Deadly night’s events revealed
TRIAL BEGINS IN MASS MURDER
The night he stabbed five people to death at a house party, accused murderer Matthew de Grood met one of the hosts armed with a knife, a box cutter and cloves of garlic — the latter items, he told witnesses, were to ward off the undead.
De Grood handed the garlic to the friend and told him he may need it. He also gave the knife to his friend, who accepted it and put it in his bedroom when they arrived at a house where a small group was celebrating the last day of classes at the University of Calgary on April 14, 2014.
People at the party later told police de Grood was acting strangely, but what they didn’t foresee — what no one could have foreseen — was that within a couple of hours of arriving, de Grood would suddenly grab a knife from the kitchen and kill five people at the quiet gathering: Lawrence Hong, Josh Hunter, Kaitlin Perras, Zackariah Rathwell and Jordan Segura.
Those revelations are contained in court documents filed by police in support of search warrants aimed at building a case against de Grood, who is charged with five counts of first-degree murder. On Monday, the first day of de Grood’s trial in which he admits killing the people, but denies murder claiming he was not criminally responsible, the publication ban on the documents was lifted, revealing details of the evidence in this case.
Investigators determined de Grood spent the hours prior to the killings working at the Crowfoot Safeway store, where he was a stock clerk. A co-worker, Andrea Laderoute, told police de Grood usually said hello but said nothing when he arrived for his shift on April 14, which was from 2 p.m. to 11 p.m.
At one point in the evening, Laderoute saw de Grood buy a package of garlic capsules. Later in the evening, at about 10 p.m., she went looking for him, but he was gone.
When Laderoute texted de Grood about his absence, he responded: “Trust that I never hurt anyone / All will be known / 5.”
In their search warrant application, investigators pointed to that text message — particularly de Grood’s use of the number “5” — as evidence of planning, but that allegation hasn’t been proven in court and de Grood’s state of mind at the time of the killings is a central issue in the case.
After leaving work early, de Grood texted Brendan McCabe, a childhood friend. McCabe met de Grood at a service station near the house, which is when de Grood handed him the garlic and a knife with a serrated blade, similar to one used to cut bread, an investigator wrote in one of the police affidavits.
During the six-minute walk to the house, McCabe said de Grood was “agitated,” and talked about hidden meanings in song lyrics and called U.S. President Barack Obama “the anti-Christ.”
After de Grood arrived, witnesses saw him put on latex gloves and noticed that he kept his jacket on and fully zipped up.
“De Grood was somewhat of a hypochondriac when they were kids, so (McCabe) didn’t think much of his behaviour,” the investigator noted in his affidavit.
Sometime after midnight, a witness at the party saw de Grood throw his cellphone into a backyard fire pit. He then smashed it with an axe and threw it against a fence.
At around that time, McCabe was among of group of four people who left the party to get some food.
They returned to a horrific scene just after 1:20 a.m. “As McCabe was on the front lawn, he heard screams from a female,” the affidavit read.
“This was followed by Josh Hunter running out of the house with de Grood chasing him. McCabe heard Hunter say that de Grood had a knife.”
McCabe told police he chased de Grood and caught up to him down the street. McCabe said de Grood was wielding a knife over his head, and he was able to grab him by the hand that was holding the weapon and convinced his friend to let it go.
“De Grood said that it’s the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ before running off,” McCabe told police.
The first officers on scene found Hunter on the front lawn, alive but fatally wounded. Rathwell and Segura were dead, found
DE GROOD SAID THAT IT’S THE ‘NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES.’
lying next to each other on the main floor inside. Nearby, a friend tried valiantly, but unsuccessfully, to keep Hong alive by applying pressure to his wounds as he lay on a couch. Another friend tended to Perras, who was conscious but died later at Foothills Hospital, only a few minutes after Hunter.
Police flooded the neighbourhood and took down de Grood. As officers rode in an ambulance with de Grood and later guarded his bedside, he made several statements about his actions.
At different times, de Grood told officers he was trying to kill “werewolves,” “zombies,” or “vampires.”
De Grood asked one officer standing guard if he would be charged with three counts of murder. When an officer replied he would be charged with five counts, de Grood responded that he acted in self-defence.