Jury convicts man of online harassment of his former wife
A jury has found a Burnaby man guilty of conducting a campaign of criminal harassment over the Internet against his former wife.
The verdict for Patrick Fox, 43, came early Wednesday afternoon following a day of deliberations by the B.C. Supreme Court jury in Vancouver.
The accused, who has been in custody since his arrest in May 2016, appeared to have little reaction to the verdict.
The jury also found Fox guilty of possessing firearms in a place where he was not authorized to do so, after he shipped four restricted handguns to California in the midst of a bitter custody battle with Desiree Capuano, 36, his former wife.
Crown counsel Mark Myhre asked B.C. Supreme Court Justice Heather Holmes to order a pre-sentence report with a psychiatric component for Fox before him being sentenced.
He said he had concerns about Fox’s “obsessive hatred” for Capuano, a resident of Arizona, and the “hyperbole” on the website that Fox used to denigrate her.
Tony Legemaat, a lawyer who has been assisting Fox, told the judge that Fox opposed a pre-sentence report because it would take too long to complete.
The judge, who suggested it might be possible to get a psychiatric report without a full pre-sentence report, put the matter over until Thursday.
The Crown’s theory was that Fox was bent on trying to destroy Capuano’s life through a series of emails and a website that he had created.
The couple met in a bar in January 2000, when Fox was going by a different name, and got married in August of that year. Their son, who cannot be identified due to a publication ban imposed by the judge, was born in September 2000 and the couple was separated in 2001.
Capuano, a mother of two, testified that the tone of many of the emails was demanding, mean and aggressive.
In one email in July 2013, Fox demanded that she return their son immediately or face “repercussions” — including every past and present employer of hers being scrutinized and her life “picked apart” with every person she’d had a relationship with found and questioned.
Capuano, who testified behind a screen so that she would not have to make eye contact with the accused, told the jury she was scared and believed Fox when he said he didn’t think anything would be more important than destroying her. She said she got the impression he had hired an investigator to search for her.
“I was always looking around, always,” she told the jury.
“I didn’t have anything to hide. But thinking somebody was following me, makes you look around.”
Capuano said she sent Fox an email asking that he cease and desist, but Fox replied that it was not technically harassment and she had no basis for making such a claim.
On cross-examination, Capuano denied a suggestion that she wasn’t afraid. She denied a suggestion that she and Fox had been merely engaging in “banter” in the emails and exchanging insults with one another.
An agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) testified that he seized the four handguns that were concealed within a computer as well as 25 rounds of ammunition and seven magazines.