‘Relief’ as Canadian serial killer Jeremy Skibicki found guilty

Tearful cheers erupted in a packed Canadian courtroom on Thursday as a judge found a serial killer guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of four indigenous women.

But in the court gallery, Jeremy Contois’ reaction was reserved.

His younger sister, Rebecca, was one of the women killed in the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba two years ago.

“I feel a little sense of relief,” Mr Contois said, but will not get full closure until the killer, Jeremy Skibicki, is formally sentenced.

In his oral verdict, Manitoba Court of King’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal dismissed the argument by the defence at trial that the accused was not criminally responsible for the murders.

Lawyers for Skibicki, 37, said he was suffering from schizophrenia at the time of the killings.

Prosecutors argued that Skibicki deliberately killed Ms Contois and three other women in 2022 in crimes that were calculated and racially motivated.

Warning: This story contains details readers may find distressing.

The murders and the subsequent weeks-long trial sent shockwaves through Canada’s indigenous community, which has long grappled with cases of violence against their women.

Wearing a grey T-shirt and pants, Skibicki did not react as Judge Joyal read aloud the summary of his judgment.

One of Ms Contois’ family members held up a large photo of Rebecca in his direction as he left the courtroom.

“Why did I lift up her photo? Because we, as First Nations people, are not statistics,” Krista Fox said afterwards.

“Every single one of us has a name, and a family that misses us dearly.”

Skibicki’s victims are Morgan Harris, 39, Marcedes Myran, 26 and Ms Contois, who was 24. The fourth woman has yet to be identified, and has been given the name Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, meaning Buffalo Woman, by indigenous elders.

Throughout the trial, a buffalo head sat on a red cloth on a table near the prosecutors in tribute to the still unidentified victim.

In his verdict, Judge Joyal said the accused failed to demonstrate he was not criminally responsible for the murders, dismissing the testimony of a British psychiatrist, Dr Sohom Das, who said Skibicki was motivated by delusions when he committed the murders.

The judge added that the “mercilessly graphic” facts of the case “are largely uncontested”, given that the accused had admitted to the murders in police interviews and in court prior to the trial.

Skibicki had pleaded not guilty due to a mental disorder.

The 100-person courtroom was packed full with the four women’s families and friends for the verdict.

Judge Joyal said the case has had an “undeniable and profound impact on the entire Manitoba community, indigenous and non-indigenous”.

With Skibicki facing life behind bars, the focus is now shifting to finding the remains of two of his victims, Ms Myran and Ms Harris, which are believed to be in a Winnipeg landfill.

A formal search has been set for this autumn, after months of pressure from their families.

According to court documents, Skibicki killed the women between March and May of 2022, with Ms Contois believed to be the final victim.

He met at least two at local homeless shelters in Winnipeg, a city of 820,000 in the prairie province.

Judge Joyal agreed with prosecutors that he deliberately targeted and exploited “vulnerable” women.

Over the course of the trial, the court heard that Skibicki had assaulted the women, strangled or drowned them and then committed sex acts on them before dismembering their bodies and disposing of them in garbage bins.

The killings went undetected for months, until a man looking for scrap metal in a bin outside Skibicki’s apartment found partial human remains in May 2022 and called police.

“She’s obviously been murdered,” the man said in the 911 call, which was played in court.

Police were able to identify the remains as those of Ms Contois.

More of her remains were discovered at a city-run landfill the following month.

In police interviews shortly after his arrest, Skibicki surprised officers by admitting to killing Ms Contois as well as three others.

At that point, police had no knowledge of the other deaths.

Speaking outside court, Ms Fox said she believes that it was only because Ms Contois’ remains were found that the other families were able to get justice.

Skibicki’s lawyers tried to argue that he was not aware of the severity of his actions due to delusions driven by schizophrenia. They argued he was hearing voices that told him to commit the crimes as part of a mission from god.

Prosecutors argued that Skibicki was fully aware of his actions, saying they were “intentional, purposeful and racially motivated”.

They demonstrated this through a mix of DNA forensic evidence, surveillance footage showing Skibicki with the women in their final days, as well as testimony from his ex-wife, who detailed a history of physical abuse.

Had Skibicki been found not criminally responsible for the four murders, it would have been a relative rarity in Canadian law.

According to data from Canada’s statistics agency and reported by the Globe and Mail newspaper, between 2000 and 2022, of 8,883,749 criminal cases prosecuted across the country, only 5,178 – or 0.06% – had such verdicts.

The case unearthed deep wounds for Canada’s indigenous community, which has long grappled with a high number of cases of their women going missing or being murdered.

According to an investigation by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, Winnipeg – a city near numerous indigenous communities – had the highest number of missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada between 2018 and 2022.

Across Canada, indigenous women are 12 times more likely to be murdered or go missing than other women, according to a 2019 inquiry.

Some indigenous women in the city remain missing, sparking fears from family members that Skibicki had more victims.

The Crown, however, said they do not believe he murdered more women.

Even with the relief of a guilty verdict, Mr Contois, Rebecca’s brother, said he still wonders why his sister – who is also a mother to a young daughter – was so brutally murdered.

“Why did he have to do it?” he said. “I wish I knew that.”