Guy Turcotte sobs as ex-wife Isabelle Gaston gives impact statement

Isabelle Gaston urged a tearful Guy Turcotte to "look me in the eyes" as she described the harrowing ordeal she's undergone since he killed their two children in 2009.

"You broke my heart, but you didn't kill my resilience," Gaston, Turcotte's ex-wife, told him at his sentencing hearing Friday at the courthouse in St-Jerome, Que.

"Still broken, my heart continues to beat for Olivier and Anne-Sophie."

Turcotte sobbed throughout her victim impact statement, which lasted about 12 minutes.

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Gaston is the prosecution's only witness as Quebec Superior Court Justice André Vincent determines sentencing in the case. Vincent will announce his ruling on Jan. 15.

The former cardiologist was found guilty of second-degree murder earlier this month in the 2009 stabbing deaths of their children, Olivier, 5, and Anne-Sophie, 3.

The defence didn't call any witnesses but filed updated psychiatric and psychological assessments.

Turcotte was invited to speak by the judge and seized the opportunity to address the judge and Gaston.

"People cannot understand the shame I have,'' Turcotte said in a weak-sounding voice.

"I cannot look people in the face, I'm so ashamed.''

Turcotte said he went to trial as a way of explaining his actions.

"I want to tell you Isabelle: I didn't go to trial to make you feel responsible," he said, adding he wanted to explain what he'd done and gone through "after hitting the bottom of the barrel."

'I can never forgive myself'

"It was not to hurt you,'' he said.

"I know I can never forgive myself what happened.''

The trial's 11-person jury reached the unanimous verdict Dec. 6 after seven days of deliberations, but the jury did not offer its own recommendation in terms of sentencing.

A conviction on second-degree murder carries an automatic sentence of life imprisonment, with the possibility of parole set between 10 and 25 years.

On Friday, the Crown asked for a minimum of 20 years before Turcotte can apply for parole.

The trial was the former cardiologist's second on charges of first-degree murder in the deaths of his children.

Not criminally responsible in 1st trial

In the first trial in 2011, Turcotte was found not criminally responsible for their deaths.

Turcotte admitted to causing the deaths of his children, but the defence argued the former cardiologist was not criminally responsible due to mental illness. ​

Crown prosecutors successfully appealed the original verdict in November 2013, and the country's highest court announced early the following year it wouldn't hear Turcotte's appeal of that decision.

In the second trial, which began in September, Turcotte testified he drank windshield washer fluid on the night of the killings in an attempt to end his own life and, upon seeing death approaching, he stabbed his two children to spare them from waking up to a dead father.

The Crown, however, argued the killings were premeditated as revenge against Gaston, who had left him a short time earlier for another man.

With its verdict of second-degree murder, the jury found Turcotte did not plan the killings but was responsible for his actions on the evening they occurred.