Borutski guilty of murder in Ottawa Valley rampage
It took an OPP detective a mere five minutes in an interrogation room with Basil Borutski before he admitted to killing Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam, describing the systematic murders as his own brand of “justice.”
It was a full 48 hours before an
11-member jury returned from deliberations
Friday, finding
Borutski guilty on two counts of first-degree murder and one count of seconddegree murder in the Sept. 22, 2015 Renfrew County killing spree.
With a second-degree murder conviction, the jury didn’t believe Borutski planned to kill Culleton when he arrived at her cottage, strangling her to death with a television cable before he executed the planned murders of Kuzyk and Warmerdam with a shotgun.
Bo rut ski was romantic ally linked to Kuzyk and Warmerdam and according to the Crown, “wanted more from his relationship with Carol than Carol was prepared to give.”
Prosecutors Jeffery Richardson and Julie Scott used 17 days of testimony - through seven weeks of a trial originally scheduled to span 17 weeks - to call 45 witnesses to give evidence, the bulk of it unchallenged and uncontested in court.
Borutski did not hire a lawyer and mounted no defence while acting as his own counsel from the prisoner’s box, his eyes frequently closed and head resting on the glass throughout the trial. He called no witnesses and did not testify in his own defence. When the guilty verdicts were read, he did not stand. At one point, he yawned while in the prisoner’s box.
Borutski will be sentenced in Pembroke on Dec. 5 and Dec. 6