How Jeremy Skibicki's 'unusual' defence compares to other serial killer cases

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

Admitted Winnipeg serial killer Jeremy Skibicki's plan to argue he's not criminally responsible in the deaths of four women due to a mental disorder strikes several experts as "unusual" — including the forensic psychiatrist who assessed some of Canada's most notorious killers.

Dr. John Bradford has evaluated murderers including Paul Bernardo, Robert Pickton and Russell Williams, all of whom were convicted in notorious serial sexually motivated killings.

Bernardo, along with then-wife Karla Homolka, sexually assaulted and killed three teenage girls in Ontario, including Homolka's sister. Pickton, who recently died in hospital, was convicted in 2007 of killing six sex workers and suspected of killing many more. Williams, a disgraced former Canadian Forces colonel, killed two women, sexually assaulted two others and broke into the homes of dozens of Ontario women and girls.

Bradford said it would be very difficult for someone to be found not criminally responsible, or NCR, in those types of killings. In all three of those cases, he found the accused weren't eligible, in part because of how much planning and organization went into their crimes.

"They have to find a victim. They have to persuade them and abduct them and, you know, they have to go to various means to do that. And then usually afterwards there's some disposition of the body in a way to avoid being arrested or being found guilty," Bradford said from Nova Scotia.

"All of that goes against … I'm generalizing, [but] when people are psychotic, they tend to be disorganized in what they do."

While not criminally responsible cases can involve multiple homicides or a series of crimes over a longer period of time, the two don't typically go together in the type of "brutal violence over a course of several weeks or months" that Skibicki has admitted to, said Anita Szigeti, a longtime Toronto mental health litigator who has represented not criminally responsible clients for nearly 30 years.

"I have, you know, hundreds of clients a year. And I don't think I've seen anyone come into the system with this pattern of offending since I've been doing the work," said Szigeti, an author of the Canadian Anthology on Mental Health and the Law.

Though Skibicki's bid to argue he's not criminally responsible is "quite unorthodox," it's less surprising given the evidence, including a videotaped confession to the killings during his police interview, said Brandon Trask, an assistant professor who teaches mental health and criminal law at the University of Manitoba.

"It would have been extremely challenging for the defence to argue, based on that evidence, that Mr. Skibicki should be found not guilty," said Trask. "One argument that was still remaining for them to make was in relation to the pursuit of this finding of NCR."

Skibicki's defence will present its case for why a not criminally responsible finding when the trial resumes Monday. Court has heard the Crown and defence each had their own experts assess the accused's mental state.

Prosecutors have alleged that over two months in 2022, Skibicki, 37, preyed on vulnerable women at Winnipeg homeless shelters before taking them back to his apartment, killing them and engaging in "vile sexual acts with their bodies." Court has heard Skibicki was seen on surveillance video throwing out the remains of the women, some of whom he had dismembered, in garbage bins near his apartment building. 

Skibicki has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in connection with the killings of Morgan Harris, 39, Marcedes Myran, 26, and Rebecca Contois, 24 — all of whom were from First Nations in Manitoba — as well as the death of an as-yet unidentified woman who has been given the name Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, by community leaders. Police have said they believe she was also Indigenous and in her 20s.