Jury begins deliberations in trial of B.C. man accused of killing his kids

The fate of Andrew Berry, accused of killing his two daughters in 2017, is now in the hands of a B.C. Supreme Court jury, which began deliberating Tuesday afternoon.

Berry entered not guilty pleas to two counts of second-degree murder, leading to a five-month trial in Vancouver, which has also been live-streamed to a public gallery in a Victoria courtroom.

He's accused of stabbing his daughters — four-year-old Aubrey Berry and six-year-old Chloe Berry — to death in his Oak Bay apartment on Christmas Day.

During his testimony, Berry told the court that he and the girls were attacked in his apartment by someone with dark skin and dark hair. He testified that he owed thousands of dollars to a loan shark named Paul.

The Crown alleges Berry used a baseball bat and a knife to kill Chloe, then stabbed Aubrey to death before trying to kill himself. He was found lying in the bathtub, naked, suffering from stab wounds.

In his closing arguments on Friday, Crown attorney Patrick Weir said Berry's testimony was "like the plot from a bad low-budget movie," alleging that there was no loan shark named Paul, no intruder who murdered the two girls and that Berry's wounds were self-inflicted.

Weir argued that Berry killed the girls because of animosity with his estranged wife, Sarah Cotton.

In his closing submissions, Berry's lawyer, Kevin McCullough, reminded the court that it's the Crown's responsibility to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that his client killed the girls.

"It's not good enough to call him a liar and then do nothing to prove it," he said in court last week.

Justice Miriam Gropper gave the jury its instructions on Tuesday, before calling the group back into the courtroom in the afternoon to make several corrections and amendments. The jury will deliberate until suppertime on Tuesday, before returning Wednesday morning.

With files from Bethany Lindsay and Canadian Press