“I tied her up well. This is one of the disturbing text messages sent by the mother-in-law of the “Granby girl” on the morning of the tragedy.
The Crown presented the jury on Thursday morning with a series of text messages sent from his cell phone to a contact identified as “Casablanca”, whose name cannot be revealed, by order of the Court. They were extracted from his phone by a specialized investigator from the Sûreté du Québec (SQ).
The 38-year-old woman is charged with the forcible confinement and second degree murder of the 7-year-old girl for acts committed on April 29, 2019. That morning, the child was found by first responders naked and unconscious on the floor of her bedroom, in the family home in Granby.
The jury trial has been taking place since October 19 at the Trois-Rivières courthouse.
The Crown theory is that the accused wrapped duct tape around the girl and that she subsequently died. His death was declared in hospital the next day, April 30.
“She screams, she cries”
On the morning of April 29, the accused, who cannot be identified, sent a series of text messages to her “Casablanca” contact.
At 8:12 a.m., her first text read: ” [la fillette] is still coming out. It is in the process of detaching itself ”.
Shortly after, she wrote: “Since you haven’t called me back, I tied her up well.”
The messages follow one another at a good pace. Several are sent before she gets a response.
Then, at 8:58 am: “She’s very attached. She’s doing her big number. She doesn’t care [des deux autres enfants] “.
The woman gets impatient: “She screams, she cries, she does all her time, she tries to get up but she cannot”, she writes at 9:01 am.
She worries again about the impact of the situation on the other two children.
She ends up receiving a few words from “Casablanca”, sends more messages, then the exchange ends at 9:27 a.m. data extraction methods did not recover it.
Tuesday and Wednesday, the jury listened to statements made to the police by the son of the accused and the brother of the little victim. In these video statements, they report seeing the girl completely covered in duct tape. The first responders who testified told the Court that they saw a pile of sticky paper on the ground, near the girl.
Publication bans prevent journalists from reporting whole or parts of testimony. The identities of some of the people involved in this drama cannot be disclosed either.
The trial continues with expert witnesses.