Mike Duffy is in the news again.

Here’s the latest from the talented Jordan Press:

Sen. Mike Duffy billed the Senate for $65,000 to pay a friend who allegedly provided “no tangible work” for the embattled Prince Edward Island senator, the RCMP allege in a new court document.

The document, filed Tuesday in Ottawa, lays out new allegations of misspending against Duffy, and seeks banking information of Gerald Donohue, who investigators say is a long-time friend of Duffy.

The new allegations stem from an investigation of Duffy’s travel and housing expenses, which the court documents say has now been expanded to include his office spending. In that funding envelope was about $65,000 over a four-year period to Donohue “for little or no apparent work.”

Police have interviewed Donohue and he “acknowledged that he produced no tangible work product for Duffy,” Cpl. Greg Horton, the lead investigator, writes in the document.

“A public official is expected to spend taxpayer’s money in a a transparent and responsible manner. Based on the facts … I believe that Senator Duffy, in his role as Canadian senator, breached the standard of responsibility and conduct demanded and expected of him as a person in a position of public trust,” Horton writes. “He used his office for a dishonest purpose, other than the public good. In doing so, he committed Breach of Trust and Fraud.”

The document also makes reference to a Feb. 20 email between Duffy and Nigel Wright, then Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff, in which Duffy allegedly talks about altering his Senate electronic calendar to redact, change or add information, including “pics of my cottage under construction.”

The document goes on to say that Wright provided the RCMP with a printout of Duffy’s electronic calendar as part of hundreds of pages provided to them over the summer.

Key evidence in a home-invasion case has been tossed out after a judge said Ottawa police unlawfully arrested, and unreasonably searched and detained a suspect for 16 hours without grounds in what he described as a “gratuitous insensitivity” to the young man’s charter rights.

“There is no way to sugar-coat or gloss over these infringements. Our system is designed to ensure that citizens are not arbitrarily arrested. … It is designed to respect the presumption of innocence. Here, the police held a man for 16 hours without grounds or legitimate purposes,” Ontario Superior Court Justice Rick Leroy ruled in a Feb. 9 decision.

Soulieman Mohammed, now 23, was pulled over in the early hours of July 1, 2011 when an Ottawa police officer noticed he was driving with no headlights on. The Honda wasn’t licensed and its plate, registered to another car, had expired back in 2008.

Unlike his two passengers who declined to identify themselves, Mohammed was co-operative. Police found bags of marijuana stuffed in the passengers’ underwear, but Mohammed was clean and denied knowing his passengers had weed that had been packaged in 32 small bags for street sale.

Still, police arrested Mohammed on drug-trafficking charges, towed his car and sent him to the police cellblock, where he was held at length because there was no detective available. Leroy said Mohammed never should have been jailed, saying that possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking is not a crime that merits detention.

Once in the cellblock, the police went through evidence seized from the car and linked it to a June 28, 2011 home invasion. The evidence included computers, cellphones and a wallet.

The judge ruled that because Mohammed’s arrest was unlawful, the ensuing search and detention were also unreasonable, and threw out key evidence in the Crown’s case.

The judge said the officer had no grounds to arrest Mohammed on drug-trafficking charges in the first place. He said it was the bad arrest that tainted everything that came afterward, including statements the suspect made to police, which were also excluded from Crown evidence this week.

“I do not accept that an ordinary prudent and cautious person in the officer’s position would conclude that (Mohammed) was probably guilty of possession for the purpose of trafficking. There are too many innocent explanations.

“The prospect for conviction based on the known evidence was non-existent. The constable drew unsupportable inferences to get to reasonable and probable grounds to arrest (Mohammed). He concluded knowledge, consent and control without any logically connecting evidence,” Leroy wrote in a Feb. 9 decision.

The judge said the community has an interest in a legal system that operates within the law, and said that the admission of evidence in this case would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

“What is most troubling about this case is both the ignorance of and disregard for basic charter rights demonstrated by some of the officers involved. These rights are simple, guaranteed and essential knowledge for all police officers,” said Michael Purcell, the defence lawyer who filed the successful application to exclude the tainted evidence from trial.

Mohammed is charged with two counts of forcible confinement, unlawfully being in a dwelling, one count of conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, possession of a weapon and two counts of uttering threats. He returns to court in April but it’ll be difficult for the Crown to prosecute him now that the key evidence has been excluded from trial.

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An Ottawa man on trial for sexually assaulting his seven-year-old daughter was found not criminally responsible on Tuesday after a judge ruled he was in a state of automatism while sleepwalking.

Diagnosed with “sexsomnia”, or sleep sex, the man was accused of crawling into bed with his daughter in December 2010, after his wife kicked him out of bed after a night of drinking. He then allegedly removed his daughter’s underwear and held her down as he touched her. He allegedly pushed the Grade 3 student off the bed when she tried to fight him off.

Dr. Colin Shapiro, a sleep expert, testified at trial that the man was likely asleep when the assault took place, suffering from parasomnia, a type of sleep disorder that can include sleep eating, sleep walking and sleep sex that he said can be triggered by alcohol consumption.

The Crown had argued that the man — whose name cannot be published — assaulted his daughter because he was drunk, not because he was asleep. The judge, however, found that the accused was not drunk at the time of the 2010 alleged attack.

It was the man’s second trial on the charge. The first ended in a mistrial.

The accused took the stand in his own defence and testified about the night he shared a bed with a friend and grabbed his buttocks thinking he was asleep with his wife.

He had pleaded not guilty to sexual assault and sexual interference.

The accused expressed relief at the verdict.

