In chilling video, Borutski details killings
OTTAWA — In a chilling videotape confession played for a jury in an Ottawa courtroom on Friday, Basil Borutski detailed how he methodically drove around Renfrew County on a clear, September day two years ago, and killed three women in a little over an hour.
“I killed them because they were not innocent,” Borutski said in the confession given to police the day after the killings in September 2015.
“They were guilty. I was innocent. I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Borutski, 59, is on trial for first degree murder in the deaths of 66-year-old Carol Culleton, 36year-old Anastasia Kuzyk and 48-year-old Nathalie Warmerdam.
Borutski sat still and silent as the tape was played. He is representing himself, but refuses to participate, ignoring the judge and lawyers completely, staring straight ahead, often with his eyes closed.
His confession was difficult to follow at times, as he manoeuvred back and forth between the details of the killings and events that occurred in the days and even years leading up to them.
He screams as he accuses the police of harassment, threatening to shoot them if they come to his house again.
The night before the murders, he said, he went to see Culleton, who he claims to have dated, at her cottage on Kamaniskeg Lake, where he said she and her new boyfriend laughed at him.
Then he returned to his home, about 24 kilometres away in Palmer Rapids, Ont., and drank rye with a neighbour.
The next morning, he drove back to Culleton’s cottage.
“I remember thinking that God is really helping me because when I went to Carol’s, Carol walked right outside,” he says.
“And then I asked her, I said, ‘Why do you hate me, why are you doing this to me?’ And then she closed the door, I was right there, and then I broke the window with my elbow and I reached in and I unlocked the door …
“There was a, a cable, a TV coil, I picked it up and I hit her with it and I wrapped it around her head.”
He drove to Kuzyk’s house, about 20 kilometres away in Wilno, Ont., and she too walked outside before going back into her home after seeing him. He followed.
“I asked Anastasia ‘why did you lie in court?’ and she said ‘I didn’t,’ and the gun went off.”
He drove to Warmerdam’s home, about 30 kilometres west in Cormac, Ont.
“What happened? I just drove in, walked in the door, she was sitting there, she went around the corner, I followed her. Boom. That was it and I walked out. It was funny, like I wasn’t even pulling the trigger on the gun, the gun was just going off. Boop.”