‘Relief’ after conviction of Canadian serial killer Jeremy Skibicki

Tearful cheers erupted in a packed Canadian courtroom Thursday as a judge found a serial killer guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of four Indigenous women.

But in the courtroom, Jeremy Contois’ reaction was reserved.

Her younger sister, Rebecca, was one of the women killed in Winnipeg, Manitoba, two years ago.

“I feel a little relief,” Contois said, but he will not be able to move on until the killer, Jeremy Skibicki, is formally convicted.

In his oral verdict, Manitoba Court of King’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal rejected the defence’s argument at trial that the accused was not criminally responsible for the murders.

Lawyers for Skibicki, 37, said he suffered from schizophrenia at the time of the killings.

Prosecutors have argued that Skibicki deliberately killed Ms Contois and three other women in 2022 in calculated, racially motivated crimes.

Warning: This story contains details that may disturb readers.

The killings and the weeks-long trial that followed sent shockwaves through Canada’s indigenous community, which has long grappled with violence against its women.

Dressed in a gray T-shirt and pants, Skibicki did not react when Judge Joyal read aloud the summary of his judgment.

One of Ms Contois’ family members waved a large photo of Rebecca at him as he left the courtroom.

“Why did I bring up his picture? Because we First Nations people are not statistics,” Krista Fox said afterwards.

“Each of us has a name and a family that misses us terribly.”

Skibicki’s victims are Morgan Harris, 39, Marcedes Myran, 26, and Ms. Contois, who was 24. The fourth woman has not yet been identified and was given the name Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, meaning “buffalo woman,” by Aboriginal elders.

Throughout the trial, a buffalo head was placed on a red cloth on a table near the prosecutors, in tribute to the still unidentified victim.

In his verdict, Judge Joyal said the accused had failed to demonstrate that he was not criminally responsible for the murders, rejecting the testimony of a British psychiatrist, Dr Sohom Das, who said Skibicki was motivated by delusions when he committed the murders.

The judge added that the “relentlessly graphic” facts of the case “are largely undisputed,” given that the defendant had admitted to the killings in police interviews and in court before the trial.

Skibicki had pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disorder.

The courtroom, which could seat 100 people, was filled with family and friends of the four women for the verdict.

Justice Joyal said the case had an “undeniable and profound impact on the entire Manitoba community, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike.”

With Skibicki facing life in prison, attention is now turning to the search for the remains of two of his victims, Ms. Myran and Ms. Harris, believed to be in a Winnipeg landfill.

An official search has been set for this fall, after months of pressure from families.

According to court documents, Skibicki killed the women between March and May 2022, with Ms Contois believed to be the last victim.

He met at least two of them at local homeless shelters in Winnipeg, a city of 820,000 in the Prairie province.

Judge Joyal agreed with prosecutors that he deliberately targeted and exploited “vulnerable” women.

During the trial, the court heard that Skibicki assaulted the women, strangled or drowned them, then performed sexual acts on them before dismembering their bodies and dumping them in bins.

The killings went unnoticed for months, until a man searching for scrap metal in a trash can outside Skibicki’s apartment found partial human remains in May 2022 and called police.

“She was obviously murdered,” the man said in the 911 call, which was played in court.

Police were able to identify the remains as those of Ms. Contois.

More of his remains were discovered at a city-run landfill the following month.

During interviews with police shortly after his arrest, Skibicki surprised officers by admitting to killing Ms Contois and three other people.

At that time, police had no knowledge of the other deaths.

Speaking outside court, Ms Fox said she believed it was only because Ms Contois’ remains had been found that other families had been able to get justice.

Skibicki’s lawyers have tried to argue that he was unaware of the seriousness of his actions because of delusions caused by schizophrenia. They have argued that he was hearing voices telling him to commit the crimes as part of a divine mission.

Prosecutors argued that Skibicki was fully aware of his actions, saying they were “intentional, deliberate and racially motivated.”

They demonstrated this through a mix of forensic DNA evidence, surveillance footage showing Skibicki with the women in their final days, as well as testimony from his ex-wife, who detailed a history of physical abuse.

If Skibicki had been found not criminally responsible for the four murders, it would have been a relatively rare situation in Canadian law.

According to data from the Canadian Statistics Agency and reported by the Globe and Mail newspaper, between 2000 and 2022, out of 8,883,749 criminal cases prosecuted across the country, only 5,178 – or 0.06% – resulted in such verdicts.

The case exposed deep wounds within Canada’s Indigenous community, which has long struggled with a high number of missing and murdered women.

Winnipeg – a city close to many Indigenous communities – had the highest number of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada between 2018 and 2022, according to an investigation by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.

In Canada, Indigenous women are 12 times more likely to be murdered or go missing than other women, according to a 2019 survey.

Some of the town’s indigenous women remain missing, leading family members to fear that Skibicki may have claimed more victims.

The Crown, however, said it did not believe he murdered any other women.

Even with the relief of a guilty verdict, Mr. Contois, Rebecca’s brother, said he still wonders why his sister – who is also the mother of a young daughter – was so brutally murdered.

“Why did he have to do that?” he said. “I wish I knew.”