‘Evil’ man sentenced to life for killing girlfriend
Family, friends feel plagued with guilt
OTTAWA — Irena Jones dreams about saving her daughter every night. Melanie Houle is haunted by guilt because she introduced Donna Jones to the man who killed her.
Krista Moulds is heartbroken that she backed out of being her childhood friend’s maid of honour over concerns of abuse only to find herself a pallbearer three years later.
The ripple effect of Jones’s horrific death was described in victim impact statements Tuesday by family and friends who wondered if they could have done more to pull her out of a toxic relationship with Mark Hutt.
But Justice Robert Maranger reminded them all as he sentenced Hutt to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years that it was “an evil selfish man” alone responsible for turning the west Ottawa house Jones bought and shared with him into “a private chamber of horrors.”
Before she met Hutt in the summer of 2005, Jones was “uniformly described as happy,” Maranger said. Hutt dragged her into an “abyss of darkness” over the course of an abusive four-year relationship, he said.
“There is only one person responsible for the death of Donna Jones: that’s Mark Hutt,” Maranger said.
A jury found Hutt guilty of first-degree murder on June 7 at the end of a five-week trial.
Jones, 33, was found on a makeshift mattress in the basement of her home on Dec. 6, 2009. Her body told a story of severe and prolonged abuse. She had two black eyes, multiple broken ribs and 29 air gun pellets embedded in her body. It was septic shock from the infected burn wounds on 40 per cent of her body that killed her. Hutt doused Jones with a pot of scalding water nearly two weeks before she died. He waited until she was dead to call 911.
A lined piece of paper with doodles and the messages “Die b---- die please” and “Do me that much” was found in the couple’s home. It was not part of the evidence during the trial but was entered as an exhibit for sentencing.
The statements of 16 people were read into the record during sentencing. Jones said that she misses her daughter every single day. “Every night I dream about trying to save Donna. I have felt so much anguish in knowing how much she suffered,” she wrote in a statement that was read out loud by a Crown prosecutor.
Houle described how she “wanted nothing more than to see her happy,” when she introduced Jones to the man who would kill her.
“I cannot help but feel responsible,” she told the court as she choked back tears.
Moulds described how she mourned the loss of her friend. “My friend was stripped of her being. Her body was ravaged beaten and burned,” she said.