New details emerge as search for body resumes

Weather prolonged ‘operational pause’ at Trail Road dump earlier this week

In her last moments of life, Susan Kuplu demanded her daughter kill her, according to the working police theory on how and why Lennese Kublu allegedly knifed her mother to death.

According to the theory, since adopted by prosecutors, the trouble began Jan. 10 when the teen girl got into an argument with her mom. At the height of the argument, Kuplu, 37, told her daughter to kill her. And then, police believe, Lennese, 18, was given a knife by her boyfriend, Dwight Brown, 29, to fulfil her mother’s bloody death wish.

Police believe Lennese killed her mother at their public-housing rowhouse on Penny Drive in the city’s west end and left her dead for a day before she helped Brown wrap her body in a blanket and toss it in a dumpster.

Lennese and Brown are both charged with second-degree murder and an indignity to a dead body. They are both in jail awaiting trial and, in the teen girl’s case, a much-anticipated bail hearing. Unlike her older boyfriend, she has not been arrested. In fact, say defence lawyers and her family, she doesn’t understand the difference between guilty and not guilty and has long been considered vulnerable.

After a gruelling two-week search, Ottawa police recently took an “operational pause” from searching for Kuplu’s body. They remain focused on the Trail Road dump and, according to Kuplu’s family in Igloolik, Nunavut, police have told them they won’t stop looking until they find her. The search was to resume Wednesday, but was pushed to Thursday morning because of the snowstorm that levelled Ottawa mid-week.

In a court appearance via video from the Innes Road jail earlier this week, Lennese trembled and appeared confused by the proceedings. Her defence lawyer, Diane Condo, told court she was outraged by a homicide detective’s actions, claiming he interviewed her vulnerable Indigenous client at the jail without any notification, or rights to counsel, in a locked room billed as a professional visit, all facilitated by jail guards.

She called it outrageous and assistant Crown attorney Matthew Humphreys told the justice of the peace not to consider his silence on the allegations as acceptance. The prosecutor said he didn’t know the details and simply had no comment. Condo also noted that her client, who has a Grade 10 education, has been in jail since Jan. 24 and has yet to get disclosure — including the recordings from police interviews with the teen at headquarters and the jail.

While Kuplu’s body remains missing, a text she allegedly sent in late November may provide some insight into what was happening in her home in the weeks before she was allegedly killed.

The Nov. 24 text to a relative indicates Kuplu didn’t want to go home.

“What happened?” the relative asked.

“(Lennese’s) boyfriend beat me up last night. And I didn’t accept the fact he’s trying to control (my daughter) +and I … I trashed the whole living room last night after they left the house. I don’t deserve his f------ treatment,” the reply read.

The Citizen read those texts to Brown’s defence lawyer James Harbic, who was unable to comment, saying he has yet to receive any disclosure of the victim’s texts or any videos of Lennese’s interviews with detectives at headquarters and later at the jail.

Speaking to the Citizen, Lise Kuplu recalled her closest sister as a loving woman who hit hard times after their father died three years ago.

“She loved her family and all of her kids very much,” her sister said.

She said her sister called daily just to tell her family she was grateful and she loved them.

Her sister said she got a call from her niece after the alleged homicide, saying she feared for her life.

Lennese and her mother moved to Ottawa years ago when her grandfather came to the city for cancer treatment.

“She’s a very good kid,” her aunt said.

Her aunt is still grieving the death of her sister, but is fully supporting her niece and has offered to act as a surety if she’s granted bail.

Her lawyer hopes she can win bail for her teen client.

“She’s an impressionable, vulnerable, young 18-year-old girl. She’s scared. She’s never been in the system and has no idea what’s going on,” Condo told the Citizen.

By all accounts, Lennese had a rough childhood, steeped in booze and violence.

Her life lately also appears to have been troubled, with her boyfriend charged with assault causing bodily harm for allegedly assaulting her in late December after an argument about having a child together.

Brown also faces drug-trafficking charges after police allegedly seized crack cocaine from him when he was arrested for Kuplu’s slaying.

None of the allegations against Brown or Lennese have been proven in court.