'I killed 4 people': A look at Winnipeg serial killer's 20-hour confession video
CBC
WARNING: This story contains distressing details.
Jeremy Skibicki walks into a grey interrogation room trailed by two police officers and sits on the only object in the small space: a black plastic chair.
It's the first moments of what will be a 20-hour interview with Winnipeg investigators nearly two years ago.
During the interview, he surprises police by admitting not only to killing Rebecca Contois, for whose death he's been arrested, but three other women as well.
An excerpt from the videotaped interview, running six hours and 46 minutes, was released by Manitoba Court of King's Bench on Thursday, after parts of it were played in court the day prior, at the start of Skibicki's trial on four counts of first-degree murder.
His defence lawyers say he admits to the killings but argue he should be found not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder.
In the video excerpt shown to court, Skibicki details how he killed his victims — three First Nations women and a fourth woman who has not been identified, but is believed to have been Indigenous — in 2022, and then disposed of their remains in the trash.
"I did this because I believe that there should be capital punishment and that this is racially motivated," Skibicki says during the interview, which began May 17, 2022, and stretched into the next day.
"This whole thing about racial purity, the extinction of the white race — you know, the great replacement theory, globalism, Bolshevism, an effort to eradicate white people. I don't believe that races are meant to be forced to live together," he tells police.
"And this existence that I've had is just completely messed up because of liberalism."
Those statements came out of the blue after hours of questioning by Winnipeg police about the partial remains of Contois, a 24-year-old woman whose home community was O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation, found in a garbage bin near Skibicki's North Kildonan apartment.
He is accused of killing her, along with Morgan Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26, both of Long Plain First Nation.
The fourth charge is in the death of an unidentified woman who community leaders have given the name Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, who police have said they believe was an Indigenous woman in her 20s.
The video shows Det. Greg Allan and Det.-Sgt. Adam Danylyshen lead Skibicki into the room, explaining he has been arrested in the death of Contois.
Debbie Sinclair may not be ready yet to talk at length about what it will feel like to be able to walk through the front door of her home in Cranberry Portage, Man., but one thing she's sure of: "They're heroes," Sinclair said of the fire crews, volunteers, emergency and Manitoba Hydro workers who for more than a week have been toiling to protect the wildfire-threatened community, which was deemed safe for residents to return to starting at 10 a.m. Sunday.