Nikolas Ibey viewed dozens of victim’s Facebook photos before killing her

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In the hours before he killed and allegedly sexually assaulted his new housemate, Nikolas Ibey browsed through Savanna Pikuyak’s Facebook profile and scrolled through dozens of her photos.

The Crown closed its case against Ibey on Nov. 25 after calling an Ottawa police digital forensic investigator who extracted more than 2,000 images from Ibey’s cellphone cache, captured from 7 p.m. on Sept. 10, 2022 and continuing until early the next morning.

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The cache contained 105 photos of Pikuyak, including 88 Facebook photos that were viewed and cached in a five-minute span beginning at 2:25 a.m. on Sept. 11.

Crown attorneys Michael Purcell and Sonia Beauchamp told the jury that Ibey was frustrated in his hours-long search for a sex worker that night, which continued into the early morning, and he assaulted, strangled and killed Pikuyak between 3 a.m. and 9 a.m.

Police arrived to the home at 34C Woodvale Green around 10 a.m. to find Pikuyak’s body on a bloodied mattress in the apartment she had recently rented from Ibey. Ibey’s father had alerted police after receiving a text from Ibey that morning confessing to the killing.

Ibey, who is represented by defence lawyers Ewan Lyttle and Maggie McCann, entered a guilty plea to second-degree murder at the outset of his trial on Nov. 12, but that plea was rejected by the Crown. He has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.

Ibey’s jury trial heard testimony last week from a crime intelligence analyst who extracted a volume of data from the laptops and cellphones seized from the crime scene, including Ibey’s Samsung Galaxy phone.

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Ibey made 800 visits to 160 distinct sex websites and communicated with 30 sex workers between 7 p.m. and 3 a.m. on the eve of the killing, according to testimony from Ottawa Police Service crime intelligence analyst Alyson Yaraskovitch.

He sent e-transfers as deposits for several failed encounters, as prosecutors produced text messages from Ibey saying he was “horny as heck” but was “really high” and too drunk to drive to sex workers who advertised as “in-calls only.”

Ibey’s trial also heard testimony last week from one sex worker who was invited to his apartment and showed up just after 1 a.m.

The woman, who no longer works in the sex trade, said Ibey was unable to maintain an erection and they had no sexual contact during their brief encounter.

She left the basement apartment after he paid her in full and sent her home about 15 minutes later.

She noticed about six lines of cocaine on Ibey’s dresser and testified that he drank beer and snorted cocaine while she was there.

After she left, Ibey turned his attention to pornographic websites and had one more failed exchange with a sex worker around 2 a.m., according to the Crown’s reconstructed timeline of Ibey’s text messages and search history.

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The Crown called Ottawa police digital forensic investigator Sgt. Joseph Desjardins, who testified as the prosecution’s final witness Nov. 25 and guided the jury through further evidence extracted from Ibey’s cellphone cache.

Police examined data captured between 7 p.m. on Sept. 10 and 11 a.m. the next day, and found 2,200 cached images.

The jury was shown dozens of cached photos that matched the ones posted to Pikuyak’s public Facebook profile. Desjardins told the jury that 88 photos had been viewed on Ibey’s phone in quick succession between 2:25 a.m. and 2:29 a.m.

There were photos of other women found in the cache, Desjardins testified, “but no significant representation of a single female other than Savanna Pikuyak.”

There was a “jump in time” when there was no activity shown in the data Desjardins examined until 9:32 a.m. on Sept. 11, when more of Pikuyak’s photos were viewed on the phone and captured in the cache.

It was around that time, according to earlier testimony from forensic investigators, that Ibey began searching the internet for information on the length of a prison sentence for murder.

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He logged into his phone at 9:03 a.m., according to the Crown’s timeline and searched for “the difference between first-degree murder, second-degree murder and manslaughter.”

He texted his father just before 10 a.m. and confessed, “I’m in big, big trouble. I got into the booze and drugs last night and killed my roommate.”

Ibey’s defence lawyers are set to inform the court on Nov. 26 whether they will elect to call evidence or witnesses to testify on behalf of the defence.

ahelmer@postmedia.com

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