Winnipeg serial killer knew what he was doing was wrong, judge says

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

Serial killer Jeremy Skibicki knew what he was doing was wrong, a judge said in a lengthy decision outlining why he convicted the Winnipeg man in the murders of four vulnerable Indigenous women.

Court of King's Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal said he came to that conclusion in part because of comments Skibicki made during his police interview, when he told officers he did some "horrible, horrible, horrible, horrible things," asked if he could confess his "sins" to an Orthodox priest and told detectives that whatever happened to him next was "never going to be enough," even if it included capital punishment.

Messages and letters Skibicki sent after the killings also showed he knew what he did was wrong, from a series of Facebook messages telling his ex-wife that he could be facing several life sentences, to letters he sent another inmate discussing his case while incarcerated that suggested "an awareness, a calculated opportunism and a potential for manipulation at the very least," Joyal's decision said.

Skibicki's police statement also revealed how the murders were racially motivated, a fact Joyal said was "rendered all the more chilling" when considered with the evidence of a shelter worker who testified Skibicki told him he was only there to "stalk his victims."

The 190-page decision released Monday comes over a week after Joyal delivered a comparatively brief oral decision on July 11 convicting Skibicki, whose face showed no sign of emotion in court as he was convicted of all four counts of first-degree murder he faced before a courtroom packed with relatives and supporters of his victims.

The convicted killer, whose defence team argued during his trial he should be found not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder, now faces an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

His lawyers argued at the time of the killings, Skibicki was driven by delusions caused by schizophrenia that left him unable to realize what he was doing was morally wrong.

The ruling came after a trial that heard weeks of evidence in May and June. The high-profile case galvanized people across the country to push for the search of a Winnipeg-area landfill for the remains of two of the women Skibicki killed.

Joyal said that backdrop to the case, combined with the "cruelty and barbarism" of the women's deaths, required the court to be especially conscious of its responsibility to give the accused "the required due process from what is and must be perceived as an impartial tribunal."

Skibicki, 37, was convicted in the killings of three First Nations women — Morgan Harris, 39, Marcedes Myran, 26, and Rebecca Contois, 24 — as well as an unidentified woman who has been given the name Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, by community leaders. She was believed to be in her 20s, and court determined based on the evidence she was also Indigenous.

Contois was a member of O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation, also known as Crane River. Harris and Myran were both members of Long Plain First Nation. All four women were killed in Winnipeg between mid-March and mid-May of 2022.

Skibicki's admissions to police provided what Joyal called a "very compelling" list of similarities among the killings, which helped the judge determine the accused was guilty of four planned, deliberate murders — which he found were also carried out at the same time as sexual assaults in all four cases.

Those similarities included that Skibicki met all four women at shelters, brought them back to his apartment where he killed them early in the morning "to ensure that no one would notice," performed sex acts on their bodies after killing them, dismembered some before disposing of their remains in garbage bins near his apartment and kept some of their belongings after killing them.