In murder of two, no remorse, no deal
(Graphic content warning: This story includes explicit details of forensic evidence, including descriptions of human remains. Some readers may find this disturbing.)
“OK, you got me, the gig’s up.”
— Adam Strong, to police officers at his basement apartment door, Dec. 29, 2017.
“On Count 2 in the indictment, I find you guilty of the firstdegree murder of Rori Hache.
“On Count 1 of the indictment, I find you not guilty of the firstdegree murder of Kandis Fitzpatrick but guilty of the included offence of manslaughter. “You can have a seat.”
— Superior Court Justice Joseph Di Luca, March 16, 2021
Gig’s up. You can have a lifetime in jail.
Adam Strong has gone down for murder and manslaughter. Automatic life sentence.
There was never much doubt that the 48-year-old slab of flab with the stringy hair and the perennial five o’clock shadow had killed two teenage girls, Rori Hache and Kandis Fitzpatrick.
At issue was what the Crown could prove beyond a reasonable doubt about the extinguishing of two lives a decade apart. And for Fitzpatrick, with no body ever recovered, no evidence of a sexual assault during the killing, the judge could go only so far — to manslaughter. Even though, in an earlier ruling, Di Luca had granted the Crown a “similar fact” admission, which meant evidence relating to Hache could be applied to the charges regarding Fitzgerald.
“Considering the evidence as a whole, I conclude that it is possible that Miss Fitzpatrick’s death occurred during the commission of a sexual assault, however, I am simply not sure that that is the case. In terms of unlawful confinement, I conclude that there is no evidence that Miss Fitzpatrick was unlawfully confined at the time of the murder.”
Note, the judge said murder, not manslaughter. But at the end of nearly five hours reading his written judgment aloud in an Oshawa courtroom, he can be forgiven for technically misspeaking.
What Di Luca couldn’t definitively conclude was that Strong intended to kill Fitzpatrick, as he would, 10 years later, definitely murder Hache.
Dismembered, dissected, disembowelled, de-fleshed both their bodies, Di Luca accepted. Sank one victim’s torso in the harbour except it was fished out by an angler. Stuffed body parts, including Hache’s head, in an old freezer. Tried much later flushing other remains, flesh and organs, down the toilet. But it flooded and clogged, blocking the drains in a unit above. Those tenants called the plumbers, who, using a mechanical snake, pulled out what appeared to be clumps of flesh and strings of entrails.
Pounds more tissue and skin were found in a bucket outside.
And that’s a sanitized version of the forensic evidence.
The remains of Hache, just 18 when she disappeared in August 2017. She was three months pregnant and had been struggling with crystal meth addiction. Strong said he met her down by the creek in Oshawa, a homeless girl. Bought her dinner, brought her home with him. The prosecution said Strong killed the teen either during a sexual assault or when she was forcibly confined. The forensic pathologist said she had skull fractures, an array of injuries to her face and head, but no explicit cause of death could be established.
The girl’s DNA was found on splatters throughout Strong’s apartment, in the kitchen, the bedroom, the ceiling, the stairwell. “Blood-letting events,” the judge said, delivering the 75-page decision.
Of Fitzpatrick, all that the police could uncover was DNA on a hunting knife and from blood inside the freezer. Strong had told a detective he meant to get rid of the weapon but never got around to it. “That’s the procrastination factor that f-ed me. All I had to do was boil (the knife). DNA doesn’t work once it’s cooked.”
The teen vanished during Christmas 2008. She’d been a street kid who hung around downtown Oshawa, among a group of homeless youths who kept tabs on each other.
Both young women led itinerant lives, sporadically homeless. Both were chronic runaways, vulnerable, trying to navigate a desperate existence on the streets. Both had drug addictions. Both occasionally sold their bodies to support their habits. And both were loved by their families. Fitzpatrick’s father never gave up hope that his daughter was alive and would come home one day, trembling with dread every time a body was found. He accepted the finality of her death only when informed by police that her DNA had been identified.
