Woman’s excuses for missing calls incredible: judge
Court is ‘extremely troubled, perturbed and shaken’ by request for leniency
When a probation officer made two spot-check phone calls to Anita Obodzinski around midnight on July 28, 2018, she couldn’t answer the phone because she had “overdosed” on Tylenol after spraining her ankle a week earlier.
Obodzinski, 54, vaguely remembers getting up for both calls, 20 minutes apart, but couldn’t make it to the phone in time. She was in a “pain euphoria” and “probably not even lucid.”
As for another two calls she missed in the early hours of Sept. 2, it’s because she was too tired from living “on Moscow time.”
Although she never left Montreal, her daughter had been in Russia from Aug. 18 to 28. Obodzinski had adjusted her schedule accordingly. Five days after her daughter’s return, she was still exhausted from the experience and, as a result, in a deep sleep when the phone rang.
These are the reasons Obodzinski, serving house arrest for defrauding an elderly woman, gave a judge in mid-January to explain why she had breached her conditions, which included answering all phone calls by correctional services staff.
Quebec Court Judge Dennis Galiatsatos is expected to decide Thursday whether Obodzinski can continue to serve her sentence in the community or if she should serve prison time.
In a decision rendered in early February, the judge did not find much merit in Obodzinski’s arguments.
“Her explanations were unclear, contradictory and at times patently incredible,” Galiatsatos wrote, ultimately rejecting her claims on their “inherent incoherence and unrealistic nature.”
On Jan. 9, 2018, Obodzinski and her husband, Arthur Trzciakowski, 51, pleaded guilty to having defrauded Veronika Piela out of her life savings when the victim was 89 years old.
In 2013, Obodzinski obtained a protection mandate that allowed her to take control of Piela’s life, steal more than $474,000 from her and force the victim out of her home. She pleaded guilty to obstructing justice, mischief and knowingly using forged documents. Piela died in December 2016.
Obodzinski received a sentence of two years less a day that she could serve in the community. It involved a one-year period of house arrest to be followed by another year where she is required to respect a curfew.
The period of house arrest was frozen in November because of the current case.
During a sentence hearing for the breaches on March 12, Obodzinski told Galiatsatos her family was only managing to make ends meet.
She said she had inherited the home they live in, and she was selling “vintage collections” of clothing and jewelry she inherited from her mother. She said she was working as a real estate consultant but had yet to be paid for recent work because she is supposed to be paid by commission.
“This worst-case scenario ... placed behind bars, they would not be able to survive. They would lose the house,” she said of her husband and teenage daughter. “There’s no way. Nobody would be able to pay those bills.”
In a joint recommendation, both sides in the case suggested Obodzinski merely see the period of house arrest remaining from her 2018 sentence extended by roughly two months.
Crown prosecutor Annick Pelletier also suggested her conditions be loosened so Obodzinski could take her daughter to school in the morning and to horseback riding lessons on Saturdays.
Obodzinski said a child therapist from Boston recommended the lessons as therapy after her daughter was “bullied” by other students at her private school while her criminal trial was covered by the media.
Galiatsatos said he was appalled by the joint submission.
“You’re basically asking for a more lenient sentence than the (original one) after the court has decided she breached her (conditions) twice,” he said. “The court is extremely troubled, perturbed and shaken by this joint recommendation (related to a case where Obodzinski admitted to) obstructing justice involving false documents in court in order to deprive a 90-year-old lady of her home moments before her death.”
The judge also said he wanted both sides to convince him how allowing Obodzinski to continue her house arrest “would not bring the administration of justice into disrepute or otherwise be contrary to the public’s interest.”
Galiatsatos is somewhat bound by a precedent set by the Supreme Court of Canada in 2016 in cases involving joint submissions on a sentence. But the judge noted he was aware of the precedent when he said he was shocked by what the lawyers recommended.