Son says he saw slain mother being chased
As he fled his home after an intruder armed with a long gun began chasing his mother through the house, the son of one of three women allegedly killed by a former boyfriend Tuesday in the Ottawa Valley heard the sound of a single gunshot.
Adrian Warmerdam, the 20- yearold son of Nathalie Warmerdam, 48, was inside the farmhome his mother once shared with 57- yearold Basil Borutski the morning police allege Borutski stormed in and began shooting.
Nathalie was in the dining room on her computer, checking emails and Facebook when she started motioning to her son who was in another room.
“I didn’t know anything was wrong,” Adrian said Thursday. By the time he realized something was awry, the gunman was inside the home and moving quickly. “At first my mother was making a motion. Presumably she saw him first.”
His mother’s ex- boyfriend is now charged with three counts of firstdegree murder in and around the village of Wilno, Ont.
“She ran through the house and he was chasing her and they ran past me,” he said. “… As soon as I realized who he was, I fled the home and on the way out I did hear a shot.”
Adrian phoned police and waited in a bush until they arrived. He didn’t see his mother’s killer flee or know how the man got to the home.
The ordeal happened between 9: 30 and 10 a. m. Tuesday, cementing a short but deadly timeline that began just a few hours before in Palmer Rapids, where police believe Borutski left his home with a plan to kill his former lovers.
The route from Palmer Rapids to Kamaniskeg Lake Road, where first victim Carol Culleton, 66, was strangled to death, to the home on Szczipior Road where Anastasia Kuzyk, 36, was shot dead, to Warmerdam’s farmhouse on Foymount Road would have taken slightly more than an hour- and- ahalf to travel.
Nathalie Warmerdam’s relationship with the man now accused of killing her and two others began in 2009 when she was working at a hospice in Renfrew, Ont. Basil Borutski was visiting his father in the hospice when the two met and began a relationship.
Her ex- husband, Frank Warmerdam, says it was a vulnerable time for Nathalie and their two children — Adrian and 18- year- old Valerie.
“She was in a very fragile and emotional state,” Frank said.
He called Borutski “very sympathetic” at the start of his relationship with Nathalie. But things began to spiral.
“Things got worse and worse,” Adrian said. “He was a heavy drinker.”
By all accounts, Warmerdam had stood by Borutski and had hoped to get him help.
In 2011, Warmerdam posted a $ 500 bond to secure Borutski’s bail on charges that he had assaulted and threatened to kill his ex- wife.
A year later, Warmerdam was on the other end of Borutski’s threats.