Jury selection begins in 1st-degree murder trial
Jury selection was underway Monday at the first-degree murder trial of Marc Leduc, accused of killing two women linked to Ottawa’s drugs-for-sex street trade.
Leduc, 59, has pleaded not guilty. His trial for the killings of Pamela Kosmack, 39, and Leeanne Lawson, 23, is not expected to hear any evidence until Wednesday.
Potential jurors, one by one, lined up Monday and asked to be excused from duty for various reasons, including problems following evidence in English.
Leduc was arrested in February 2013. In an unusual move, Ottawa police held a news conference to announce the first-degree murder charges.
Kosmack, a 39-year-old mother, spent her final moments of life down in the dirt of a darkened bike path on June 4, 2008.
She died a world away from the day her high school principal took her aside and told her she had the smarts to go somewhere in life, somewhere far from her Ritchie Street public-housing project.
Though some news reports in 2008 portrayed Kosmack as a hard-drug addict throwaway, her family has said there was much to celebrate about a great yet troubled life.
At the 2013 news conference following Leduc’s arrest, police Chief Charles Bordeleau said investigators had evidence that Kosmack had worked in the sex trade — a claim her family has denied in the past.
Kosmack always made time for her children, saw them every second week and managed to keep her hard-drug habit a secret, her family said.
Leeanne Lawson also lived a hard life and was found dead in a parking lot along King Edward Avenue in September 2011.
She had moved to Ottawa as a teen seven years earlier.
In 2011 police said she worked in the sex trade to feed a drug addiction.
She had been staying at a shelter down the street from where her body was found.
Leduc’s arrest came more than a year after former police chief Vern White held a news conference to warn sex-trade workers about a pattern in unsolved sex-trade killings. Police warned sex-trade workers to work in pairs and in well-lit spots on the street.
In a statement released at the time, Pamela Kosmack’s family said: “Pam wasn’t a federal court judge or a grad student.
“Pam wasn’t taken off the street returning home from work one night, but Pam was a loving mother, an adored daughter, a kind, caring and compassionate big sister and a dear friend of many people.”
Jury selection was expected to go into Tuesday and the trial, presided by Ontario Superior Court Justice Hugh McLean, could start hearing evidence Wednesday at the Elgin Street courthouse.
Leduc is being tried on both murder charges at the same time.