Mark Haslett may have known right from wrong before and after he killed his roommate, his jury trial heard on Tuesday.

In cross-examination of a forensic psychiatrist who interviewed Haslett, 27, prosecutor Julien Lalande led the jury through comments made by the accused in the hours surrounding the Feb. 11, 2013, knife attack on Rolland Laflamme. Haslett has said he stabbed Laflamme because he wouldn’t stop whistling.

Some of the statements were drawn from Haslett’s own testimony last week, and others were contained in an audio recording made by Haslett, key portions of which have been played for the jury of 10 women and two men.

The prosecutor suggested that Haslett may have known he had done something terribly wrong because he hit the liquor store right after the deadly stabbing, saying he knew it was going to be his last drink in a while. He didn’t waste time standing in line at the checkout, either, and instead started drinking a bottle of screw-top red wine in an aisle. He also declared that he deserved to die and go to hell.

In custody shortly after the killing — he had returned to the scene of the crime — Haslett said he feared that his family would disown him. These seemingly incriminating statements support that the accused knew right from wrong, the prosecutor suggested.

Dr. Scott Woodside said Haslett just barely met the threshold to warrant the not-criminally-responsible defence mounted by Ottawa lawyers Sean May and Samir Adam. They are trying to establish that their client was too mentally ill to form the intent required for a second-degree murder conviction.

That Haslett  killed Laflamme is not in dispute. After all, as Adam told the jury: What rationale human being would kill someone over whistling?

Haslett, who suffers from paranoia, firmly believed he was being persecuted and tortured, not only by Laflamme’s whistling but by his homophobic and racial slurs.

The murder trial resumes on Wednesday with the defence in the final stretch of making its case for the jury.

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Mark Haslett has had more than his fair share of hardship. At 10, he was the boy in Blackburn Hamlet who had the awful duty of calling 911 when his dad died at home from a stroke. Ten years later, his mother died too.

His life was in chaos and when he and his siblings had to go their separate ways, Haslett found himself alone — sometimes on the street in the ByWard Market — and struggling in the grip of mental illness. He heard voices. He believed strangers were stalking him. He felt tortured by secret messages from TV broadcasts.

On Feb. 11, 2013, his “main agent of sound torture” was fellow boarding house resident Rolland Laflamme, 54, who continued to whistle after Haslett politely asked him to stop.

Haslett killed his roommate on that day to “end it all.” Not only did the 27-year-old make an audio recording of the deadly stabbing, but he also casually returned to the scene of the crime and encouraged Ottawa police to listen to his secret recordings — which were later used against him by assistant Crown attorneys prosecuting him for second-degree murder.

But after three weeks of evidence, including opinions from two forensic psychiatrists who suggested Haslett was not criminally responsible because of mental disorders, a jury Friday spared the accused from a murder conviction and instead found him guilty of the lesser offence of manslaughter.

“We’re delighted that the jury made the finding of manslaughter and found him not guilty of murder. That clearly reflects a lot of consideration was given to his significant mental health issues,” said defence lawyer Sean May.

From the start, May and fellow lawyer Samir Adam told the jury of 10 women and two men that there was something wrong with their client.

What rational man, they asked the jury, would kill someone for whistling — let alone audiotape it?

The lawyers portrayed their client as a disturbed man who has wrestled with demons and lived a tragic life, struggling with delusions, depression and addiction. Haslett, they said, was sinking in the “quicksand of psychosis” when he knifed Laflamme.

Jurors heard the victim’s 911 call, in which he begged for an ambulance, repeatedly saying he was “f-cking bleeding to death.”

They heard that Haslett believed his roommate, and other unknown agents, were persecuting him. During the trial, his defence lawyers noted that Laflamme’s death was tragic and senseless, and said his family is scarred forever.

Samir Adam summed it up this way: “His death is hard to understand because it doesn’t make sense.”

Haslett, his lawyers said, was so mentally ill that he couldn’t possibly form the intent to kill, a key element required to prove second-degree murder. They urged jurors to find Haslett not criminally responsible — a verdict that would have sent the him to a mental hospital for years.

Instead, after hearing all the evidence, including Haslett’s own testimony, the jurors ruled on Friday afternoon that the killer was responsible for manslaughter, though not murder, which would have brought a life sentence.

No date has been set for sentencing. Haslett is expected to be credited for the time he’s been held in jail since the killing.

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Ottawa’s Calvin Nicol, a body-modification artist who has black-tattooed eyeballs and silicone horns, faced his accused attackers in court on Monday, testifying that he was jumped and severely beaten on Rideau Street on Nov. 1, 2014, in a random attack seconds after someone called him a freak and threatened to kill him.

