OPP questioned about potential of warning victim on day of triple homicide

The coroner's inquest examining the murders of three rural eastern Ontario women by a man who had a known history of intimate partner violence is raising the question of whether provincial police could have warned one of the victims during the man's murderous rampage.

For much of the inquest so far, the testimony has centred on the years leading up to the murders.

But on Wednesday, the focus turned to the police's response to what they later learned were murder scenes and what might have gone differently with the benefit of hindsight.

"We had to act on the information we had at the time," Supt. Derek Needham, the officer in charge of the Ontario Provincial Police's on-the-ground response, testified Wednesday on Day 8 of the ongoing inquest.  

On Sept. 22, 2015, Basil Borutski murdered Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam at their homes in and around the community of Wilno. He knew all three women. 

He was convicted of three counts of murder in a jury trial and is in prison. Before the murders, he was convicted and jailed for acts of intimate partner violence against two of the victims and then released on probation conditions that he defied without reprimand.

The inquest, which is a fact-finding mission and not meant to assign legal blame, has also heard there were more than 100 opportunities for people to intervene in the five years before the murders. 

Inquest jurors, who are hearing from experts and first-hand witnesses, are being tasked with recommending changes to policies and protocols to better protect and support survivors of intimate partner violence in rural communities in the future.

Timeline of murders and 911 calls

Borutski drove to Culleton's cottage near Combermere around 7:30 a.m., broke in and strangled her, his 2017 murder trial heard. 

He stole Culleton's car and went to Kuzyk's home in Wilno, where he shot Kuzyk. He then drove over 30 kilometres to Warmerdam's home on Foymount Road near Cormac in Bonnechere Valley Township and shot her too. 

The first 911 call about the killing spree was made by Kuzyk's sister at 8:52 a.m.

She reported Borutski was at Anastasia Kuzyk's home with a shotgun and had fired one shot, the inquest has heard from a retired OPP inspector who gave a summary of police evidence.

Kuzyk's sister also reported Borutski had been criminally charged in connection with Kuzyk, according to the summary. 

The first officer arrived at Kuzyk's home at 9 a.m.

Needham testified he was the closest on-call critical incident commander to the area, despite being based at the Lanark County OPP detachment in Perth, Ont., located more than 100 kilometres from Wilno.

When told about the first 911 call, Needham drove toward Wilno while also arranging for officers, including members of the OPP's SWAT team, to respond and set up a perimeter around Kuzyk's house.

"Public safety, officer safety, obviously is number one if you have a perpetrator with a long gun," Needham said, adding that officers were acting on information that Borutski was still in Kuzyk's house. (He had already fled by then, officers would later learn.) 

Twenty-eight minutes after the Kuzyk 911 call, Nathalie Warmerdam's son called 911 to report Borutski had been at the Warmerdam home too and fired a single shot. 

"We immediately split our resources to respond to that call," Needham said.

Warning voicemail on mother's phone

Valerie Warmerdam, Nathalie Warmerdam's daughter, has questioned during the inquest whether her mother could have been warned about Borutski that day.

She said her mother's voicemail contained a message from somebody saying "it might not be safe today."

"[It] came probably 10 minutes after she would have died," she testified.

"If members of the community were able to get that through the grapevine in that time, I'd love to see a system that could more reliably have gotten information to her through proper channels a little bit faster."

Det. Const. Stacey Solman of the OPP's Kilaloe detachment — one of the officers who went to the Kuzyk scene in Wilno — testified that "everybody in our detachment was aware of [Borutski] and his history."

Borutski was classified in an OPP database under the categories of "family violence, mental health, alcohol and hates police," she added. 

Solman said she had previously cautioned Warmerdam about Borutski's proximity to guns.

Later, after Warmerdam and Borutski had separated and Borutski was convicted for threatening Warmerdam's son, Solman was "upset" to learn Borutski was being allowed to move closer to his victims. 

"I had concern for public safety as well as the safety of the victims," Solman said. 

A 'revenge' list

Needham said that when officers learned of Warmerdam's son's call on the morning of the murders, Solman immediately stated over a police radio that the women at both known locations were past victims of intimate partner violence by Borutski. 

"I don't believe she was the only one thinking it at the time," Needham said.

Needham said that while he was briefed on the Kuzyk 911 call, he did not have access to the call recording and knew "nothing about the previous intimate partner violence."

Solman's flagging of Borutski after the second 911 call did prompt officers to move toward identifying other potential targets, Needham said. 

One of Borutski's other former partners was taken to safety at a detachment, family members were called, and officers went to Valerie Warmerdam's school on the day of the murders, the inquest heard Wednesday.  

The inquest heard Tuesday from a former director of Ontario's Victim/Witness Assistance Program that Borutski had a list of "people he was seeking revenge on." 

'Gap in information sharing'

Kirsten Mercer, the lawyer representing End Violence Against Women Renfrew County, suggested during her cross-examination of Needham that more could have been done.

"People were warned. Schools were put in lockdown. Messages went out to the public. If [Solman] hadn't been there that day and nobody had said it out loud, someone's got to go warn X, Y, Z person," Mercer said. 

She later clarified she was looking for gaps in information sharing and whether Warmerdam could have been warned by police after the Kuzyk 911 call. 

"I don't know whether a call could have come in time," Mercer continued.

"But what I know is that if there is a gap that we can address, if there's a system that we can put in place to make sure that everybody has better information faster, and that means we save someone the next time, then that's exactly the kind of thing that this inquest should be focused on."

Needham said in his testimony that "not until the second call [was] there any linkage made to the fact that A) he [was] gone and B) there [was] now a second victim and possibly more."

"I agree that there is a gap in information sharing," he added. "What I don't believe is that that had an impact on things that day."

Solman brought up privacy concerns when asked by Mercer about a potential warning system for other victims. 

"If that call had come in at Anastasia's and other victims were notified, are we breaching Anastasia's privacy? What if it wasn't him? There's lots of scenarios that would have to be looked at."

"But if there was a way to do it?" Mercer pressed. 

"We'd all be in favour of that, I'm sure," Solman replied. 

'Nothing normal about that day' 

Police entered Kuzyk's home at 9:30 a.m. and found her dead.

Once officers arrived at Warmerdam's home, their entry into the house was delayed by several factors, including uncertainty about whether Borutski was still there and concern for the safety of officers and Warmerdam's son, who had followed his mother's safety plan and run in an opposite direction into the bush some 500 metres away.

"They were still worried about the barrel of a long gun pointing out a window," Needham said of officers.

There was also "a significant delay" in pinging the location of Borutski's phone because his cell phone carrier would only do so approximately every 20 minutes, Needham added. 

The first ping came back showing Borutski in Pembroke, Ont., where the inquest is taking place.

"That made a lot of sense because some of the potential further targets that day, including the court office, Crown attorneys as well as several other potential targets, were in the City of Pembroke," Needham said. 

Borutski was eventually arrested in a rural west Ottawa field. 

Carol Culleton, who was the first of the women murdered that day, was found by police last, around noon. 

"There was nothing normal about that day," Needham said.