And both, tragically — a decade apart — had crossed paths with Strong. Neither survived the encounter.
Strong wasn’t even on the police radar until Dec. 29, 2017, when the plumbers called police after making their gruesome discovery. Upon answering their knock on his door, he blurted out that, yup, there was a body. “If you want to recover the rest of her, she’s in my freezer.”
The human remains that had clogged the toilet, Strong recounted during a videotaped 11-hour interview with a detective. “All the water came up and I heard kerplunk … I’m picking it up with my hands as fast as I can.”
Strong admitted knowing Hache and said he was aware she was involved in the sex trade. But insisted that any security camera video showing her coming to his home would also show her leaving his home. “The honest to God truth.”
It was a lie, as Strong conceded in his second interrogation, the marathon interview. “I was trying to protect my ass.”
In the back of a police cruiser, on the night he was taken into custody, Strong had told the arresting officer he knew they were pulling up Hache’s body parts and that he “would be caught.”
While never specifically confirming he’d killed Hache, it would be absurd, said the judge, that he’d come across a dead body and taken it to his apartment for dismemberment and disposal, returning to the remains months after dumping her torso into the water, then thawing the frozen parts, including the head, in hot water.
“I am satisfied that it was Mr. Strong who caused Miss Hache’s death, on the evening of Sept. 1, or shortly thereafter,” Di Luca said.
Satisfied as well that Hache died from repeated blunt force trauma to her head, possibly with a hammer or similar implement. This was murderous intent.
“I reject the suggestion Ms. Hache possibly died of an overdose,” the judge continued.
The Crown argued Hache had been sexually assaulted or confined during the murder. Di Luca found the evidence that Hache had been strapped into a restraining device — a pulley over Strong’s bed — indicated they had engaged in a BDSM act.
Given the forensic evidence, the judge could not rule beyond a reasonable doubt that any sexual act was non-consensual when it started.
But that became irrelevant at the point where Strong began raining blows on the girl.
“As a matter of law, a person cannot consent to intentional infliction of bodily harm … the sex act instantly becomes non-consensual.”
Hache was still alive when Strong started beating her, as proven by the bruising she’d sustained.
“I do not know why Mr. Strong began beating Miss Hache. Perhaps she objected. Ultimately it does not matter. Motive is not part of the offence.”
Which made the issue of unlawful confinement moot. Any consent given earlier “would have evaporated” amidst the grievous harm Hache absorbed before breathing her last. The pummelled remnants of Hache’s body spoke for her.
There was, is, sadly no body to speak for Fitzpatrick. Di Luca accepted she’s dead.
Strong himself, in police interviews, acknowledged the presence of Fitzgerald’s DNA on his knife — even 10 years later — and traces of her blood in his freezer would mean he’d be charged in both deaths, but maintained they couldn’t prove he’d killed either.
He was initially charged with committing an indignity to a body — Hache’s remains. The two murder charges were laid on Nov. 8, 2018, almost a year later.
Strong did not testify and the defence did not call any evidence at the three-month trial.
“There is no evidence on specific cause of death,” in relation to Fitzpatrick, said the judge. “I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that she was killed in some unlawful fashion by Mr. Strong.”
Di Luca resolved that dismemberment of Fitzpatrick’s body took place over a period of time and that Strong employed the same disposal tactics with Hache. He was thus surprised when Hache’s torso surfaced and was likewise frustrated when Hache’s body parts couldn’t be flushed away.
“He formed this view because he had earlier disposed of Miss Fitzpatrick’s body by flushing (parts) down the toilet,” the judge reasoned.
In his police interrogations, Strong teased that he had information he might share — presumably about the whereabouts of Fitzpatrick’s remains — but that was a card he would play later, after swinging a deal. He knew he was going to prison but was seeking some comforts, maybe a TV and use of the internet.
There was no deal. There was no remorse, either. Just self-pity, blaming his “damageness” on a lousy childhood.
Strong had said to the detective: “I’m a monster.”
Yes, you are.