“It was quite a cloud lifted off his shoulders, so he’s very relieved,” said defence lawyer Ken Hall. “I’m pleased with the outcome and he can now move on with his life.”

He now goes before the Ontario Review Board, a panel of psychiatrists, judges, lawyers and public representatives that reviews such cases. The board will decide his conditions, if any.

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Ottawa soccer coach Matthew Braithwaite, 25, pleaded guilty Tuesday for a sex crime against a young girl on his team. Braithwaite is on bail awaiting sentencing on May 1. He pleaded guilty to sexual interference of a person under 16.

His crime was exposed after someone read his online messages to his young player, which were later reported to Ottawa police. The guilty plea marks another victory for the Ottawa police Sex Assault and Child Abuse unit.

Braithwaite, who coached soccer in Ottawa’s east end, committed the crime in July 2014.

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Ottawa lawyer John Hale was quick on his feet in Court Room No. 2 on Friday and, as always, had his eye on the ball.

Upset that he wasn’t credited more for time spent in custody, his client, an Ottawa thief who lost his left eye to cancer while at the Innes Road jail removed his ocular prosthetic and threw it at the lawyer, who caught it after a single bounce off the counsel desk.

“That’s the thing about this business, there’s always something new that happens,” said Hale, who joked that it was a “new form of retainer.” Told it was a good catch, he said modestly, “I could see it coming.”

His client, a thief who steals to feed a drug habit, was sentenced Friday to 18 months. He served about 102 days in pre-trial custody and was credited for 153. He thought he deserved more but he was confused about the process.

Jesse Whitlock, 32, is going back to jail. The lawyer gave the fake eyeball to a police guard for fear his client, who has mental-health issues, would flush it down a toilet in protest.

How Whitlock lost his left eye was reported in the Citizen last year. At the time, Whitlock accused doctors at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre of ignoring his vision problems until it was too late to save his eye from an aggressive form of cancer.

A retinal surgeon agreed Whitlock‘s left eye may have been saved if the choroidal melanoma had been identified sooner, but wouldn’t blame other doctors for missing it because the cancer is so rare in patients as young as Whitlock that they wouldn’t have been looking for it.

Whitlock said he complained in February 2013 about seeing flashes in the eye to a doctor at the Innes Road detention centre.

Whitlock, who was in jail at the time for stealing a car and leading police on a chase, says the jail doctor told him it could be caused by dust.

“I was total 3 1/2 months blind with a full-blown, Stage 5 cancer in my eye in jail before I got it removed,” said Whitlock. “They wouldn’t have had to take my eye if they had taken the matter more seriously. They could have just zapped it out. It would have saved my eye,” he told the Citizen at the time.

Meanwhile, Whitlock has outstanding break-and-enter charges in Gatineau.

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Two inmates at the Innes Road jail are facing new charges in connection with the savage beating last week of Ottawa terrorism suspect Carlos Larmond, who was allegedly attacked right before lunch on March 3.

Michael Clarke, 29, is charged with assault causing bodily harm and assault with a weapon, according to court records that reveal he is alleged to have used a tea canister as a weapon in an attack that left Larmond, 24, with a broken left arm, a fractured left orbital bone and substantial head injuries.

A source close to the investigation says the terrorism suspect didn’t throw a single punch during the two-on-one attack, and that he put his arms out in a defensive position as inmates punched him. Another source says the attack was not unprovoked. Either way, Larmond is not charged in the case and the attack was captured on video, which is a key piece of evidence in the Ottawa police case.

Terrence Wilson, 24, is also charged with assault causing bodily harm.

Larmond was transported to the Civic Hospital under guard and later escorted back to jail.

The attack remains under investigation by Ottawa Police Service detectives.

The RCMP terrorism probe against Larmond — and his twin brother Ashton — centres around wiretapped cellphone conversations, as well as intercepted text messages.

Carlos Larmond was arrested on a Friday night in January at the Trudeau airport as he waited at the gate to board a flight to Frankfurt. The RCMP seized his luggage but did not find any incriminating evidence. He had a return ticket.

The night the Mounties picked Carlos up at the airport on the terrorism charges, they drove him to an interview room and showed him a chair. There was no mixing up the twins at the gate. Ashton, the dominant twin, had had his passport revoked months earlier.

They cuffed Carlos after he checked his luggage and made it through security, waiting to catch a flight with a booked destination of India.

Then they asked him to come clean about his alleged terrorism plans overseas. He explained it away, saying he was going on holiday after converting to Islam. Then the investigators played him the recorded conversations and questioned him until around 4 a.m.

They then drove him to the Elgin Street courthouse on a Saturday morning, and he was formally charged with trying to leave the country to wage terrorism.

The news of the terrorism sweep has rattled Ottawa’s Muslim community. Its leaders have condemned and banned those who are allegedly radicalized.

They say the twins were not members of any congregation. Ashton, according to a leader at the mosque on St. Laurent Boulevard South, attended during Ramadan in 2013.

None of the allegations has been proven in court, and the alleged terrorism twins are awaiting a yet-to-be-scheduled bail hearing.

In her own words, Nancy Lane’s life was out of control. The only thing that kept her sanity intact was her work as a nurse, which she said helped make the time fly. She scrambled from one payday loan to another, sometimes securing two high-interest loans on the same day against her next cheque so she could keep wiring money to the Dominican Republic, the place she called “heaven,” and where she wanted to spend her days with a boyfriend who was good at selling dreams.

She sent thousands of dollars when she was so broke her electricity had been cut off.

