Trial begins for suspect in LaSalle double slaying
Altamond Little shouted that he could do whatever he wanted with Marjorie Dammier because she was his wife just before he allegedly shot her in the face.
Reported by a neighbour of Dammier’s when she was killed on Oct. 8, 2013, the statement was part of opening remarks from prosecutor David Simon at the start of Little’s trial at the Montreal courthouse on Tuesday.
Little, 46, is charged with two counts of second-degree murder. He is alleged to have fatally shot Dammier, 29 — a woman with whom he had been in a relationship for a decade and had two children with — and Maxime Berthiaume Calado, 30, the man she was living with at the time in an apartment on Des Oblats St. in LaSalle.
Simon told the jury that Dammier was shot with a sawed-off shotgun recovered inside the apartment and that Calado was killed with a knife that was nowhere to be found when police arrived.
“Their relationship was rocky to say the least,” Simon said of Little and Dammier’s time together as a couple.
The prosecutor said the couple broke up often over the course of roughly 10 years until Dammier decided to begin a new relationship with Calado. Simon said the jury will hear evidence that “Little desperately wanted to rekindle their relationship” and could not accept that she was with Calado.
“You might even say she gave him mixed signals,” Simon added, while noting it appears Dammier went on a trip with Little before she was killed and during the time she was in a relationship with Calado.
While summarizing the Crown’s case, Simon said there is evidence that on the day of the double slaying, Little managed to have himself buzzed inside the building on Des Oblats St. (where Dammier had lived since 2007) at 5:35 p.m. and waited roughly three hours before she and Calado arrived.
Simon said neighbours will tell the jury they heard the sounds of an altercation and that one witness heard Calado say: “Stop. She’s so small. Why don’t you fight someone your own size?”
Little is alleged to have shouted in reply: “She’s my wife! I can do whatever I want!”
Simon then said witnesses heard “a bang, a struggle and then silence.”
A security camera captured an image of a person wearing a dark jacket, with the hood pulled over the head, exit the back door of the building before a neighbour called 911 at 10:17 p.m., Simon said. When police arrested Little days later, he was wearing a similar jacket and a T-shirt stained with Calado’s blood.
A bloody fingerprint at the crime scene was later matched to Little, and there is no evidence he suffered an injury during the altercation that would have caused him to bleed, Simon said. DNA found on two cigarette butts in the apartment was also matched to Little.
Expect to hear from 20 witnesses over the course of the trial who will testify about “the historical dynamics” of Little and Dammier’s relationship, Simon told the jury.
Superior Court Justice Michel Pennou has advised the jury that the trial is expected to last at least eight weeks.
In attendance Tuesday was Calado’s mother Sylvie Berthiaume, a resident of France, who used crowdfunding to help to fund her trip to Montreal for the lengthy trial.
Correction: The original version of this report gave an incorrect name for one of the victims. The Montreal Gazette regrets the error.