Former wife of Winnipeg serial killer testifies in court on abusive relationship

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The former wife of a man who admitted to killing four First Nations women testified in a Winnipeg superior court on Thursday, recalling the lurid details of their abusive relationship, including how he violently attacked and sexually assaulted her on numerous occasions.

The 44-year-old Métis woman, whom The Globe and Mail is not naming because she is a survivor of sexual violence, told Court of King’s Bench Justice Glenn Joyal that she met Jeremy Skibicki in early 2018 at the Siloam Mission shelter for vulnerable people in the city. She said she had been struggling with a methamphetamine addiction and did not have a place to live at the time.

Mr. Skibicki approached her when she was sitting alone and invited her back to his apartment, the woman told the court. “I really like this one,” she heard him tell his friends that day.

The pair started living together and got married in September of that year after Mr. Skibicki publicly proposed to her in a pharmacy. “I felt stuck,” she testified about her marriage. By September, 2019, she had been granted a protective order against him by a court in Winnipeg.

But Mr. Skibicki maintained contact with her and was messaging her on Facebook until his arrest in 2022, she said.

According to an agreed statement of facts by both the Crown and defence, Mr. Skibicki killed a yet-to-be-identified woman whom Indigenous elders have named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, meaning Buffalo Woman, on or about March 15, 2022; 39-year-old Morgan Harris on or about May 1 of that year; 26-year-old Marcedes Myran on or about May 4; and 24-year-old Rebecca Contois on or about May 15.

While Mr. Skibicki, 37, has admitted to the killings, his trial, which is in its second week, now rests on whether the defence can show he was too mentally ill to be held criminally responsible of first-degree murder.

The Crown is arguing that Mr. Skibicki murdered the four women in a thought-out scheme that involved stalking them at shelters, inviting them back to his home to drug them, sexually assault them, then kill them before engaging in further sexual acts on their bodies, only to dump their dismembered remains in garbage bins that ultimately ended up in Winnipeg-area landfills.

But his defence lawyers have pointed out that he disclosed a borderline personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder to police during his nearly 20-hour interrogation.

During his interrogation, a shortened video of which was shown in court last week, Mr. Skibicki confessed to police that he met at least three of his four victims – Ms. Harris, Ms. Myran and Ms. Contois – in or around Siloam Mission, the same shelter where he had met his wife. (He said he killed his first victim, Buffalo Woman, shortly after he met her near a Salvation Army shelter in the city.)

On Thursday, Mr. Skibicki’s former wife testified that, during their relationship, he would routinely perform sexual acts on her while she was asleep after she would take her medication for post-traumatic stress disorder.

She said she would wake up in the morning bleeding, with soreness all over her body. “He had a fetish for sleeping beauty syndrome, is what he called it,” she told the court, wearing glasses with pink lenses that she said were because of a concussion she got from Mr. Skibicki.

Another fetish was to treat her like a rag doll, she said. When asked by Justice Joyal to clarify, she said that meant him having sex with women who are “kind of like limp and lifeless.”

At different points, Mr. Skibicki attacked his former wife with a knife or tried to suffocate her with a pillow, she said.

Mr. Skibicki also showed her snuff pornography, which depicted men performing sexual acts on dead bodies, she told the court.

He intruded with her life wherever she went, she said. After filing the protective order against him, she was in addictions recovery, but he interfered with her treatment, she said.

Her mother helped her escape the relationship in March, 2021. But in spring of the next year, he got in touch with her on Facebook through one of his many different aliases, she said.

On May 9, 2022, after he had killed three of his victims, Mr. Skibicki messaged his former wife that he “might not be caught.” He told her that he “could be doing like three life sentences,” the court heard Thursday.

She called him through the social-media app because she had a feeling “something terribly wrong had happened,” she said. But he would divulge little, saying that if he admitted to his crimes, he would have to be on the run.

His last message to her was sent at 11:45 a.m. on May 17, just hours before his arrest after Ms. Contois’s remains were found the previous day. “Lots to do today,” the message stated. “Take care baby.”

When cross-examined by the defence, the woman said she believed Mr. Skibicki may have been schizophrenic and that he had multiple personalities.

Defence lawyer Leonard Tailleur pointed out that she called him “demented” in her protection order application. He also cited messages between the two to suggest Mr. Skibicki’s belief that he was being manipulated by a higher power for his acts.

Mr. Skibicki’s trial is adjourned until Friday. It is expected to continue until June 6.