Mistress tells court, ‘I’m better-looking’
Accused insults husband’s girlfriend, denies getting ready for a divorce
Gurpreet Ronald said she hadn’t wanted a divorce but was getting ready for one.
She closed the joint bank account, transferred assets, including gold, and talked to a lawyer.
Her husband, Jason Ronald, also an OC Transpo driver, had been threatening to divorce her for the past 10 years, she said. She said she took him seriously this time because he hadn’t been home in days. They were both having affairs, their finances were in chaos and their fights had turned violent, she said.
Ronald, 40, and her secret lover, Bhupinderpal Gill, 41, also an OC driver, are on trial for the Jan. 29, 2014 daytime killing of his wife, Jagtar Gill, 43. The intimate details of Ronald’s marriage leading up to the killing were revealed at her murder trial on Friday under a day-long grilling by assistant Crown attorney Brian Holowka.
She was slashed and bludgeoned to death in her living room on the 17th anniversary of her arranged marriage. The police theory is that the lovers killed her so they could finally be together.
Ronald told the jury that she had not seen divorce as an option.
But Holowka charged that she had gone to great lengths to plan for one, pointing to a journal Ronald said she had kept to record facts in case the divorce got messy or, in her own words, extreme.
The prosecutor also noted that a key theme in their disintegrating marriage was their finances, and claimed that Ronald helped her husband get a job at OC Transpo so he wouldn’t be a drain on her if they parted ways.
“It was part of your plan, to make him financially stable . ... If he’s financially stable, it would lead to the path of divorce,” Holowka said.
Ronald maintained she didn’t want a divorce but everyone was pressuring her “to protect myself.”
She repeatedly told court that she still had hope for her marriage.
The prosecutor answered that by saying, “There’s no going back. You’re so done with him that you’re sending your friends photos of your husband’s girlfriend . ... You’re tearing down the foundation of your relationship.”
“I didn’t see it that way, but I see what you’re saying,” Ronald replied.
Then, in testimony that popped eyes in the gallery, Ronald told the court, “I don’t mean to be rude ... but I’m better-looking than her.”
The prosecutor guided the jury through a series of texts Ronald had sent to her friends, including one saying her husband’s mistress was “f---ing ugly.”
Ronald also maintained she had nothing to do with the killing of Jagtar Gill, someone she considered a friend. She said having a years-long affair with Gill’s husband was not her proudest moment.
And she stuck to her story, which explains why her blood was at the scene of the killing and why she ditched a bloody knife and gloves.
She said she had dropped by Jagtar Gill’s Barrhaven home to say hi and pick up some tools. She says she came upon the crime scene after the fact. Shocked at the horrifying discovery, Ronald said she felt like she was going to faint so she steadied herself on the bloodsoaked carpet and accidentally stepped on the bloody knife. She says she doesn’t know what she was thinking. Her mind was racing and she was running out of breath, she said, adding that she picked up the knife, then threw it down.
Fearing she’d be blamed for the killing because she was the mistress, she said she started covering her tracks.
In a panic, she said, she put on latex gloves and started wiping her fingerprints off the knife she had just handled. She said she was shaking so much that she somehow cut herself. To explain how her blood got upstairs, she told court that she went looking for a bandage.
Ronald said she went for the front door, and decided to take the key evidence with her, all the way to a National Capital Commission trail where she dumped the gloves and knife.
The prosecutor noted that, through all of this, she never called 911.
“You never think, ‘This is insane, I’ve got to call the police?’ ” the prosecutor asked.
“That would have been the right thing to do, but I didn’t,” she said. “Looking back, there are some things I could’ve done differently, but I didn’t.”
The prosecutor accused Ronald of fabricating her version of events, bringing up what she had said to police when they came calling. She first said she didn’t even know the Gills and originally said she hadn’t been to their home on the day in question, let alone dump the evidence.
Her co-accused, Bhupinderpal Gill, testified last week that he, too, didn’t have anything to do with the killing, and said he found his dead wife after the fact. He, too, dumped key evidence, including a weightlifting bar used in the killing. He also said he hid evidence for fear he’d be blamed in his wife’s killing.