Adèle Sorella is a free woman, for good. The Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) will not appeal the acquittal of the Laval resident, who was accused of having killed her little daughters Sabrina and Amanda in 2009.
After two trials in which she was found guilty of murder by a jury, Ms.me Sorella was finally acquitted last December by Judge Myriam Lachance of the Superior Court.
The magistrate found that the Crown had not met its burden of demonstrating that the mother was indeed the author of the two murders, because there were gaps in the evidence.
No error of law
After this acquittal, the DPCP indicated that it had carried out a rigorous analysis of the reasons for the judgment.
“Although this verdict is not what was expected, in light of the applicable rules of law, the DPCP concludes that it cannot appeal this case,” he indicated by email. He emphasizes that to appeal a verdict, he must raise an error of law and that “mere disagreement is not sufficient grounds”.
Adèle Sorella is therefore finished with justice, after having spent 15 years in court.
Amanda, 9 years old, and Sabrina, 8 years old, were found dead on the floor of the playroom of the family home in Laval on March 31, 2009. They had foam in their mouths, but their bodies showed no marks. of violence. The forensic toxicology expert did not detect “any substance that contributed to the death” in their blood. The medical examiner was unable to determine the medical cause of the girls’ deaths, but concluded that they died of asphyxiation, after a process of eliminating all other possible causes.
Murder linked to organized crime?
The Crown argued that the mother had had the “exclusive opportunity” to commit the murders that morning. She wanted to commit extended suicide, it was argued, that is to say, she wanted to take her own life by taking her children to death. The judge did not accept this theory: everyone said she adored her children and that they “were everything to her,” the judge said while reading her judgment in a courtroom at the courthouse in Laval in December. In her three previous suicide attempts, nothing had been aimed at children, she added.
The defense had always claimed that another possibility existed: that the two children were killed by a member of organized crime in retaliation. Because their father, Giuseppe De Vito, was an Italian mafia boss. At the time of his daughters’ deaths, he had been on the run for three years, wanted by the police. A few years after his arrest, he was finally found dead in his prison cell, from cyanide poisoning.
This thesis of a suspicious third party is therefore neither “far-fetched nor fanciful”, ruled Judge Lachance.