Nicol, 31, was walking to the bus stop after his shift as a body-piercing apprentice when he was attacked by at least three men at the behest of a Rideau Street “enforcer” who instructed others to kill him, court heard on Monday. Timothy Smith and James Picody are on trial for aggravated assault in a vicious random attack that Nicol likened to a hate crime.

Nicol testified that when he walked down Rideau Street someone confronted him, yelling, “Who the f — k are you?” Nicol, not wanting to fight in a lopsided match, said he was a “nobody,” just a body piercer making his way home for the night around 7:15 p.m.

He testified that at that moment in his life, everything was good. He had finally landed an apprenticeship as a piercer and loved it so much he showed up to the Rideau Street studio seven days a week and the tips were plentiful.

“It was perfectly in line with my lifestyle,” Nicol told court under examination-in-chief by prosecutor Hart Shouldice.

At the start of Nicol’s testimony, the Crown attorney asked the complainant to give the court a “tour of his face.” Nicol detailed his body modifications, which include black-tattooed eyeballs, silicone horns and Vulcan script inked on his face. Nicol, who is a Trekkie, or fan of the Star Trek franchise, said his art of body modification is a symbolism of self- and artistic expression.

“It makes me happy looking the way I look. It’s a whole lifestyle,” testified Nicol, whose mother sat behind the prosecutor’s mother in the gallery.

The court, presided by Ontario Court Justice Matthew Webber, heard that Nicol was attacked by a gang of young men he didn’t know. He was hit about the head and kicked all over when he collapsed. He managed to get up and run but was tackled and beaten again on the head, shoulders and ribs. He managed to escape into a McDonald’s and ended up walking back to his tattoo and piercing studio to clean his wounds. His dentures were knocked out and lost, and he realized he couldn’t move his left arm. He then caught a homeward bound OC Transpo, recalling, “I was bleeding all over the bus.”

To this day, Nicol — left-handed — has not been able to return to work as a body piercer because he can’t raise his left arm.

His injuries suffered on the night of Nov. 1, 2014 are “long-lasting,” court heard.

His accused attackers, both seated in the prisoner’s box, are at the Innes Road jail during the trial because both were denied bail.

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It would have been hard to miss the sight of Calvin Nicol, covered in blood and running for his life through McDonald’s on Rideau Street.

The body-modification artist who says he was severely beaten because of his appearance — silicone horns, tattooed eyeballs and a forked tongue — testified that he managed to escape his attackers by running into McDonald’s shortly after 7 p.m. on Nov. 1, 2010.

But when it came time to play the security video from the night in question at trial on Tuesday, Ottawa Police Const. Blake Pope testified that he never did see Nicol, 31, on the video taken inside McDonald’s. It is only an 11-minute video and Nicol is not seen on it.

The constable, testifying at the aggravated assault trial of James Picody and Timothy Smith, both 32, said he may have missed Nicol going through the McDonald’s and testified that he was more focused on the suspects, not the complainant.

Earlier on Tuesday, Nicol testified that he had mixed up his accused attackers with their alleged roles in the beating that left him unable to work as a body piercer.

Nicol testified at the judge-alone trial that it wasn’t until he walked by the two accused in court on a break, and got a better look at them, that he realized he had “messed up.”

When he was first asked to identify his accused attackers in the prisoner’s box, Nicol only glanced at them quickly because he’s afraid of them, he told court later.

“They scare me and I don’t want to bring back the memories,” he said.

His mistake was that he switched up the two and their alleged roles.

The complainant has testified that he was attacked by at least three men as he made his way to the bus stop on Rideau Street after a shift as a body-piercing apprentice. He likened the attack to a hate crime and has testified that someone called him a freak and threatened to kill him.

Nicol was repeatedly kicked and hit until he managed to escape into the McDonald’s at 99 Rideau.

Nicol has Vulcan script from Star Trek inked on his face and wore a 666 belt buckle for his testimony, which wrapped up on Tuesday.

The court then heard testimony from an Ottawa police officer who reviewed security video from inside the McDonald’s just moments after the attack outside. The police constable said he believed that the images showed the two accused — James Picody and Timothy Smith — at the McDonald’s just after the alleged attack.

Both men have pleaded not guilty to aggravated assault.

Nicol has testified that his body modification art is a symbolism of his self-expression. He said it makes him happy and is a “whole lifestyle.”

The court, presided over by Ontario Court Justice Matthew Webber, has heard that Nicol didn’t know his attackers.

Related

• Body-modification artist unable to work after Rideau Street attack, court hears

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Ottawa’s Suliman Mohamed, arrested in an RCMP terrorism probe in January, has been denied bail after an eight-day hearing.

