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Borutski 'would have stopped' deadly rampage, court hears

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OTTAWA - Basil Borutski said he “would have stopped” the September 2015 rampage that killed three women, appearing to blame the victims for their own deaths in a police interview the day after the killings.

Borutski is defending himself on charges of first-degree murder in the deaths of Carol Culleton, 66, Anastasia Kuzyk, 36, and Nathalie Warmerdam, 48.

The jury on Tuesday heard the remainder of a five-hour police interview in which Borutski admits to killing the women, but insists the actions were “not murder.” The Crown has described it as a “confession.”

When asked by OPP Det-Sgt. Caley O’Neill if Borutski would “take it back if (he) could,” Borutski responded, “Of course I would.

“Like when I asked Anastasia, ‘Why did you lie?’ why couldn’t she have just said, ‘I’m sorry.’

“I’m sure I would have stopped right there, but she still lied. And Carol lies. And I talked with her so much about being honest and the truth and positive and then she still lied … then I told her about how lies have f—d me and my family and my life, how it has projected me as something I’m not … I don’t have a bad bone in my body.”

Borutski detailed the day of the killings, saying it seemed as if he were watching himself from outside his body, looking like “a zombie.”

Culleton was the first to die. Borutski described strangling the woman with a TV coaxial cable in her cottage near Combermere, before stealing her car and driving to Wilno. There, he confronted Kuzyk and shot her in her kitchen with a 12-gauge shotgun, court heard. He then continued on to Warmerdam’s farm on Foymount Road, where he said he shot her on the stairs of her house.

“Everything was as if it was a play,” Borutski told the detective. “Carol opened the door, and Anastasia walked right out the door … I walked up to the door and opened it and Nathalie’s right there … It was as if it was supposed to be.

“I asked a question and as soon as I asked the question, she lied. It’s just like, lie, ‘Bang.’ Same with Anastasia. I said why did you lie in court. She said ‘I didn’t.’ ‘Bang.’ There was even no sound, it was just like ‘pop,’ and it wasn’t like that I pulled the trigger…”

Borutski had been in a relationship with both Kuzyk and Warmerdam.

The Crown said in its opening statement Borutski was charged and convicted of offences against Kuzyk in 2014, and charged and convicted of offences against Warmerdam in 2012.

Culleton had “befriended” Borutski, but according to the Crown, “Basil wanted more from this relationship with Carol than Carol was prepared to give.”

After killing the three women, Borutski told the police interrogator, he had planned to drink three bottles of alcohol he had stashed in the woods before turning the shotgun on himself.

“I planned on drinking and blowing my head off,” he said. “But then I started thinking, ‘You can’t do that Basil, you’re innocent and if you blow your head off you’ll never go to heaven’.”

Borutski repeatedly lashed out at police and the justice system throughout the interview, saying, “I didn’t get here by myself. You (police) drove me crazy. I begged yous to do something.”

Borutski detailed numerous occasions over 20 years of “bad history” where he believed he had been wronged by police or by the courts.

Near the end of the interview, before he was escorted to his initial bail hearing, Borutski asked to speak to a psychiatrist.

“Geez, would I ever like to know how this happened,” he said.

ahelmer@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/helmera

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