Controlling behaviour was a warning sign in 15% of intimate-partner homicides, CBC analysis found
CBC
WARNING: This story contains graphic details of violence.
In the last few weeks before a murder devastated people in her Halifax social circle, Ardath Whynacht began to worry.
"I had a sick feeling in my stomach," she said.
Whynacht was concerned about two people she knew socially: a high school friend, Nicholas Butcher, and the woman he was dating, Kristin Johnston.
Butcher's friends knew that he was struggling to find work, in debt and depressed. People in their circle knew the two were having problems in their relationship.
Whynacht says she later learned in court that others among her friends knew Butcher was accessing Johnston's private messages. He also followed her movements, which Whynacht characterized as "stalking" behaviour.
She made a suggestion to a mutual friend that Butcher might want to consider counselling.
"But of course, you can't force someone to get help," she told CBC News in an interview.
Whynacht says she had a feeling that something was wrong — and it turned out she was right.
In March 2016, Butcher stabbed and killed Johnston, 32, then cut off his own hand, which was later reattached. Two years later, a jury convicted the 36-year-old of second-degree murder.
Whynacht and others who study domestic violence say that warning signs hold the key to preventing such deaths in the future. A CBC investigation that analyzed nearly 400 cases of intimate partner homicide in Canada between 2015 and 2020 found that at least one warning sign was present in 36 per cent of cases, or more than one in three.
The most common warning signs were recent or pending separations (20 per cent of cases), previous reports to police and patterns of coercive or controlling behaviour (both 15 per cent of cases). The analysis was unable to draw conclusions about warning signs in the remaining two-thirds of cases due to a lack of publicly available information.
Johnston, a much-loved yoga teacher in Halifax, had expressed to friends that she wanted to break off her relationship with Butcher, who was living with her in her home. He read her Facebook messages to friends and followed her on the night he killed her, waiting for hours in his car with a knife.
Multiple witnesses testified at Butcher's trial that Johnston wanted to break up with him but was having difficulty doing so.
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