The Canadian Press
TORONTO—The female victims of a triple homicide in eastern Ontario died despite their efforts to protect themselves and a legal system that largely took pains to address their alleged killer’s long history of domestic violence.
Shelter workers in eastern Ontario were familiar with Basil Borutski’s name years before it surfaced in the headlines following an alleged killing spree earlier this week that culminated in three charges of first-degree murder.
Court documents reveal that two of his alleged victims, 36-year-old Anastasia Kuzyk and Nathalie Warmerdam, 48, used to date Borutski and both had pressed assault charges against him.
Media reports have identified the third victim, 66-year-old Carol Culleton, as Borutski’s most recent partner.
The three women died in and around the tiny village of Wilno, Ont., about 180 km west of Ottawa.
But Borutski’s long criminal history had given him a reputation well beyond the town’s boundaries.
Leigh Sweeney, executive director of the Bernadette McCann House shelter in Pembroke, Ont., about 70 km northeast of Wilno, said Borutski’s name was known to staff.
“Renfrew County is maybe the largest county in Ontario but it’s small,” she noted.
“People know people. We’re very connected.”
Sweeney said the tragedy highlights the complex, insidious nature of domestic violence—a crime that too often goes unreported.
In this case, however, Sweeney said Borutski did not fly under the radar.
Court documents reveal allegations that the one-time millwright assaulted Kuzyk, Warmerdam, and his ex-wife, Mary Ann Borutski.
Borutski “successfully defended” an assault charge filed by Mary Ann Borutski in 1985, but his own daughters described him as “violent, easily agitated, and tyrannical,” according to an Ontario Superior Court judgment that granted a divorce to Basil and Mary Ann Borutski in 2011 and ordered him to pay his ex-wife almost $93,000.
In 2012, he was convicted of making threats and breaking a door while he lived with Warmerdam.
A charge that he assaulted her, however, was stayed by the Crown.
Two years later, Borutski had moved on to a new girlfriend—and a new assault charge—after Kuzyk accused Borutski of choking her.
He also was accused of burning some of Kuzyk’s possessions and of stealing a car from a member of her family, as well as violating a probation order that required him to keep the peace.
He was convicted and served time in prison last year.
Domestic violence experts say Borutski’s repeat history of violence, coupled with the increasingly serious nature of his attacks, would have raised every conceivable red flag.
“If you were to go through our risk assessment list, you can check off every one 10 times over for this person,” Sweeney said.
Less typical, she noted, was the fact that the system designed to protect both men and women from chronic abusers appears to have worked as intended.
The victims spoke up, ended their relationships, and followed through on pressing charges.
For the most part, the legal system took their claims seriously, ultimately imposing jail time on Borutski in 2014.
But Amanda Dale, executive director of Toronto’s Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic that supports women survivors of violence, said the traditional legal system is not equipped to deal with domestic violence cases properly.
Courts tend to treat each case as an isolated incident without considering past patterns of behaviour, but Dale said it’s those very patterns that can most reliably flag repeat offenders.