Lane, a Brockville nurse and former Prescott town councillor, is accused of killing her husband, Art Lane, in 2009 by administering a lethal cocktail to cash in on his $200,000 life insurance policy. Her trial for first-degree murder has heard she was financially desperate and longing to live with a boyfriend described by the Crown as “a gigolo and con man half her age.”

On Tuesday, the Crown led the jury at the Ottawa courthouse through a binder thick with telephone logs and copies of financial transactions and email messages.

In an email to an acquaintance months before her 61-year-old husband died at home on Oct. 8, 2009, Lane, 55, detailed the story of her Dominican boyfriend. She acknowledged his faults but expressed hope that one day he’d turn his life around.

“People like Alejandro and his family who have few or no possessions so their greatest asset is their ability to dream and unfortunately tell tales,” Lane wrote in the 2009 message, which was shown to the jury. “I truly believe that Alejandro’s tales are never intended to be malicious, he just never thinks of the consequences or what will happen tomorrow. He has no money, no job, no home, no car, what he has is his great ability to sell dreams.”

In the email, she spoke of the man’s failed business schemes and the times she bailed him out financially.

“I don’t blame him for what he does because if I had been raised with nothing I don’t know that I would be that different. It is difficult enough to survive in DR with no money let alone think of a future. That being said, people get hurt, conned and angry with him, rightfully so and then he hides. I am not apologizing for him and actually I spend a lot of time and money getting him out of holes he has dug himself into.

“You and others would think that crazy but I take him for what he is and don’t expect or need or want a regular, responsible guy. I’m not at that place in my life, and Alejandro could never be a regular, responsible guy. He doesn’t even know how to handle money, probably because he never had any.”

She said she hoped he would become an honourable man like his father, “before someone he has conned puts a knife in him.”

In an opening statement at the trial scheduled for 19 weeks, Crown attorney Robert Morrison said Art Lane was killed right after his wife returned from the Dominican Republic, “fresh from the arms of her lover.”

The jury has also heard that the accused’s own son worked as an undercover police agent against her to help Ontario Provincial Police solve his father’s death.

The Crown’s theory is that Art Lane, a well-known union negotiator in Brockville, was better dead than alive to his wife.

The Crown has conceded to the jury that the medical evidence in the trial is not definitive.

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Using multiple computers around the clock, Ottawa police have been trying to crack an Algonquin College student’s laptop password for more than a year, and have now been granted a 12-month extension to see if they can finally break the code.

The computer technician student is a suspect in a child-pornography investigation and was arrested in the college parking lot on Feb. 4, 2014 — the same day authorities seized his laptop, thumb drive and iPhone from his backpack.

The police didn’t find any child pornography on his phone or thumb drive, but they still don’t know about the laptop because the police department has been unable to crack the student’s 26-digit alphanumeric password. In a police interview on the day he was arrested, the student refused to reveal his password and the police have been trying to crack it ever since.

Not for lack of trying. In fact, in his March 24 ruling to let the police keep working on the laptop for another year, Superior Court Justice Julianne Parfett said, “The evidence before me indicates that multiple computers have been working 24/7 to unravel the password, but it has yet to happen.”

“There has been no foot-dragging in this investigation, nor any evidence of procrastination or bad faith. It is not a matter of a lack of training or resources. It is a matter of decrypting a hard drive, which is a long and complex procedure,” the judge said.

The original tip that sparked the investigation came on May 9, 2013, when Microsoft reported that 89 images had been uploaded from an online hosting site linked to someone’s IP address at a home in Greely. The police later obtained a search warrant and, months later on Feb. 4, executed it at the family residence, home to seven people.

Right before the search, as police did surveillance outside, they spotted one occupant — the student — leaving for school. They followed him and later arrested him at the college parking lot and seized his laptop.

It should be noted that none of the electronic devices seized from the home contained any child pornography. All seized devices except the laptop have been returned to the family. The police didn’t have a warrant to seize the student’s laptop but a judge ruled that the search was justified because there was a “realistic risk that any evidence contained on the hard drive would have been destroyed before the police had the time to obtain a warrant.”

Because of the urgent circumstances, the judge ruled there was no charter breach. Breach or not, the judge said she would not have returned the laptop either way.

The judge called it a matter of “striking the appropriate balance between (the suspect’s) rights at the investigatory stage of the proceedings and the public’s right to have serious offences properly investigated.”

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It was the last role she wanted, but she played the part well.

A 17-year-old girl forced into prostitution for a night in May 2012 presented herself to her first john as an older and willing money-for-sex escort who discussed limits and told him “It’s your time, it’s your money.”

Money, she told him, was the best part of being a hooker.

What the john — Joseph Donnelly, 41 — didn’t know was that the Ottawa teenager had been forced into prostitution just hours earlier after meeting teenage pimps who terrorized her and took nude pictures against her will so they could send them to potential johns in Ottawa looking for a night of paid sex. He also didn’t know that she pretended to be a prostitute at the behest of her tormentors out of fear.

Donnelly is on trial for sex assault because the police and the prosecution have accused him of having unprotected sex against the young woman’s will and sex using an object without her consent.

His alleged victim, now 20, took the stand for the second day Wednesday and under a detailed cross-examination that reduced her to tears, defence lawyer Paul Lewandowski established for the jury that she left out key details when she gave statements to police in the following days — notably the allegation that Donnelly used a sex object to rape her.

The lawyer told court the girl’s story had been consistent all along, except when it came to her encounter with Donnelly.

At one point during cross-examination, Lewandowski branded her a liar.

The girl admitted that she initially left out details, in part, she said, because she was disgusted with herself.