“We’re profoundly disappointed with her worship’s decision and right now we’re reviewing all of our options,” said defence lawyer Leo Russomanno.

There is a publication ban on all of the evidence presented at the bail hearing, but the decision can be reported.

The RCMP terrorism probe yielded charges against a handful of Ottawa men, including twin brothers Ashton and Carlos Larmond, both 24.

Carlos Larmond was arrested at a Montreal airport as he awaited an overseas flight. RCMP allege he was leaving the country to wage terrorism. His brother, Ashton — and known as the dominant twin — was arrested in Ottawa the same day and charged with facilitating a terrorist activity, participating in the activity of a terrorist group, and instructing another to carry out an activity for a terrorist group. It’s alleged the twins conspired between August 2014 and the day they were arrested.

Suliman Mohamed, 22, a friend of Ashton’s, was arrested days later and charged with participating in the activity of a terrorist group and conspiring to participate in a terrorist activity. Mohamed is expected to be tried along with the Larmond twins in the fall of 2016.

The terrorism probe is anchored in wiretapped cellphone conversations between the Larmond twins, who remain separated at the old Innes Road jail.

The RCMP also intercepted texts from their cellphones. The twins dumped their phones sometime last year, convinced they were being followed by undercover police at the rink and the gym.

None of the allegations have been proved in court.

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The Ottawa daycare owner who preyed on two young girls in his care is going to prison.

Jeffrey Wills, 41, was sentenced on Thursday to five years in prison and will be banned from any public place where children gather, including community centres, pools and playgrounds for 15 years.

At his sentencing hearing earlier this week, the court heard from parents of the young victims, who said that Wills’ evil deeds had shattered their lives. Both families have since moved from the neighbourhood.

One father said his daughter is now fearful of men – including him.  The mother of the other victim said her family’s world had changed and it felt dirty.

“She deserved a care-free childhood. She had it but you took it away,” she said, referring to Wills, who was found guilty in March for the 2013 child-sex crimes.

One of the girls has trouble making eye contact with men, hides under the covers at night and now sleeps with the lights on.

“It is the court’s hope that the children and their families continue on their healing path,” Ontario Court Justice Jack Nadelle said before sentencing Wills Thursday.

In March, Nadelle found Wills guilty of sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, sexual exploitation and sexual assault involving the then three- and five-year-old girls in May 2013.

Wills maintained his innocence at trial but the judge ruled said that the evidence of the two girls was “accurate, truthful and reliable.”

Wills hugged and kissed his supportive wife goodbye moments before an Ottawa police officer handcuffed him and escorted him to jail.

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In a horrifying account of being hog-tied and gagged, then repeatedly raped in a Nepean basement by a young couple, a teen girl told police in 2014 that she was screaming in pain and begging them to stop.

“They said I’m a good sex slave. … They wouldn’t stop. They were giggling and laughing,” the girl, now 17, told Ottawa police in a videotaped interview about the alleged events of the 2014 Victoria Day weekend.

The videotape was broadcast on Monday at the sex-slave trial of Caroline Budd, 21, and Antonio “Anthony” Comunale, 32. They have both pleaded not guilty on charges of sexual assault and forcible confinement.

The teen girl told police that she had met Budd a month earlier and that her and her boyfriend, Comunale, had plied her with free booze and drugs. On the night in question, she says she didn’t understand why they wanted her to keep drinking even though she was already falling-down drunk.

The alleged victim, after watching her 2014 police interview in court, told prosecutor Mark Moors under direct examination that everything she said in her statement was true.

The girl says that the attack began with Budd spanking her hard with her hands and a metre stick, saying she had been disobedient. Then she said they blindfolded, hog-tied and raped her.

She said she just wanted to go to bed, but they wouldn’t let her unless she had a few more shots of booze. She said she cried herself to sleep.

The girl didn’t initially report it to police, or anyone else, because she said she was still processing it and didn’t know if it amounted to rape.

She is one of two alleged victims in the case, and, under a strong cross-examination by Anne-Marie McElroy on Monday, the girl acknowledged that even though she had her iPhone when she went to bed, she didn’t text anyone for help. She told her mother days later about the alleged attack.

McElroy also produced texts the alleged victims sent on the night in question. In the texts, sent right before the alleged attack, the alleged victim tells an unknown person “I’m horny too.”

The alleged victim told court she didn’t remember sending the texts, and when McElroy suggested that her texts were an invitation for a night of sex, the victim countered: “Not with them.”

The defence lawyer also asked her why she didn’t mention any physical injuries in her police statement. She said she didn’t mention them because the police never asked.

