WHAT THE JURY DIDN’T HEAR . . .
7 years ago, Allan Lanteigne was beaten to death in his home. His husband and his husband’s lover were charged with murder. They now await a verdict in a puzzling case that featured intimate emails, a combative defendant and an exasperated judge.
More than seven years after Allan Lanteigne was beaten to death in the foyer of his Ossington Ave. home, a jury is now finally deliberating the fate of the two men charged with his murder.
Lanteigne’s husband, Demitry Papasotiriou-Lanteigne, 38, and his lover, Michael Ivezic, 57, have been on trial for first-degree murder — a plot the Crown said was driven by their plan to cash in on Lanteigne’s $2-million life insurance policy.
For the past six months, courtroom 4-9 at the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto has featured an eclectic mix of evidence and characters: from intimate emails and diaper porn to a soldier judge and a combative defendant who acted as his own lawyer. There was also plenty the jury wasn’t told.
The story began on March 3, 2011when the 49-year-old University of Toronto accounting clerk was found dead in the matrimonial home. There were no signs of forced entry.
More than a year and a half later, Toronto police arrested Papasotiriou-Lanteigne. Ivezic was arrested in Athens, Greece two months after that, and extradited in early June 2013. Both men denied any involvement. The Crown’s case against Ivezic, the alleged assailant, was undeniably stronger: his DNA was found in Lanteigne’s fingernail clippings, and he was in the GTA at the time of the killing, while Papasotiriou-Lanteigne was living in Greece.
But the prosecution got off to a bumpy start. Although Ivezic was committed to stand trial for murder following a preliminary hearing in 2014, Ontario Court Justice Shaun Nakatsuru discharged Papasotiriou-Lanteigne on the grounds that there wasn’t enough evidence against him.