The jury heard that when she spoke to respected Ottawa police Det. Kelly Lyle days after the alleged rape, the girl said back in 2012 that when the john asked to use a sex aid she refused. “I didn’t even know this guy … I said no way, so I didn’t,” she told police.

But a year later at the trial of her intimidating teen pimps, the alleged victim mentioned for the first time that the john used a sex object — a fact that Lewandowski seized on.

Pressed why, the teen testified:”I was just embarrassed. It wasn’t something I was comfortable telling people. I find it strange.”

“It was hard to talk about, and it’s still hard to talk about,” she testified.

The defence lawyer also noted for the jury that the girl’s rape kit, performed by a nurse at the Civic Hospital, shows that when asked if penetrated by an object she answered “No.” The rape kit also says her alleged rapist used a condom, but in testimony Wednesday, she said he took it off during sex without her consent.

The defence lawyer told court that her complaint to police — prompted by a 911 call by her mother — was presented in a way that described the money-for-sex encounter as consensual. The girl told the jury that she didn’t really know what to tell police and that she was confused and had been traumatized by her ordeal.

The teen agreed with the defence that she pretended to be a prostitute at the behest of her threatening teen pimps, and in turn giving Donnelly the clear impression that she was an older, experienced escort who, the court heard, told the john she’d meet up with him again. The court also heard that she willingly performed oral sex, sex with a condom at first, and later agreed to give him a back massage.

The defence also told the jury that the alleged victim had opportunity to simply walk away from it all, but when Donnelly asked her where she wanted to go, she directed him back to her terrorizing teen pimps.

When “things are happening,” the girl said, “you don’t think of ideas to get to safety. … Maybe he’s dangerous, I don’t know.”

The rape trial resumes Thursday at the Ottawa courthouse.

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The only john charged in Ottawa’s notorious teen pimp case has been found guilty of raping a then-17-year-old girl who was forced into prostitution for a night in May 2012.

Joseph Donnelly, 41, stood statue-still as the jury — eight women, four men — returned the verdict Friday. His sister and brother planted their faces in their hands when the jury foreman announced the verdict.

Donnelly didn’t know that the Ottawa teen, now 20, had been forced into prostitution only hours earlier after meeting teen pimps who terrorized her and took nude pictures against her will so they could send them to potential johns in Ottawa looking for paid sex. Court also heard he also didn’t know that she worked as a hooker out of fear of her tormenters.

By all accounts, she played the part well, presenting herself as an older, experienced escort who discussed limits and told him: “It’s your time, it’s your money.” She told Donnelly that she was 19 and said the best part of being a hooker was the money.

Donnelly, 41, was tried for sex assault because the police and the prosecution have accused him of having unprotected sex against the young woman’s will and sex using an object without her consent.

Donnelly took the stand in his own defence and said there were no indications that she was lying about her age and insisted that he used a condom during sex and it was all consensual.

But the victim, on the stand for two days, told a different story, saying that Donnelly took the condom off during sex against her will and later used a sex object without her consent. She testified about a painful and degrading night of sex after her teen pimps plied her with drugs and caked her in makeup.

The victim left out key details when she gave statements to police in the days following the assault, notably the allegation that Donnelly used a sex object to rape her. Defence lawyer Paul Lewandowski told the jury at trial that the victim’s story had been consistent all along, except when it came to her encounter with Donnelly.

The girl said she initially left out details, in part, she said, because she was disgusted with herself.

“I was just embarrassed. It wasn’t something I was comfortable telling people. It was hard to talk about, and it’s still hard to talk about,” she testified at trial. She also told court she didn’t really know what to tell police and said she was confused after her ordeal.

In a cross-examination that left the victim in tears, Lewandowski branded her a liar.

But in the end, and after three days and nights of deliberation, the jury believed that she wasn’t the one lying.

“Obviously, we’re disappointed with the verdict and will be exploring all legal options,” Lewandowski said.

Julian Daller, an assistant Crown attorney, declined to comment.

Donnelly, who is out on bail, will now be subjected to a pre-sentence report and sexual behaviour tests before sentencing.

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Ottawa financial adviser Conrad Eagan made a name for himself for being trusted by his elderly clients, but an Ottawa police investigation now casts him as a villain who defrauded several of them — including his own grandmother — in a $1.6-million bogus investment scheme.

Detectives allege that Eagan, 56, won the absolute trust of his clients only to exploit some by drafting their wills, appointing himself as executor and stealing their money.

Eagan was arrested earlier this week on more than a dozen criminal charges, including conspiracy to commit fraud, money laundering, proceeds of crime and uttering forged documents.

In many cases, according to police, Eagan persuaded his clients that their estates were better served if, instead of an outright inheritance, the money was kept in trust and the beneficiaries given an annual return of 10 per cent of the “invested” assets. This, police say, allowed Eagan to access the money in the estate accounts without anyone questioning what he was doing or where the money was going so long as the annuities were paid.

In one case, police allege that Eagan, after draining the cash accounts of an 88-year-old client, convinced him to take out a $200,000 line of credit on his mortgage-free home. The elderly man was told the money would be invested, but police say all of it went directly to Eagan, and his longtime friend Alistair Melville, who lives in Hamilton.

At one point, Eagan was given power of attorney over his grandmother’s affairs. She is now among those alleged to be his victims.

The police also allege that Eagan was fired from his last employer Worldsource Financial in August 2012 after it discovered that he was not only writing wills and accepting money from clients, but had forged signatures of dead clients so he could transfer their accounts with him from his previous employer.

The Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada revoked his licence earlier this year but police say that didn’t stop him from working with clients who believed their money was being properly invested. Instead, police say, Eagan spent most of the money.

