Trial of Jean Fenelon: closing arguments by Crown, defense

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Marie Gabriel was on the phone with her best friend in the final moments of her life when she shouted at an unwanted guest, “Get the f— out of my house!”

The intruder was Jean Fenelon, her ex-partner and father of her two young children, prosecutors told the jury Tuesday during closing arguments in Fenelon’s first-degree murder trial.

The violence, which broke out on March 26, 2022, at Gabriel’s home at 1485 Heatherington Rd., was the “culmination of seven years of conflict” as Gabriel, 24, attempted to flee and break ties with the “tumultuous” relationship break. controlling, aggressive, verbally abusive,” Fenelon alleged Crown attorney Dallas Mack.

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Gabriel’s best friend, Norland Tassy, ​​stayed on the phone for seven minutes that morning before the line went silent. She would never hear Gabriel’s voice again or see her friend alive again.

According to the Crown’s case, Fenelon was furious that Gabriel had ended the relationship and had recently started seeing another man.

“Marie was done with him,” Mack said. “She wanted him out of her house and out of her life.”

Gabriel blocked Fenelon from the front door that morning as he walked around the house and entered through the back entrance.

According to the Crown’s allegations, Fenelon chased Gabriel through the basement, hit her in the back of the legs with a piece of wood, grabbed her and dragged her across the concrete floor, where her bloody footprints would later be found.

He then grabbed a 30-pound dumbbell and smashed it against her head as she lay on the bare floor.

Gabriel’s battered body was discovered in the basement in a pool of blood with the barbell nearby.

She died almost immediately when the killer delivered at least two “catastrophic” fatal blows with the barbell that collapsed and shattered her skull, according to testimony from forensic pathologist Dr. Christopher Milroy.

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Milroy also identified defensive injuries when Gabriel likely held her arms up to fend off the “brutal” attack, Mack told the jury.

“No stranger did this to Marie Gabriel,” Mack said. “This was personal.”

Fenelon pleaded not guilty at the start of his trial on October 7.

His lawyer, Ari Goldkind, chose not to call any evidence or witnesses to testify after the Crown closed its case last week.

During his closing address to the jury on Wednesday, Goldkind asked: “Are you sure it was Mr Fenelon who committed this terrible crime? Probably not, maybe not… but proof beyond a reasonable doubt?

“Are you satisfied that he did it and that everything fits?” Goudkind asked. “There’s no point.”

Goldkind said his client had “not a scratch” on him after the attack and insisted Fenelon had gone to the townhouse on Heatherington Road to pack his belongings and move.

It was Fenelon who called 911 to report Gabriel’s death two days later, on March 28, Goldkind said, when he claimed he visited the house and found Gabriel’s body in the basement, lying in a pool of dried blood.

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“Why would I kill the mother of my children?” he told an Ottawa police detective during one of two interviews in late March 2022.

Gabriel had left the “toxic” relationship with Fenelon in October 2021, according to the Crown’s timeline, before Fenelon “manipulated” his way back into her life.

They met in the summer of 2016, when she was 18 and he was 34. They shared a son and a daughter, and friends and family said their relationship with Gabriel was often “erratic” at the time.

Fenelon “controlled and isolated” her, Mack told the jury, and produced text messages that she sent to her father, Andy Stone, that said, “I’m hurt, I don’t know who to go to.”

She left the home she shared with Fenelon in Gatineau and fled with her two children to a shelter in Ottawa and then to a hotel before later moving to the townhouse in Heatherington.

When Gabriel’s daughter became ill, Fenelon manipulated her, according to the Crown, convincing her that they should get back together and that he would protect her.

Gabriel was convinced her daughter was suffering from a “voodoo curse,” Mack told the jury, when Fenelon “re-entered her life.”

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The relationship was broken again in March 2022. The Crown produced text messages that Gabriel sent to Fenelon in the weeks before she was killed, telling him: “I don’t want anything to do with you.”

She had recently rekindled a relationship with another man, Jean Isralson, and went out on a date the night before she was murdered.

Isralson would later testify at trial about the threatening text messages Gabriel received from Fenelon that evening: “I hope your legs break.”

Mack told the jury that Fenelon would have been “furious” when he found out she was in a relationship with another man.

After killing Gabriel between 11:42 and 11:52 a.m. on March 26, prosecutors alleged, Fenelon got into his car and drove to his mother’s house in Orléans, then went to Petrie Island to throw away his bloodstained clothes .

He spoke to investigators on March 28 — after making a 911 call reporting Gabriel’s violent death — and gave a fabricated version of that day’s events, Mack said.

He also turned over his phone, which investigators used to track his movements in the hours after Gabriel was killed.

Two days later, he spoke with a second homicide detective when he was charged with second-degree murder.

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That charge was upgraded to first-degree murder during the investigation.

Mack told the jury this week that they could take two paths to reaching a guilty verdict on first-degree murder. They could discover that Fenelon planned and deliberated on the murder, or they could discover that Fenelon waged a campaign of criminal intimidation that culminated in the murder.

Goldkind, Fenelon’s lawyer, responded by telling the jury that “the evidence is lacking” in the Crown’s case and that there was “sufficient reasonable doubt.”

He highlighted the search conducted by Ottawa police on Petrie Island, which took three separate searches over three days before police found the pants, shirt and Timberland boots that contained Fenelon’s DNA and were stained and stained with Gabriel’s blood.

Goldkind said it was “unthinkable” that skilled, trained police officers could have missed the clothing during their first two searches of the area. Mack said initial searches focused on the wooded area around the beach and not on the shoreline, where the clothing was ultimately found.

Fenelon had no scratches or visible injuries, which Goldkind said was inconsistent with the violent struggle depicted by the Crown. Neighbors did not testify that they heard any signs of violence, despite the “thin walls” at the mansion.

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There were no traces of Gabriel’s blood in Fenelon’s vehicle, which was seen on surveillance cameras casually leaving Heatherington’s home.

“It was a horrible, toxic relationship,” Goldkind agreed. “But there is nothing to indicate that a murder was imminent.”

High Court Judge Ian Carter gave his legal instructions to the jury on Wednesday afternoon. The jurors, nine women and three men, would then begin deliberating before returning with a verdict.

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