Dying boy’s family called indifferent
Grandmother ‘ more concerned about job interview’ Police officers, fire captain testify at couple’s murder trial
A job interview at a department store seemed more important to a 53- year- old grandmother than the fate of her 5- year- old grandson she is accused of killing, a trial heard yesterday.
“ She kept repeating she had a job interview at 10 a. m.,” police Sgt. Louise Farrugia testified, recalling the demeanour of Elva Bottineau while Jeffrey Baldwin was stretched out on a kitchen counter, emergency crews frantically trying to revive him at his east- end home shortly after 7 a. m. on Nov. 30, 2002.
Later that day, Bottineau and her daughter, Jeffrey’s mother, talked about a $ 50,000 life insurance policy, with the mother wondering if there would be a payout for her son’s death, Det. Const. Ian Kennedy testified.
Bottineau and her husband, Norman Kidman, 53, had custody of Jeffrey and his three siblings for about three years after the children were taken from their abusive parents, the trial heard. Both have pleaded not guilty to one count each of first- degree murder in the death of the child. They have also pleaded not guilty to the unlawful confinement of a granddaughter. Court has heard Jeffrey died of septic shock, weak after years of starvation and living in squalor in a bedroom locked from the outside. Farrugia said Bottineau “ seemed more concerned about the job interview” at Zellers than her grandson, at one point complaining there was not enough money for the six adults and six children living in the subsidized dwelling. The officer went on to say that shortly after emergency crews arrived, Kidman came downstairs, drowsy from sleep, seemingly uninterested in the fate of his grandson, complaining how Jeffrey “ still pees and poops in his bed.”
It was later, at the hospital, that Bottineau got upset and cried about Jeffrey when told the child had died, Kennedy testified.
“ ‘ I tried my best to get him away from his abusive parents,’ ” the officer recalled Bottineau saying. “ ‘ All I tried to do was just help. Maybe I should have just tried harder.’ ” She told Kennedy she had checked on Jeffrey three or four times throughout the night, adding at one point he called her “ mommy,” the officer testified. When the child complained about being cold, she said she rubbed his little feet and wrapped him in a blanket, Kennedy recalled her saying. But police and emergency crews who went to the house described in court how Jeffrey’s bedroom was cold and filthy, with no heat coming from the vent, while the rest of the house seemed normal and warm.
After Jeffrey died, the Catholic Children’s Aid Society put the other five children at the house into foster care, the trial heard.
Firefighter David Merrifield suspected something was wrong almost immediately when he arrived at the house on a call of a child not breathing. “ Usually the parents would be out on the street flagging you down, there would be lights on in the house or they would come out of the house and hand you the child right at the truck,” he testified.
Fire captain Royal Bradley testified he had to knock repeatedly on the front door of the darkened house before Bottineau answered it, adding she seemed annoyed with the firefighters for making so much noise because others were sleeping. When he got to the kitchen, he testified, he saw Jeffrey lying on the counter “ like a bag of groceries.” During cross- examination by lawyer Nicholas Xynnis, who represents Bottineau, along with lawyer Anil Kapoor, Bradley acknowledged he didn’t know a dispatcher had advised Bottineau to put the child on the counter to check his breathing when she called for help. The trial resumes today before Justice David Watt of Ontario Superior Court.