Luigi Sorella delivers emotional testimony about discovering his nieces' bodies in their Laval home

Luigi Sorella was at first relieved when he arrived at his sister Adele's home in Laval on March 31, 2009.

He had rushed over after receiving a worrying voicemail from his sister at around 1 p.m. that day.

That phone message was entered as evidence during the testimony of Luigi Sorella, who took the witness box in a Laval courtroom on the sixth day of Adele Sorella's murder trial Tuesday. 

The 52-year-old woman has pleaded not guilty to two charges of first-degree murder in the deaths of her daughters, Amanda, 9, and Sabrina, 8, on that day in 2009.

In the voicemail Luigi Sorella received, Adele Sorella can be heard saying she told her mother not to come to her home that night. Sorella also tells her brother to ask her husband's brother, Nick, to meet him at her house in Laval, off Pie-IX Boulevard.

"You and Nick need to come to the house, all right?" she is heard saying in the recording.

Other suicide attempts

Luigi Sorella told the court he called several people in the family to try and find out where his sister was and to try and find a key to her house, fearing from the message that she would try to commit suicide again.

The jury has heard from the Crown that Adele Sorella's husband, Giuseppe De Vito, was wanted on a worldwide warrant for drug-related charges.

De Vito had gone into hiding in 2006, Luigi Sorella said, and since then, his sister had attempted to take her own life more than once. 

But when Luigi Sorella pulled up to the luxurious home on de l'Adjudant Street, he noticed Adele Sorella's car wasn't in the driveway. His brother, Enzo, who he'd called on the way, was outside petting the family dog in a fenced area while he waited for him.

Luigi Sorella unlocked the door and walked inside. The lights were off.

"Nothing looked out of normal," he said, answering questions from Crown prosecutor Nektarios Tzortzinas. "I got the sense that everything was OK, that I was blowing things out of proportion."

Then, Sorella said, he noticed the low hum of a television playing in the girls' playroom to the right of the entrance.

"And then I noticed my two nieces lying on the floor," Sorella said, his voice cracking.

In his opening statement to the six men and six women of the jury last week, Tzortzinas said Adele Sorella was arrested later that same day, after having been involved in a car accident.

Adele Sorella, seated behind her legal team, could be seen wiping her nose during her brother's testimony, and several others in the gallery wiped away tears.

Superior Court Justice Sophie Bourque, who is presiding over the trial, suspended Luigi Sorella's testimony until the afternoon, to give the witness a chance to regain his composure.

'She lives, but not a normal life'

Sorella later described how he attempted to revive the girls with the help of the dispatcher who answered his 911 call, before police and paramedics arrived. 

Under cross-examination, defence lawyer Pierre Poupart's questions to Luigi Sorella focused on his sister's poor emotional state after her husband's disappearance.

Luigi Sorella described how his sister had met her husband in elementary school.

"They were high school sweethearts," he said, agreeing with the defence that Adele Sorella had been profoundly in love with De Vito.

He agreed his sister's life had unravelled after her husband was targeted in the police crackdown on organized crime, known as Operation Colisée.

"I think she never recovered," Luigi Sorella said. "She lives, but not a normal life."

Luigi Sorella said his family was tight-knit and spent a lot of time together. After De Vito went into hiding in 2006, he said, Adele Sorella became paranoid that her family was in danger. 

He also described periods during which Adele Sorella was unable to fully function as a mother and "as a person."

"After [the first] suicide attempt, she became a zombie," he said. "You could talk to her, and she would just stare into the abyss."

Poupart asked if, despite Sorella's struggles, she had been a "loving mother, a caring mother" and if her children were happy. 

The brother agreed with that characterization of his sister and said that when he was on his way to her home that day, he'd never doubted anything bad had happened to his nieces. 

Enzo Sorella, Adele Sorella's other brother, is expected to take the witness box after Luigi's cross-examination is complete.