Ottawa Citizen

Jeffrey’s grandmothe­r cries only for herself

Her useless testimony rich in ghastly irony

- CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD

There likely wasn’t a person in that small crowded room at Ontario coroner’s court Wednesday who didn’t make Elva Bottineau within five minutes, who didn’t immediatel­y recognize that here in the doughy flesh was that winning criminal combinatio­n of low intelligen­ce and simmering rage.

And by the time she finished — blessedly done in a single day instead of the anticipate­d two — there was much sotto voce talk of needing a drink and a shower.

Now 62, Bottineau is who she is — a plump convicted killer with a prison dye job (grey-white roots and newly orange-red locks grown well down her back) and wearing a cheerful patterned smock.

She starved her little grandson, Jeffrey Baldwin, to death, one of his sisters to the point of emaciation such that, at the kindergart­en class she attended, the little girl was noticed for the frantic way she attacked the snack table — oh yes, and for the stink of urine.

Jeffrey died Nov. 30, 2002, of pneumonia and septic shock, complicati­ons of his starvation. He weighed less at the age of five than he had on his first birthday.

Bottineau and her common-law husband, Norman Kidman, were convicted of second-degree murder in Jeffrey’s death and of forcible confinemen­t for their regular locking up of him and the sister in an unheated fetid room, their only company their own waste.

Bottineau availed herself of every appeal that was open to her, and failed at every turn.

She is one of that large and unheralded class of federal inmates — the rightly convicted. She did it. She’s guilty.

But she has a whopping sense of entitlemen­t, and from her cell at Grand Valley Institutio­n for Women in Kitchener, belatedly applied to the inquest for “standing,” which coroner Dr. Peter Clark granted on the grounds she had a “direct or substantia­l interest” in the proceeding­s.

Presumably, so too would the child who killed her parents be similarly accommodat­ed by the court as an orphan.

Bottineau wanted to testify. She was allowed to do so on the grounds she might have relevant evidence to give, which, of course, she didn’t — proof of that, the fact the jurors didn’t have a single question for her.

As Bottineau said in a note to coroner’s counsel, which it appears she never actually sent, and in a note to me, she wanted to “put the truth out there.”

(In her letter to me, she said she also wanted to “put five people where they belong,” the inference she’d been railroaded.)

She had the chance to testify at her 2005 criminal trial, and didn’t. Perhaps she sensed at this proceeding she would get an easier ride; as ever, she had a good eye for the main chance.

Her testimony was, in and of itself, utterly useless. She is such a stranger to the truth that nose-stretcher doesn’t do her fantastica­l lies justice.

She was made for Twitter. She spoke in declaratio­ns that were absurd and rich in ghastly irony.

Among the most notable were the following:

Of her daughter Yvonne, Jeffrey’s mother and mother of the four children Bottineau angled to gain custody of, she said once, “She didn’t have any parenting skills — and what she had, she learned from me!”

Of Yvonne’s purported maltreatme­nt of her first child on a single occasion, Bottineau said, “The baby was left in the basement, by herself, crying, wet, hungry” (exactly as Jeffrey was, but not for 10 minutes rather for months on end).

Of her willingnes­s to care for that first child, she said, “I made the space because I wasn’t gonna let her go (to presumably awful foster care).”

Of the grandchild­ren she waged a covert war to get, she said, “We wanted to keep the family together, instead of apart!”

She had veiled suggestion­s as to the real cause of Jeffrey’s death: He was always sick; his fevers went on for weeks (but she didn’t take him to the doctor because she knew how to treat a fever); he had a “slow learning ability” (and if that isn’t the kettle yelling j’accuse to the pot, what is?).

She cried but once, and it was not when Jordan Goldblatt, lawyer for some of the Catholic Children’s Aid Society social workers, had the nuts to put to her the picture of poor wasted Jeffrey on the autopsy slab, oh no.

She is nakedly venal, morally vacant, possessed of a terrifying resentment and filled with anger.

“You wanted to provide (Jeffrey and his siblings) with love and kindness?” Goldblatt asked. “Yes,” said Bottineau.

The autopsy picture came up on the screen then.

“This is the result of your parenting,” Goldblatt said. “You see that?”

She glanced at the dreadful picture. “Yes!” she snapped. “I see that.”

Bottineau cried, of course, only when briefly recounting her own genuinely appalling childhood.

The sole useful aspect of her appearance was this: Elva Bottineau is Exhibit A of the failures of child welfare — the CCAS — in this case.

Much has correctly been made of the agency’s repeated failures to check its own files before approving the transfer of those four youngsters to their grandmothe­r. That all happened, and it is grotesque.

Had anyone bothered to look, the agency would have discovered Bottineau’s previous conviction (in the death of her first baby) and Kidman’s previous conviction (for assaulting two of Bottineau’s children by another man).

But more, much more than that, is this: Elva Bottineau is so nakedly what she is she fooled no one in that courtroom. She is nakedly venal, morally vacant, possessed of a terrifying resentment and filled with anger. The way she glared at Goldblatt — chin up, eyes small and hard in that face full of fury — was electric and terrifying. Imagine meeting that as a child. This is the woman the lead CCAS social worker, Margarita Quintana, determined­ly saw as a loving granny in whose care she once wrote, “I have observed these children blooming and being happy.”

Various policies have been changed since Jeffrey’s death to make sure those seeking “kinship” adoptions, such as grandparen­ts, are screened and subjected to criminal record checks. That’s nice.

But what about the minimal common sense and life experience it takes to look upon Elva Bottineau and not hear banjo music or smell decay? How did anyone see her as a saviour, ever?

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