The trial continues Tuesday.

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The father of an 11-year-old boy reported missing on the night of Feb. 12, 2013 portrayed his son as “out of control” and warned a responding police constable that she might find bruises on his body because “I lose it sometimes,” an Ottawa court heard on Wednesday.

Ottawa police Const. Cindy Cybulski had responded to a report that a neighbour had found the missing boy, who was complaining of back pain and sitting slumped in snowbank on a darkened Kanata street. The boy’s father approached the officer and detailed a sad story about the hardships of raising a problem child.

The officer testified that at first she sympathized with the father, saying “as a parent, I was devastated … I was really feeling for this guy.”

She comforted him with a hand on the shoulder.

But when the father said his son was so hard to handle he had to tie him up, Cybulski went to check on the “tiny” boy, now in the back of a brightly-lit ambulance where she saw the child’s emaciated condition.

“It was like a concentration camp movie. His chest was just bones, you could see every rib,” Cybulski testified before Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger.

The boy had gouges on his wrists and ankles and he said they were “from the chains,” the officer testified.

It was at that moment that the constable broke into tears on the stand, saying “and a minute earlier I just wanted to give him back to his dad.”

She arrested the father. On the way to the station, the father said he was an RCMP officer who worked on the force’s counter-terrorism unit, according to the constable’s testimony.

The boy’s parents are accused of keeping the boy shackled and handcuffed six months. Both are charged with aggravated assault, forcible confinement, and failure to provide necessities of life.

The boy’s father, a suspended Mountie, is also charged with sexual assault causing bodily harm, and three counts of assault with a weapon (handcuffs, wooden stick, and a BBQ lighter). The boy’s stepmother, 36, is also charged with assault with a weapon (wooden spoon).

There is a court-ordered ban on any information that could reveal the boy’s identity.

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A jailhouse video capturing the vicious beating of accused terrorist Carlos Larmond can now be seen after a judge released it to the press on Thursday.

Terrence Wilson and another prisoner unleashed the beating at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre on March 3, around 11:30 a.m., just as lunch was about to be served on B Range. A security camera at the Innes Road jail captured the March 3 attack and was filed as an exhibit at Wilson’s sentencing on Thursday.

Wilson, 24, pleaded guilty to assault causing bodily harm. He was fined $13 and sentenced to 60 days in jail.

As previously reported by the Citizen, Larmond, also 24, was attacked after he allegedly threatened Wilson for refusing to convert to Islam.

Larmond can be seen trying to keep his arms up in a defensive position. At one point, he is hit with a coffee urn. Right after the attack, Wilson is seen low-fiving another inmate.

Related

• Inside the jailhouse beating of Carlos Larmond: Terror twin recruiting "soldiers of Islam"
• Ottawa terror twins' dad blames sons' case for drug relapse

Hours after her husband had been arrested for allegedly torturing his 11-year-old son in the basement, the boy’s stepmother told authorities that she felt guilty for not protecting him.

“I’m not saying I did anything wrong … I’m guilty of not protecting him,” she told a child-protection worker on the night of Feb. 12, 2013.

Her regret is documented in Ottawa police notes read in court Thursday at the trial of a former RCMP officer and his wife.

They are both accused of keeping their 11-year-old son shackled and chained in their Kanata basement for six months.

The 44-year-old father is also on trial for aggravated sexual assault. A former member of the RCMP’s counter-terrorism unit, he is accused of chaining his son in the basement and torturing him with a barbecue lighter and a stick. The stepmother, 36, is accused of beating the boy with a wooden spoon. They are both also on trial for failing to provide the boy with the necessities of life.

The condition of the emaciated boy, covered with old and fresh wounds, brought the responding police officer to tears. An emergency room doctor also cried at the sight of the tiny boy the night he was rushed to hospital.

When the boy escaped the basement on a search for water, it was the first time neighbours had seen him in months. One said said he looked like a ghost. Another said she didn’t recognize him because he had lost so much weight, the court heard.

He asked one woman if he could stay the night, holding out change from his piggy bank.

She started walking him back home but stopped when the boy complained of back pain and slumped in a snowbank. Her husband called 911 and asked for police and an ambulance.

It was the second time police got a call about the boy. The first call came in hours earlier, around 2 p.m. The boy’s father, the accused, reported his son missing. In another conversation with police, he warned that they might find bruises on his “out of control” son because “I lose it sometimes,” the court heard.

The father also said he had to tie his son up to control him, according to police testimony.

Hours after the father was arrested, a child-protection worker visited the home and seized the couple’s other two children, a four-month-old and a two-year-old.

