As Nelson Hart's sentence to life in prison for the murder of his twin daughters was read yesterday morning, his wife, Jennifer, broke down in tears and stormed out of the courtroom.
Mr. Hart, portrayed at his murder trial as a chronic liar and a scared, insecure man, was convicted yesterday of two counts of first-degree murder in the drownings of his twin daughters at a Newfoundland lake in 2002.
He was given an automatic sentence of life in prison with no parole for at least 25 years.
Mr. Hart, who at one point in 2005 told an undercover officer that he killed the girls to keep from losing custody of them to his brother, cried after the verdict was read.
In the five years since their twins drowned on a sunny summer day in August of 2002, Mrs. Hart has been steadfast in her support of her husband, maintaining his innocence -- even though he was responsible, by malice, accident or circumstance, for the death of their only children.
Not permitted in the courtroom until after she gave her testimony on March 7, Mrs. Hart spent the first eight days of the trial haunting the lobby outside the thick wooden doors.
She would wait and watch as her husband was led to and from the holding cell, sometimes walking beside him, managing to exchange a few words, a few glances. From time to time, one of the sheriff's officers would give her a note -- usually a request for toiletries, including new razor blades.
"The only reason I stand here, stand by him, is because I know he's innocent," Mrs. Hart said in an interview this month.
"It's what I've always believed."
Karen and Krista Hart drowned while with their father at Gander Lake in central Newfoundland on Aug. 4, 2002.
At the centre of the emotionally charged case were two videotapes -- secretly recorded by undercover police -- of Mr. Hart describing how he drowned the girls.
During the four-week trial, Mr. Hart's lawyer, Derek Hogan, said his client confessed only because he was intimidated by officers who he believed were violent gangsters.
But the Crown said the tapes show a relaxed Mr. Hart explaining in detail how he carried out a careful plan to kill the girls, an argument the six-man, six-woman jury ultimately believed.
After the verdict was read, the court adjourned for a few minutes, then reconvened to hear a brief statement from the 38-year-old convicted man.
Mr. Hart, who is epileptic, said he had tried to tell the gang's fake boss that he had a seizure the day the girls fell in the water, but the boss pushed him to tell another story.
"I'd like for the people of this town, the public of this town [to know]. . . what was done to me," Mr. Hart said.
"I was told not to go against the crime boss. I tried to tell him the truth, but . . . he didn't believe that."
Outside the court, Mr. Hart's mother, Pearl, said she still believes her son is innocent.
"I do think he did not do it. There's a lot about this story that's not right." She said her son faces a grim future behind bars.
Pearl and Jennifer Hart were regular spectators at the trial. Pearl Hart spoke up more than once from the public gallery, drawing sharp rebukes from Mr. Justice Wayne Dymond. Jennifer Hart reportedly fled the room once earlier, when a police video of Mr. Hart supposedly re-enacting the murder was shown.
In 1997, Mr. Hart, then 28, had just recently moved out on his own. He suffered from epileptic seizures severe enough that the provincial government arranged for live-in care. Jennifer Hicks, 22, was hired.
It wasn't long before the two were lovers. Jennifer lost her job, and both were soon surviving on social assistance. Karen and Krista were born in March of 1999; the couple married a year later.
After the death of the twins, Mrs. Hart left the province, her husband and their home in Gander for a short time.
She later said police officers told her she was in danger and literally drove her away. Within months, missing her husband, she returned, and the two lived together in Grand Falls-Windsor, about an hour's drive from Gander.
Although she maintains that house, Mrs. Hart stayed in Gander with Mr. Hart's mother for the duration of the trial. She had nowhere else to turn -- and Pearl Hart seemed to be the only other person to believe in Mr. Hart as much as she did.
"Pearl worries about me," Mrs. Hart said in the interview. "She thinks as long as I'm in here with her, I'll be okay. Of course, she's having a really hard time, too. I can't tell you what we've been through.
"I can't sleep, I don't know what to do."
Mrs. Hart has never made a secret of her animosity toward the RCMP officers who enacted the complex sting that led to her husband's taped confession.
"When this is all over, well . . . what a story will I have to tell," she said in the interview.
In the initial stages of the police investigation, Mr. Hart told detectives that Krista fell in the water at Little Harbour, but he didn't jump in to save her because he couldn't swim.
Instead, he said, he left his other daughter Karen behind in a panic and drove 10 kilometres to his home to get his wife, who also couldn't swim.
By the time police arrived, Karen was dead and Krista was floating on the water, unconscious. She was airlifted to a hospital in St. John's, where she was declared brain dead, taken off a ventilator and died in her mother's arms, court heard.
Mr. Hart changed his story nearly two months later, saying he suffered a seizure while at the lake and could not recall how the girls ended up in the water.
He told police he hadn't mentioned the seizure previously because he feared officers would confiscate his driver's licence.
Without any other witnesses, the investigation eventually came to a standstill.
But in February, 2005, the RCMP launched an elaborate sting operation that cost the force $413,000.
Over four months, officers posing as members of a criminal syndicate recruited Mr. Hart to join a fictitious gang they described as being bigger than the Hells Angels.
As the investigation drew to a close, Mr. Hart was told the gang's leaders had a few questions for him -- questions that would test his loyalty.
At a meeting in a Montreal hotel room on June 9, 2005, an officer portraying the ringleader asked Mr. Hart what really happened to the girls at the lake.
At first, he tried to tell him about the seizure, but the mob boss said not to lie. Mr. Hart then gave a detailed account of how he planned to drown the girls -- so there would be no blood.
"This is just about the perfect murder," the officer says on a tape played at the trial.
"It was pretty well organized," Mr. Hart replies.
He was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder on June 13, 2005.
Mr. Hogan, Mr. Hart's lawyer, argued at trial that his client was such an accomplished liar that the confessions shouldn't be believed. He said his cash-strapped client was lured into the sting with promises of easy money -- he earned more than $15,000 -- but was left frightened by the officers.
He said he plans to file an appeal.