BC woman on trial for murder, not ‘battered partner’: Crown

Advisory: This story contains details of a murder.

VANCOUVER – A Nanaimo woman who allegedly killed and dismembered her boyfriend because he threatened to kill her showed no signs of an abused partner acting in self-defense, the prosecutor said in his closing remarks.

Paris Laroche, 28, is charged with first-degree murder and disturbing human remains in connection with the March 2020 killing of her ex-boyfriend, Sidney Mantee, 32.

The case is being heard by Justice Robin Baird at the BC Supreme Court in Vancouver.

The trial heard how the five-foot-tall woman hit Mantee, who was a head taller and about 40 pounds heavier, on his head with a hammer as he slept. She kept his body in the apartment and dismembered his remains for more than six months with a sledgehammer and other tools, including household knives and a saw, before disposing of the body parts in city parks in Nanaimo and in the Pacific.

The barber at one point donned blue latex gloves and dramatically showed off a large claw hammer and a sledgehammer.

“These are important items,” he told Judge Robin Baird. “This is not a weak and vulnerable woman.”

He noted that Laroche told two undercover officers that she used the sledgehammer on the body while it was in the bathtub. The officers had befriended Laroche under the pretext of getting revenge on Mantee for abusing their fictional sister and daughter.

Barber argued that Laroche’s behavior did not indicate that she was afraid to leave Mantee because of his threats and that she had no choice but to kill him to save herself. For example, he said, she didn’t write about the abuse in her diary the night before Mantee was killed.

The day before the murder, she wrote that she would go to the ocean with her crystals, light an “abundance candle” and express an intention while writing that she wanted to end her relationship.

“If you were in an abusive relationship, wouldn’t you write something much harsher?” Barber asked.

Summarizing evidence from the trial, which last took place two months ago, Laroche’s attorney said Thursday that she was in constant fear because of her belief that Mantee would carry out his threats against her, her friends and family, and her cats.

In his closing statements, Glen Orris referred to cases of women being acquitted under the battered husband defense, which was first used in Canada in 1986 when Angelique Lavallee was found not guilty of shooting her abusive partner in the back of the head after a psychiatrist had testified. she felt like she would be killed if she didn’t fight back.

Orris said the fact that Laroche killed the heavier and larger Mantee and then had to deal with the body and buy tools to dismember it shows that she had not really thought through her plan to kill him.

He said the manslaughter charge would be more appropriate than first-degree murder, which requires proven premeditation and carries an automatic life sentence without the right to parole.

Barber said Friday that the court heard no examples of when, where or how Laroche was abused by Mantee, and that her diary entries after the murder included how to clean behind the heat registers and dispose of the mattress, while painstakingly detailing what she does. with the body parts.

There was evidence that there was abuse in the relationship, “but it is not so extensive that it is a legal justification for what she did,” Barber said.

Baird, the judge, addressed Laroche directly at the end of the trial, telling her that he still had a lot of evidence to go through and that he could not say how long it would take before he delivered his verdict.

“I’m going to think about this long and hard, okay?” he said.