Girl’s killer denied parole after 26 years
A man who sexually assaulted and then killed an 11-year-old girl in Lasalle, just weeks after a murder case he faced at the Montreal courthouse was dropped, has been denied parole 26 years after his crime shocked Montrealers.
Timothy Cobb, 54, was eligible for full parole when his case was recently heard by the Parole Board of Canada. On Jan. 27, 1994, he entered a quick guilty plea to the first-degree murder of Sarah Dutil, an 11-year-old girl from Verdun he had killed just six days before. He received a life sentence and he was automatically required to serve at least 25 years before he could become eligible for full parole.
In an effort to hide his crimes, Cobb placed Sarah’s body in a large bag and tossed it into a dumpster close to the apartment building where he killed her. Her mother discovered the bag after she went to the apartment building looking for Sarah and did not believe Cobb when he said her daughter had left hours before.
The girl, who was babysitting for a woman Cobb knew, had been stabbed through an eye and bruises were found on her slit throat. The prosecutor in the case, André Vincent, who is now a Superior Court judge, said at the time that it was “one of the most horrible crimes I’ve ever seen.”
The violent death of a child followed by the indignity to her body shocked Montrealers. But that reaction was multiplied when media revealed that, just five weeks earlier, the Crown abandoned a murder case Cobb was charged in.
In June 1993, Cobb’s trial before a jury was well underway when Justice Henry Steinberg, the judge who was presiding over it, was suddenly promoted to the Quebec Court of Appeal. Steinberg declared a mistrial before moving on to the higher court.
Critics later pointed out that Steinberg was hastily promoted just two days before Brian Mulroney resigned as Canada’s prime minister. And Steinberg said, back in 1994, he did not know that by accepting the promotion he would no longer have jurisdiction over the jury trial. A few days after Sarah was killed, the Chief Justice of the appellate court at the time questioned why Mulroney had promoted Steinberg so quickly and noted that the previous appointment to the same court took nine months. He also said the decree proclaiming Steinberg a Quebec Court of Appeal judge was issued so quickly there was no time to ask about his ongoing cases.
The trial involved the June 20, 1992 murder of Daniel Deschênes, a 21-year-old drug dealer. At least one witness in the trial testified Cobb had tricked Deschênes into believing they were going to an isolated part of Notre-dame-de-grâce to take target practice with firearms. The same witness said Cobb wanted to kill Deschênes because they had robbed a drug dealer months earlier and Cobb was worried Deschênes would rat him out.
Witnesses who testified during the trial informed the Crown they were not willing do the same in a second trial. On Dec. 17, 1993, a different judge placed a stay of proceedings on the Deschênes murder case after the Crown informed the court that it could not proceed without its key witnesses.
A little more than a month later, Cobb killed Dutil. And four days after the girl was killed, then federal justice minister Allan Rock announced that legislation would be changed to prevent judges from dropping trials after having been promoted.
While Cobb was willing to go through the lengthy process of a jury trial in the Deschênes case, he had no patience to be tried for Sarah’s death.
“Sir, I killed the girl, OK? She’s dead,” Cobb told the judge on Jan. 27, 1994, when he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder just six days after the girl was killed. “I plead guilty to life in prison. I’m going to die there.”
Nine days later, Cobb tried to turn his statement to the court into a self-fulfilling prophecy when he attempted to take his own life inside a federal penitentiary. He survived after two guards making rounds found him semi-conscious inside his cell.
Now, 26 years later, Cobb asked the parole board to be released on full parole. According to a written summary of the decision, Cobb told the board he takes “responsibility for his crime and indicated he did not reflect on it beforehand and acted impulsively. You indicated that if you had not killed (Sarah) you would have killed someone else.”
Last year, Cobb asked the board for permission to take part in escorted leaves from a minimum-security penitentiary and was turned down. His case management team (the people who prepare an offender for a release) felt Cobb had become too institutionalized and noted that he had only seen his security classification lowered to minimum in 2018. He was also still considered a risk of reoffending in a violent way.
After his request for escorted leaves was rejected, his case management team noticed a change in Cobb’s attitude. He began sessions with a psychologist and volunteered to take part in a study Correctional Service Canada conducted last year to look at how being placed in solitary confinement affected offenders.
The summary of the board’s more recent decision also notes that Cobb had little hope of being granted full parole and, for that reason, he did not even present a release plan to the board. He conceded that he will have to go through a much more gradual process, starting with escorted leaves, before he can be granted full parole.