Crown, defence deliver closing arguments at Jean Fenelon murder trial

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Content warning: This story contains graphic depictions of domestic violence

Marie Gabriel was talking with her best friend on the phone in the final moments of her life when she was heard yelling at an unwelcome guest: “Get the f— out of my house!”

The intruder was Jean Fenelon, her ex-partner and father of her two young children, Crown prosecutors told the jury Tuesday during closing arguments at Fenelon’s first-degree murder trial.

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The violence that erupted inside Gabriel’s home at 1485 Heatherington Rd., on March 26, 2022, was the “culmination of seven years of conflict” as Gabriel, 24, was trying to flee the “tumultuous” relationship and to cut ties with the “controlling, aggressive, verbally abusive” Fenelon, Crown attorney Dallas Mack alleged.

Gabriel’s best friend, Norland Tassy, remained on the phone for seven minutes that morning before the line went silent. She would never hear Gabriel’s voice again and would never again see her friend alive.

Fenelon, according to the Crown’s case, was enraged that Gabriel had ended the relationship and had recently started seeing another man.

“Marie was done with him,” Mack said. “She wanted him out of her home and out of her life.”

Gabriel was blocking Fenelon at the front door that morning when he circled the house and forced his way in through the back entrance.

According to the Crown’s allegations, Fenelon chased Gabriel around the basement, struck her in the back of the legs with a piece of wood, grabbed her and dragged her across the concrete floor, where her bloody footprints would later be found.

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He then picked up a 30-pound dumbbell and smashed it into her head as she lay on the bare floor.

Gabriel’s battered body was discovered in the basement in a pool of blood with the dumbbell nearby.

She died almost instantly as the killer delivered at least two “catastrophic” fatal blows with the dumbbell that caved and shattered her skull, according to testimony from forensic pathologist Dr. Christopher Milroy.

Milroy also identified defensive injuries as Gabriel likely held up her arms to fend off the “brutal” attack, Mack told the jury.

“No mere stranger did this to Marie Gabriel,” Mack said. “This was personal.”

Fenelon pleaded not guilty at the outset of his trial on Oct. 7.

His defence lawyer, Ari Goldkind, elected to call no evidence or witnesses to testify after the Crown closed its case last week.

During his closing address to the jury on Wednesday, Goldkind asked: “Are you sure that it was Mr. Fenelon who committed this horrible crime? Not probably, not maybe … but proof beyond a reasonable doubt?

“Are you satisfied that he did it and that everything fits?” Goldkind asked. “It doesn’t make sense.”

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Goldkind said that his client “did not have a scratch” on him after the attack and insisted that Fenelon had gone to the Heatherington Road townhouse to pack up his things and move out.

It was Fenelon who called 911 to report Gabriel’s death two days later on March 28, Goldkind said, when he claimed he visited the house and found Gabriel’s body in the basement lying in a pool of dried blood.

“Why would I kill the mother of my kids?” he told an Ottawa police detective during one of two interviews in late March 2022.

Gabriel had left the “toxic” relationship with Fenelon in October 2021, according to the Crown’s timeline, before Fenelon “manipulated” his way back into her life.

They met in the summer of 2016, when she was 18 and he was 34. They shared a son and a daughter and friends and family said their connection with Gabriel was often “erratic” during that time.

Fenelon was “controlling and isolating” her, Mack told the jury, and produced text messages she sent to her father, Andy Stone, saying: “I’m hurt, I don’t know who to go to.”

She left the home she shared with Fenelon in Gatineau and fled with her two children to an Ottawa shelter, then a hotel, before later moving to the Heatherington townhouse.

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When Gabriel’s daughter got sick, according to the Crown, Fenelon “manipulated her and convinced her that they had to get back together and he would protect her.”

Gabriel had been convinced that her daughter was suffering from a “voodoo curse,” Mack told the jury, as Fenelon “inserted himself back into her life.”

The relationship had broken down again by March 2022. The Crown produced text messages Gabriel sent to Fenelon in the weeks before she was killed, telling him: “I want nothing to do with you.”

She had recently rekindled a relationship with another man, Jean Isralson, and went out on a date the night before she was killed.

Isralson would later testify at the trial about the threatening text messages Gabriel received from Fenelon that night: “I hope your legs break.”

Mack told the jury Fenelon would have been “infuriated” when he found out she was dating another man.

After killing Gabriel between 11:42 and 11:52 a.m. on March 26, prosecutors alleged, Fenelon got into his car and drove to his mother’s house in Orléans, then headed to Petrie Island to ditch his bloodstained clothes.

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He spoke to investigators on March 28 — after making the 911 call reporting Gabriel’s violent death — and gave a fabricated version of events on that day, Mack said.

He also turned over his phone, which investigators used to retrace his movements in the hours after Gabriel was killed.

He spoke to a second homicide detective two days later, when he was charged with second-degree murder.

That charge was upgraded to first-degree murder during the investigation.

Mack told the jury this week they could take two paths to reach a guilty verdict on first-degree murder. They could find that Fenelon planned and deliberated upon the killing, or they could find that Fenelon was waging a campaign of criminal harassment that culminated with the killing.

Goldkind, Fenelon’s lawyer, countered by telling the jury “the evidence is lacking” in the Crown’s case and there was “ample reasonable doubt.”

He highlighted the search conducted by Ottawa police at Petrie Island, which took three separate searches over three days before police found the pants, shirt and Timberland boots that contained Fenelon’s DNA and were stained and spotted with Gabriel’s blood.

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Goldkind said it was “inconceivable” that skilled, trained police officers could have missed the clothing on their first two searches of the area. Mack said the initial searches had focused on the wooded area around the beach and not the shoreline, where the clothes were eventually found.

Fenelon had no scratches or visible injuries, which, Goldkind said, did not align with the violent struggle depicted by the Crown. Neighbours didn’t testify about hearing any signs of violence, despite the “thin walls” at the townhouse.

There were no traces of Gabriel’s blood in Fenelon’s vehicle, which was seen on surveillance cameras casually leaving the Heatherington home.

“It was a terrible, toxic relationship,” Goldkind agreed. “But nothing suggests that a murder was brewing.”

Superior Court Justice Ian Carter delivered his legal instructions to the jury on Wednesday afternoon. The jurors, nine women and three men, were then set to commence deliberations before returning with a verdict.

ahelmer@postmedia.com

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