'Lengthy and difficult' Ontario murder trial for prospective parents of 2 boys nears end. Here's what to know

WARNING: This story references allegations of child abuse.

On Dec. 21, 2022, a Burlington, Ont., woman called 911 to report a 12-year-old in her care had no vital signs.

"We can’t wake him up,” Becky Hamber told the dispatcher, who instructed Hamber and her wife, Brandy Cooney, to do chest compressions on the boy.

First responders found the child in a pool of liquid on the floor of his basement bedroom. They brought him to hospital, but doctors couldn't revive him.

The boy, L.L., was from the Ottawa area but had lived with Hamber, Cooney and his little brother J.L. since 2017. CBC is referring to the Indigenous boys using initials due to a standard publication ban on their identities.

Days after L.L.'s death, the Children's Aid Society took J.L. from the couple. On Jan. 17, 2023, Halton police arrested the women and charged them with assaulting him. On Feb. 29, 2024, police charged the pair with killing L.L. 

Hamber, 46, and Cooney, 44, have pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murder of L.L., as well as not guilty to confinement, assault with a weapon and failing to provide the necessaries of life to J.L.

Their judge-alone trial, which began in mid-September, is before Justice Clayton Conlan in Ontario Superior Court in Milton.

Over seven months, the trial has heard from dozens of witnesses, including social service workers, health professionals, educators and police. Hamber, Cooney, and J.L., now 14, also testified over multiple days. Evidence includes thousands of deleted text messages that police accessed, hours of audio recordings and hundreds of images, including from security cameras the women used to surveil the boys.

Witness testimony wrapped Jan. 23, with Conlan calling the trial "lengthy and difficult." Closing arguments are set to begin Monday and continue March 27.

Here's more of what we've heard in the proceedings so far.

L.L.'s physical and mental health are key focuses in the trial.

His therapist, Dr. Shelinderjit Dhaliwal, testified she urged Cooney and Hamber to take the boy to the emergency room multiple times, but they refused.

If they'd listened, "We wouldn’t be going through this and the boy would be alive,” Dhaliwal testified in October.