No parole for 70 years for man who killed three

2015 RAMPAGE

PEMBROKE, ONT. • A 60-year-old man convicted of killing three women during an hour-long rampage in the Ottawa Valley two years ago has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 70 years.

Basil Borutski was convicted late last month of first-degree murder in the deaths of 36-year-old Anastasia Kuzyk and 48-year-old Nathalie Warmerdam, and of second-degree murder in the slaying of Carol Culleton.

Culleton was strangled with a television coaxial cable and Kuzyk and Warmerdam were both killed with a 12-gauge shotgun fired at close range. They all died within about an hour of each other at their residences in Renfrew County on the morning of Sept. 22, 2015.

Court heard Borutski shot Kuzyk while she cowered behind her kitchen island and chased Warmerdam around her farmhouse before shooting her at point-blank range as she tried to run up the stairs.

He broke into Culleton’s cottage, picked up a coaxial cable and wrapped it around the 66-year-old’s neck six times, the Crown told court.

Judge Robert Maranger ruled Wednesday that Borutski will serve two consecutive life sentences — which each carry a parole ineligibility of 25 years — for firstdegree murder followed by at least 20 years of a life sentence for second-degree murder.

The Crown had asked for the severe penalty at a sentencing hearing on Tuesday as families of Borutski’s victims appealed to the judge to imprison him for life.

“I beg the court to keep this man away from my family and society for the rest of his living days,” Warmerdam’s father Frank John Hopkins said in a statement read to the court.

Borutski refused to make any comments or submissions and showed no emotion as the families of his three victims told of their heartbreak through victim impact statements.

Five impact statements were read in court Tuesday including one from Lorraine Wallace, a friend of Carol Culleton.

“All her dreams cannot be realized because of you,” she said.

Before the murders, Borutski — who chose to forgo having a lawyer during the trial, but barely said a word during the proceedings — had twice spent time in jail after two of the women accused him of assault and uttering threats.

Following his conviction, Leighann Burns, executive director of the Ottawabased women’s shelter Harmony House, said Borutski’s reputation as a violent and dangerous person was wellknown in and around the Ontario community of Wilno, not far from where the