Eagan, according to police, used some of stolen money to buy U.S. properties. He also played the stock market and, by 2012, police say his portfolio was mainly (97 per cent) in a mining exploration company in South America. The market value of Eagan’s stocks at the time was approximately $2.6 million.

But it wasn’t long before someone at the TD Bank noticed some unusual transactions — notably that money from estate accounts was going to his personal accounts, according to authorities. The bank froze his assets in September 2012. Meanwhile, Eagan’s stock value peaked at $4.1 million. The bank called him twice to request that he liquidate the stock but he refused. It later dipped and, as of August 2014, was down to $780,000.

After his arrest, Eagan posted $20,000 bail on strict conditions that require him to remove himself as executor of any will, not possess any identification card, bank card or credit card unless he can prove that it has been lawfully issued in his name, not contact any complainants or witnesses, to surrender his passport, to remain within 200 kilometres of the Ottawa courthouse, not to transfer any of his properties in Canada or the United States, not carry more than $500 at any time, and to stay off the Internet.

The police have also issued a warrant for the arrest of Melville, his longtime friend and co-accused.

None of the allegations has been proved in court.

The grey-haired, blue-eyed financial adviser is now unemployed. His bail conditions require him to live with a relative and report to Ottawa police every Wednesday.

Eagan has hired one of Ottawa’s leading criminal defence lawyers to represent him.

“These are obviously serious allegations against a man who has no prior involvement with the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, I cannot comment on specifics given that this matter is presently before the courts,” said lawyer Oliver Abergel of Abergel Goldstein.

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Had former Ottawa realtor Chris Hoare really wanted to kill his wife on the morning of April 2, 2014, he would have used the hatchet from the garage or the butcher’s knife from the kitchen — anything more deadly than a Little League baseball bat, his lawyer said in closing arguments on Friday.

“A child’s bat can hardly be seen as an ideal weapon to beat somebody’s brains in,” defence lawyer Eric Granger told court. “There were other weapons more lethal.”

He noted that the bat was “surprisingly lightweight” and told court that there was nothing to stop Hoare, 45, from taking more swings at his wife’s bloody and bruised head. “He chose to stop. He chose to not go further,” said Granger, who also noted that there was no evidence that the bat was damaged in the surprise attack.

“If Hoare intended to kill (Kirsten) Côté, wouldn’t he have kept swinging?”

Granger told court that the Crown failed to establish even a motive for the alleged murder attempt, arguing instead that Hoare had every reason not to kill her. She was his longtime wife and best friend, and because she stayed home to care for their five young children he could make a successful living as a real estate agent. There was no benefit for him to kill his wife, his lawyer said, arguing instead that he had everything to lose.

Yes, he made some stupid decisions that morning, his lawyer said, but had no intention to kill his 43-year-old wife.

Hoare, who testified in his own defence in the trial by judge alone, denied that the attack was planned and said he struck his wife to stop her from going shopping. He said he was afraid she would finally find out about their desperate finances. Their credit card had only $200 left on it, and Canada Revenue Agency was garnisheeing 100 per cent of his earnings.

Hoare stopped paying taxes years ago to meet his family’s big bills — from electricity to vacations. By the time of his arrest last year, he owed more than $200,000 in taxes. He kept it secret from his wife for fear she would divorce him.

“The lie grew for years,” his lawyer said.

On the morning of the attack, he had taken the narcotic oxycodone and planned to finally come clean about their financial desperation. But instead of telling his wife the truth, he lashed out in rage when she got ready to go shopping.

Under a pretence, he lured Côté to the garage and told her to close her eyes before striking her with the bat. Nothing he did that morning made sense, he told court, and now he is left with nothing.

His lawyer said the beating, executed in the “heat of the moment,” bought his client more time to avoid the truth, and under no circumstances did he intend to kill her.

Ontario Court Justice Robert Wadden asked if it was the lawyer’s position that the beating was an act of a loving husband.

“It was an act of self-preservation,” Granger replied.

Hoare pleaded guilty to assault with a weapon for the attack, but has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder, aggravated assault and choking.

His lawyer told court that there are no “long-lasting” physical injuries to support an aggravated assault conviction, and that Hoare wasn’t trying to choke his wife, rather just muffle her cries for help for fear the neighbours would hear. He used a dish rag and later a shoe to cover her mouth, the court has heard.

His estranged wife now uses a walker to get around and suffers from headaches and dizziness.

During cross-examination this week, prosecutor Michael Boyce suggested to Hoare that he had chosen the bat as a weapon knowing it would inflict the most damage on Côté. And when that didn’t work, he tried to choke her to death with a rag.

The prosecutor also noted that if was his true intention was to stop his wife from shopping, he could have simply taken her credit card or car keys.

When Hoare was arrested, he told police he beat his wife because she was threatening to harm their children. He later admitted that that was a lie.

The judge is scheduled to give a decision on May 25.

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Through horrendous acts of sexual abuse, an Ottawa man has stolen his granddaughter’s innocence, a judge said Wednesday as she sentenced the 72-year-old to five years in prison.

Ontario Court Justice Ann Alder said the man — whose identity is shielded by law — exploited his young granddaughter from the time she was nine until she was 13. The judge said there was also evidence that he may have been grooming his trusting young victim.

“You took advantage of that trust. You simply abused her love,” the judge said.

The judge noted that the five-year sentence was on the lower end of the scale for sex crimes against children, but the man’s quick guilty plea spared him a harsher penalty. The grandfather was arrested on April 16 on charges of sexual assault and sexual interference. The guilty plea also spared the victim and her family a gruelling trial, the court heard Wednesday.

