Killer granny seeks standing at inquest
TORONTO — Just how much natural justice and procedural fairness can any one person, whether embattled senator or killer granny, reasonably expect?
Even the breathtaking entitlement on display in the Senate pales in comparison to that displayed by the granny in question, Elva Bottineau.
A convicted murderer, she now wants to take part in the Ontario coroner’s inquest examining the starvation death of the little boy she killed — her five-yearold grandson Jeffrey Baldwin.
The bombshell revelation came Monday from Jill Witkin, counsel to coroner Dr. Peter Clark.
Last December, in preparation for the inquest, coroner’s constable Rob McConnach sent out the usual letters announcing a preinquest meeting for potentially interested parties.
Bottineau was among a large pool of those who were sent the form letter.
Though officials never heard back from her, within two months Bottineau had filled out an “inmate request form” from her cell at Kitchener, Ont.’s Grand Valley Institution.
(With the institutional efficiency by now well documented, thanks to another inquest probing the death of another GVI inmate, Ashley Smith, the form appears to have disappeared into the ether.)
It’s dated Feb. 17 this year.
Bottineau wrote in her inimitable melange of misspelled English and ferocious self-regard, “My dire (desire) is to atten (attend) and voice my opinions.
“To put the thruth (truth) out there!
“PLEASE — this does mean a lot to me.”
She claims also to have written two letters — not received by coroner’s officials — and finally last Tuesday, Witkin got a message to phone her.
On Bottineau’s behalf, Witkin then contacted lawyer Owen Wigderson, who dispatched an associate last Friday for a meeting.
Wigderson himself was at the inquest Monday morning. Though he isn’t yet formally representing Bottineau, he agreed to meet her at the federal prison later in the day to discuss with her “the scope and purpose” of the inquest and her potential “standing” here.
He was also to explore “alternative means” to pay for his representation.
Pending the fruits of the lawyer’s discussions with Bottineau, Clark agreed to interrupt the testimony of Margarita Quintana, the key social worker from the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto who was involved with the family.
It is clear from testimony and documents at the inquest Quintana trusted and relied upon Bottineau.
She and the CCAS supported her various applications in family court to win custody of Jeffrey and his three siblings — without anyone at the agency ever checking their own internal files.
Those files were replete with damning information about Bottineau and her common-law husband, Norman Kidman — chiefly they were each convicted child abusers by the time the CCAS pronounced them a splendid alternative to the youngsters’ own inept teenage parents.
Bottineau and Kidman were convicted in 2006 of second-degree murder in Jeffrey’s Nov. 30, 2002 death.
They were also convicted of forcible confinement for their regular locking up of Jeffrey and a sister in a fetid, unheated bedroom cell which was locked from the outside.
The children were confined for up to 12 hours a day and forced to live in a cesspool of their own waste.
Both youngsters were emaciated, but the little girl survived, probably because she was let out for half-days at kindergarten where she inhaled the snacks.
Jeffrey, rarely out of his ghastly prison, died of septic shock and pneumonia secondary to chronic starvation.
As David Watt, then the presiding Ontario Superior Court judge at the grandparents’ criminal trial and now on the Ontario Court of Appeal, found, the two youngsters were horribly mistreated and neglected.
Jeffrey was but a bag of bones, with caked-on feces over most of his skin. He weighed less at almost six than he had at 15 months.
Both grandparents were sentenced to life in prison, but as the dominant figure both in the east-end Toronto house and in the couple’s relationship, Bottineau got a longer term of parole ineligibility — 22 years, compared to Kidman’s 20.
A woman of marginal intelligence but unlimited cunning and with what a psychiatrist called a ferocious will to meet her own needs, Bottineau has lived on the public teat her entire life.
Born into a dysfunctional, sprawling family, she entered what was essentially the family firm — social assistance — and appears to never have worked.
One of her motivations for taking over her daughter Yvonne’s children appears to have been, as Watt heard, that she raked in an extra $600 per child.
She lived in subsidized housing.
She was ably represented at trial, where she chose not to testify in her own defence and where the tab was certainly paid by legal aid.
She appealed her conviction and sentence — again undoubtedly through public funds — to the Ontario appeal court, which in 2011 tossed all the appeals.
Bottineau then sought leave to appeal from the Supreme Court of Canada, which granted her leave, then dismissed her application.
As lawyer Freya Kristjanson, who represents Jeffrey’s three siblings at the inquest, said with icy fury Monday, Bottineau is “a killer who tortured Jeffrey and his siblings while starving him to death. … She has had her hearing.”
This, Kristjanson said, “is an inquest into the death of Jeffrey Baldwin, not a soapbox for his killer.”
She and several other lawyers said they would oppose any application for standing from Bottineau.
Among them is Suzan Fraser, who represents the Ontario advocate for children and youth, who told Clark Bottineau’s perspective is “not needed” and would “warp” the proceedings.
To all these objections, Wigderson replied coolly, “I doubt the moral blameworthiness of the person seeking standing is a bar to that standing.”
Surely, however, there comes a proper end to a person’s claim to be heard, a limit upon the beleaguered public purse and a natural finish line even for natural justice.
As Elva Bottineau at the age of 62 might be reminded, the truth — or thruth — is already out there about her.