floor, prosecutors said.

He ended her life with a 30-pound dumbbell that he smashed into her head, likely as she was laying against the bare floor.

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She died almost instantly, according to testimony from forensic pathologist Dr. Christopher Milroy, as the killer delivered at least two “catastrophic” fatal blows with the dumbbell that caved and shattered her skull.

“No mere stranger did this to Marie Gabriel,” Crown prosecutor Mack told the jury. “This was personal.”

Fenelon pleaded not guilty at the outset of his trial on Oct. 7 and his lawyer, Ari Goldkind, elected to call no evidence or witnesses to testify on behalf of the defence.

Goldkind raised the spectre of a mistrial before the case formally closed on Wednesday. Superior Court Justice Ian Carter notified the court that the jury had sent a question to the judge asking for the “legal definition of animus.”

Crown prosecutors had used that term during their closing address to describe the hostility and ill-will they said Fenelon harboured against Gabriel as he waged a campaign of criminal harassment that culminated in the killing.

The jury posed that question a day after the prosecution made its final case to the jury; and just moments after Goldkind had completed his own closing address to the jury.

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Goldkind, as he pointed out to the judge, had never mentioned “animus” during his hours-long closing address.

The question, which was signed by “the jury,” had also arrived before the judge had delivered his final legal instructions to the jurors. The judge’s instructions represent the important final stage of a jury trial before deliberations can commence.

Goldkind argued the question suggested the jury had prematurely commenced their deliberations.

“We are in uncharted territory here,” Goldkind said Wednesday, suggesting the mishap could result in a mistrial. “It’s either nothing or we’ve wasted 22 days (of trial) here.”

The jury was temporarily excused late Wednesday as the judge considered arguments from the Crown and defence before ultimately deciding to proceed with his instructions to the jury.

Carter ruled that jurors were allowed to discuss the case prior to beginning formal deliberations, and said the question posed by jurors did not suggest they had reached any advance conclusions.

The jury, comprised of nine women and three men, took three days before concluding that Fenelon was guilty of murder.

Goldkind asked that each member of the jury be polled to ensure their verdict was unanimous. All 12 jurors answered confidently in the affirmative.

The first-degree murder conviction means Fenelon was automatically sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

ahelmer@postmedia.com

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