That guilty plea and the prison time, the judge said, “in part, ends the terrorizing of your granddaughter.”

The girl’s life took a rapid turn after the abuse. She became suicidal and suffered anxiety attacks that had her family turn to doctors for help. It all became terrifyingly clear when the girl finally disclosed the abuse to a school counsellor.

“You stole her innocence . . . and she will never get that back,” Alder said.

Sadly, the court heard that the young victim blames herself for the abuse she suffered, but the judge made it clear who was really to blame.

“The only person responsible is you,” she told the grandfather.

The grandfather stood and apologized in court before police escorted him to a jail cell, where he will wait to be transferred to a federal prison.

In the end, nobody believed Rachelle Denis.

She was the killer in the prisoner’s box who often looked distant. The only time her eyes lit up was when the jury heard testimony about her child-like purse and clothes from the kids’ rack. It was fresh evidence, in real-time, that spoke to her mental disorders.

The jury, having heard days of testimony from renowned forensic psychiatrists and from a remorseful Denis, spared her a murder conviction and instead found her guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter in February. They didn’t think she had the mental ability to form the intent to kill.

Denis, 43, was sentenced Thursday to serve only eight more months for ramming her Jeep into Tony El-Kassis, and smashing him into a brick wall as he walked toward the Richmond shopping plaza on July 2, 2010. Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Smith described the killing as brutal and sentenced her to eight years in prison, but after time credited for serving five years of pre-trial time at the notorious Innes Road jail, Denis now has only eight months left to serve behind bars.

Tony El-Kassis was struck from behind as he walked in the parking lot of the Richmond Plaza on the morning of July 2, 2010. The 60-year-old chip truck man died from his injuries days later.

The judge’s decision on sentencing also left Denis where she began, dismissing her claim that El-Kassis had raped her as a delusion.

In 2009, Denis had complained to Ottawa police that the Richmond chip-truck man had raped her. When police went to talk to him about the allegation, El-Kassis told the officer right away that he knew Denis, that they’d had an affair, and that the sex was the best he’d ever had. Even Denis’ complaint described consensual sex. The police sent an officer to check on her well-being after she made the complaint.

Though police didn’t believe her, they raised her complaint when she was interviewed hours after the 2010 killing, with a detective pointing out that of all the people on the planet to run down, her victim happened to be the same man she claimed raped her months earlier.

El-Kassis was not charged with any crime.

Though branded as delusional by psychiatrists at her murder trial, Denis’ belief that she was raped by El-Kassis is so firm that she complains about physical pain to this day.

When nobody would listen, Denis advertised the alleged crime by scrawling RAPIST in bleeding-red spray paint on the side of Tony’s Chip Wagon, as one of her five young children sat waiting in the family car.

And when she tried to confront El-Kassis at his family home or at the chip wagon, he called the police. He tried to get a restraining order against her but was unsuccessful. He just couldn’t shake his mistress. He actually had two mistresses — Denis and her sister.

Again and again, the jury heard about how El-Kassis took advantage of the mentally ill woman for sex only to cut her adrift. But Denis, who suffers from several mental disorders, obsessed about the breakup. She stalked him at home and at the chip truck. She called repeatedly, day and night. El-Kassis’s family changed their phone numbers.

The manslaughter verdict is seen in Ottawa legal circles as a victory for Abergel Goldstein, the firm that defended Denis at the second-degree murder trial.

“Ms. Denis, for the first time in almost five years, knows for certain now when she will have paid her debt to society and can be, hopefully, re-united with her children and husband,” said defence lawyer Natasha Calvinho.

Denis might have lived out her years in obscurity, in a routine life, no matter how disturbed, if not for the morning of July 2, 2010. She was a mother of five, who once ran a daycare at her home in Hunt Club.

In and out of hospitals and their psychiatric units, Denis had more doctors than friends. Renowned forensic psychiatrist Hy Bloom, who literally wrote the book on the specialty, said Denis had more mental disorders than most of the thousands of patients he’d assessed in his storied career.

The jury heard that Denis had carried a stillborn for a month, about her postpartum depression, her PTSD symptoms, her delusions, her anxiety.

A psychiatrist testified that she went into autopilot the morning she saw El-Kassis in the parking lot and ran him down. He died days later in hospital. The one constant in her inconsistent narrative was that she blacked out after seeing El-Kassis.

The intimate details of her life were on display for weeks. El-Kassis was the godfather of her youngest child and her stepfather’s best friend and hunting buddy. When her stepfather died in 2009, El-Kassis showered her with gifts and the attention she craved.

Her mental health was a key theme that came up almost every day at trial. She has a documented history of mental illness dating back to her childhood. In her police interviews, and during her time on the stand, she never once brought up mental illness as an excuse. In fact, she mostly gave incriminating statements, right down to the fact that she had wanted to harm El-Kassis.

While the case is known as the Chip Truck Trial, there is no chip truck. The trial heard it called chip stand, chip truck, chip wagon, and fry stand. There are no wheels. It’s more of a diner than a wagon, even though it’s called Tony’s Chip Wagon. And there are flowers outside.

Denis knew it well. She called it day and night.

Once she’s released from jail, one of her parole conditions is to stay 1,000 metres away from the chip truck, and not to drive for the next 12 years.

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

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Maygan Sensenberger is in trouble with the law again.

The 26-year-old actress and wife of retired senator Rod Zimmer has been accused of attacking two people at an Ottawa medical clinic with a lit cigarette and a hand-held fan and then later, when she was arrested at gunpoint at her Rockcliffe Park home, of assaulting and threatening three city police officers while holding kitchen knives.

Sensenberger was represented by a lawyer and did not appear in court Thursday on the criminal charges that date back to an alleged August 2014 disturbance at a medical clinic. In the alleged assaults, police say she used a lit cigarette as a weapon against a woman, and then a hand-held fan on another woman during the same incident.

Though Sensenberger was charged in 2014, she skipped out on her first court appearance and never showed up at Elgin Street police headquarters for fingerprinting.

The court ordered a warrant for her arrest, and she would not get handcuffed and hauled to jail until Feb. 22. That was the day that paramedics were called to her Rockcliffe Park home for a medical emergency for her 72-year-old husband.

It’s alleged she was acting erratically and drunk, and paramedics called police for help. The police say that when they arrived, Sensenberger was holding kitchen knives in a threatening manner. They also charged her with uttering threats of bodily harm.

And they charged her with one last criminal count: mischief. In this count, the Ottawa police allege that Sensenberger wilfully damaged the window of a police cruiser during her arrest. The police also ran her name only to find out that she was wanted on a bench warrant for skipping out on a court date, and a police appointment for fingerprinting last fall.

She is now out on bail after her mother posted a $5,000 bond.

Sensenberger was also charged with a breach of conditions related to her suspended sentence a few years ago for causing a disturbance on an airplane. It was the condition to not drink alcohol.

Sensenberger was in the news last week when break-and-enter thieves made off with a collection of 27 guns, including old rifles and handguns, from her Rockcliffe Park home. Nobody was home at the time and police made arrests and quickly recovered the stolen guns the next day.

The big break-in may have been an inside job. One of the accused had worked for the former Liberal senator until a few weeks ago. Michael Larocque, 34, did odd jobs for the ex-senator, including sometimes chauffeuring him around town. He’s charged with break and enter and possession of stolen goods.

None of the allegations against Sensenberger or the accused thief has been proven in court.

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Nancy Lane, the former nurse and Prescott town councillor on trial for first-degree murder in the 2009 death of her husband, pleaded guilty Monday to a lesser charge of manslaughter after a new pathologist’s report revealed Art Lane most likely died from heart failure rather than a lethal cocktail of drugs.

The surprise guilty plea was announced to the jury on Monday and moments later the jurors were thanked for their patience and discharged from duty.

Defence lawyer Norm Boxall stressed to the jury that Lane’s manslaughter plea was specifically because she failed to assist her husband as he lay dying in their Brockville home on Oct. 8, 2009.

“A spouse has a legal duty to get assistance, and for whatever reason, she didn’t,” her lawyer said.

Instead of calling for an ambulance, the nurse walked by her dying husband and went downstairs to do the laundry. She then went to friend’s house and returned later to find paramedics and police at her home. She was angry that her stepson had called police, and she demanded that paramedics leave her dead husband alone, saying he had a Do Not Resuscitate order that she couldn’t find.

Lane, 55, denies that she poisoned her longtime husband.

The new pathology report casts uncertainty about whether drugs played any role in the death of the 61-year-old union leader, and says he most likely died of heart complications following years of serious health problems.

The medical opinion sank the Crown’s theory that Lane had poisoned her husband so she could collect a $200,000 life insurance policy and spend her days in the Dominican Republic with a gigolo half her age.

Crown attorney Dallas Mack told the jury that Lane had failed to provide the necessities of life to her ailing husband, and for that, she has admitted manslaughter in an agreed statement of facts that was accepted by Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger.

The jury heard about years of medical troubles that had dogged Art Lane, but those who knew him closest testified that his health seemed to be improving. He was gaining weight, his colour had returned. He was in better spirits too, and looking forward to future job prospects as a labour consultant.

The murder trial, which began on March 9, heard dramatic testimony from the victim’s son, Alex Lane, who testified that he wore a police wire against his mother to help police build a case against her. He told the jury that he hates what his mother did, but loves her still because he thinks she is mentally ill.

The day his father died, his mother wouldn’t let him inside.

“She didn’t want to let me in the house,” he testified at trial. “She said, ‘Your father’s dying.’ I didn’t believe her. She said it so often that you just brush it aside. It’s like the little boy who cried wolf.”

Alex Lane didn’t give a complete statement to police back on Oct. 8, 2009, telling court at the time he didn’t want to believe what he felt in his heart — “that my mom played some involvement in his death, but I didn’t want to believe it.”

He later gave the Ontario Provincial Police a full statement, and finally confronted his mother in November 2009 at his brother’s birthday party. Her explanation, in his own words, was nasty. And it brought dead silence to Courtroom No. 34.

“She told me the reason he killed himself was because of me,” he recalled. She said he killed himself because he was embarrassed that his son had told a son from a previous marriage that the hydro had been cut off and there was no food in the fridge.”

He told court that he and the rest of the family submitted a claim against the life insurance payout because they didn’t want Nancy Lane to get any money until the circumstances of the death had been cleared up by police.

When she found out, he said, she tried to pay him and her three other sons off to drop the claim. She first offered them $5,000 each, and when they kept refusing, she kept raising the stakes all the way up to $20,000 a piece.

On wearing a police wire, the son testified: “So the operation was, I was going to play the dirtball son to try to carve out some of the life insurance money for myself only … (and) negotiate to split (with his mom).”

Justice Maranger thanked the “patient and solid” jury in what he described as a long and complicated case.

Lane will remain out on bail awaiting a sentencing hearing.

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

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Ottawa realtor Chris Hoare lived an elaborate lie for years, presenting himself as a family man so devout that he didn’t show houses on weekends, but still somehow made enough money to cover all the bills as the sole breadwinner for a family of seven.

But behind his public image as the best-listing agent in town, Hoare — who was found guilty Monday of attempting to kill his wife — was a hard-drug addict who was so broke the utilities were about to be disconnected.

And he was torn about coming clean with his loving wife, Kirsten Côté, 43. He had been keeping the family’s desperate finances a secret. The housing slump of 2008 hit him so hard he stopped paying income taxes and used the money instead to pay all the bills. By 2014, he owed more than $200,000 in taxes and the government had garnisheed 100 per cent of his income.

On the morning of April 2, 2014, right after driving the kids to school, Hoare, 45, decided he was going to finally tell the truth. His wife was heading out to buy groceries, not knowing the bank account was overdrawn and the credit cards maxed out.

But Hoare figured the truth was too hard, so he tried to kill her with a baseball bat and then lied about it to cover his tracks.

In delivering his verdict, Ontario Court Justice Robert Wadden found Hoare guilty of attempted murder in what he called a brutal and unrelenting, surprise attack on a vulnerable woman. Hoare had lured Côté to the garage by telling her he had a surprise for her, told her to hold a serving tray with both hands, turn and face the wall and close her eyes. He then struck her on the head from behind with a baseball bat.

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• Dramatic courtroom showdown can be revealed after Hoare guilty verdict

She didn’t know what had hit her after the first, two-handed swing. She thought something had fallen on them and her first reaction was to ask her husband: “Are you OK?”

But the attack continued and, battered and bleeding, Côté begged for mercy and screamed for help. Hoare got on top of her and pinned her down under his crushing weight (365 lbs.) Then, he tried to suffocate her, first with a dish rag and later a shoe, declaring that he had “disgraced myself … I’ve lost everything. We have nothing.”

Côté managed to get out of the garage and the attack ended when a neighbour driving past stopped his car to see what was going on.

Hoare told the neighbour it had been an accident. Later, he lied to police, saying Côté had attacked him in a fit of rage and had threatened to harm their children. Hoare testified in his own defence at the trial.

Judge Wadden said Monday that Hoare’s testimony was unbelievable.

“I have no doubt that Mr. Hoare would be willing to lie in court … His testimony is illogical and unbelievable … I cannot believe any evidence about his intentions,” Wadden said.

In all of this, Hoare’s wife thought she was living in a perfect marriage. Deeply in love after 14 years and still hadn’t fought, about anything, the court heard.

The vicious baseball attack has left her with lifelong injuries. She now uses a walker to get around and suffers from splitting headaches every day.

Hoare was also found guilty of aggravated assault and choking. He remains at the Innes Road jail awaiting sentencing next month.

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

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Mark Haslett took the stand at his murder trial on Wednesday to detail a life so lonely that he stayed in his bedroom and urinated in bottles so he wouldn’t have to step out into the common lounge of his Carling Avenue rooming house and face what he believed was a roommate’s “psychological warfare.”

Haslett, 27, who has a history of mental illness, covered his window with a tarp and played video games in the darkened room for up to 30 hours at a time. He felt that Rolland (Rolly) Laflamme, 54, was taunting him with racial and homophobic slurs. In a rambling journal that police found in his bedroom, Haslett documented what he described as torture.

That Haslett knifed Laflamme to death on Feb. 11, 2013, is not in dispute, and his lawyers, Samir Adam and Sean May, are trying to establish that their client was too mentally ill to form the intent required for second-degree murder. They have asked the jury to find that Haslett is not criminally responsible because of his mental disorders.

Haslett testified that he was jealous of his few friends because they had big families, and he had been on his own for a long time. His father died when Haslett was 10 and his mother died a decade later.

His older sister, Jebbeh Haslett, 28, testified on Wednesday that their family life was chaotic after their father’s sudden death and her younger brother had difficult and lonely teen years. She told the jury about his consistent delusions that he was being stalked and that he constantly worried about her safety.

At first, she thought he could be telling the truth because another brother had been hospitalized after a hate-crime attack that younger brother Mark witnessed.

She later realized: “There’s something not right. I knew something was wrong … he’s not living the same reality I am.”

“It was evident that her brother was in crisis, she testified. “I knew his mental health was crumbling. He was in distress.”

Haslett grew up in Blackburn Hamlet in east Ottawa and was living in Montreal in the years before the killing. When he told family members he wanted to come back, they said he could, if he agreed to seek treatment for mental illness. Haslett’s sister and aunt testified on Wednesday that they persuaded him to go to a hospital, only to learn that he was turned away. The jury heard that hospital staff directed him to a homeless shelter downtown.

Testifying in his own defence, Haslett told the jury that he heard messages from televisions. “They have to stop messages from TV broadcasts,” he wrote in his journal.

Haslett, in leg irons and under police guard, told the jury that he was offended by his roommate’s anti-gay taunts. The jury has heard that Laflamme’s TV was always on. In his chilling 911 call, played for the court, the TV can be heard so clearly that the dispatcher asks who is talking.

Haslett made a secret audio recording of his final confrontation with his roommate about Laflamme’s constant whistling. On the recording, played for the jury, Laflamme tells Haslett to lose his attitude.

The tape also recorded the moments after the killing — including when he walked into a liquor store and drank a bottle of red wine in the aisle, and when he returned to the rooming house and was arrested. Haslett is heard telling the officers how to work his recorder so they can listen to it, and encourages them to get his USB device from his bedroom.

He gave police the keys to his bedroom, where they found the bloody murder weapon.

His defence team has told the jury that his mental condition warrants medical treatment, not a cell.

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

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