Alain Corriveau testified on Thursday that his priority on the “cruel and unusual punishment” call was the immediate safety of the boy’s younger siblings.

He toured the house and saw the boy’s upstairs bedroom, which he told court looked more like a spare room than a typical child’s bedroom.

Corriveau interviewed the stepmother and thought it was odd that she never once asked about the boy’s condition or his whereabouts.

“That would have been a natural response for any parent in this room,” Corriveau testified.

But the stepmother’s lawyer, Anne London-Weinstein, established that the child-protection worker had never been on such a case and his impression was anchored in rare circumstances.

How could there possibly be a natural response in the face of such unnatural events, the lawyer suggested in cross-examination.

“Shackled and tortured in a basement in the suburbs? It’s close to the absolute horror end of the scale,” London-Weinstein said.

In the interview with the child-protection worker, the stepmother denied that she had been abused by her husband.

Corriveau noted that the woman seemed like a loving mother to her younger children. When he removed them from the home, she helped with the car seats before saying goodbye.

The trial continues Friday. A court order bans publication of the names of the accused.

Related

• 'I thought I was looking at a ghost,' neighbour tells child abuse trial of Mountie, wife

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A former Mountie confessed to police that he had kept his 11-year-old son shackled in the basement and rationed his food, giving him just two peanut-butter pitas a day.

On the day he escaped — Feb. 12, 2013 — the boy weighed only 23 kilograms (50 pounds) and doctors at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario said he almost starved to death.

In a videotaped statement a day after his arrest, the boy’s father said he had run out of options and had to restrain his “out of control” son.

“I wasn’t doing this to destroy him. I didn’t do this to take him away from the world,” the father told police.

The police interview was shown on Friday at the trial of the ex-RCMP officer and his wife.

The boy’s father detailed how he kept the boy handcuffed and shackled in their Kanata basement, where he slept in a sleeping bag on the floor next to a bucket he used as a toilet.

The man, who cannot be named under a court order to protect the identity of his son, said he had run out of ways to punish the boy for “lying and stealing.”

During the interview, Ottawa police Sgt. Tracy Butler asked about burn marks around the boy’s genitals.

“He could have died,” Butler told him.

The father apologized.

“I’m sorry. I love him. I hate myself for it. I’d rather die than have him like this,” he said.

Two younger siblings were seized by child-protection workers hours after the boy escaped while his family was out shopping.

His stepmother, 36, told authorities that she felt guilty for not protecting the boy.

She and her husband, 44, are both on trial for confining the boy and failing to provide him with the necessities of life.

The boy’s father is also on trial for aggravated sexual assault with a barbecue lighter.

The condition of the emaciated boy, covered with old and fresh wounds, brought the responding police officer to tears.

Related

• Stepmother felt guilty for not trying to keep boy safe, trial told
• 'He was just bones, you could see every rib': Child abuse trial of Mountie, wife

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A day after he escaped his Kanata basement, an 11-year-old boy recounted horrific abuse — including starvation and torture — in a police interview he gave from his hospital bed at Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.

In the Feb. 13, 2013, videotaped statement, the emaciated boy details how his father punished him by chaining him up in the basement and burning him with a barbecue lighter. Doctors, some of whom cried at the sight of the boy’s condition, said he had almost starved to death.

The boy, now 13, and looking much healthier, testified on Wednesday at his parents’ trial on charges of aggravated assault, forcible confinement, and failure to provide necessities of life. He spoke intelligently and watched silently as his videotaped statement was shown in court.

The boy said he had been trying to escape for a month. On Feb. 12, 2013, the boy told police his shackles had loosened and he wriggled his ankle free, then finally managed to free himself. He was down to 50 pounds and he told police that he was badly dehydrated. He said his father fed him only peanut butter, bread and water, that he used a bucket as a toilet, and he slept on the basement floor in chains.

His father also videotaped disturbing interrogations of his shackled and naked son, forcing him to confess so-called sins such as kissing a girl up in a tree.

In the videotaped interrogation, the boy begs: “I want my family back.”

In his taped police interview, the boy is asked if his stepmother had ever tried to stop his father.

“Sometimes … a few times where she would … when my dad would go out of whack. She would interfere. She would hold him by the shirt to try to calm him down, but my dad sometimes wouldn’t stop,” the boy told police in his bedside interview.

The boy also expresses loyalty to his father, saying not to blame him and, “My dad doesn’t deserve to be in jail.”

“My dad didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t want him to go to jail,” the boy told authorities, according to notes read into the court record on Tuesday.

However, the boy also testified on Wednesday that his father had molested him when he was around seven years old.

The boy’s stepmother, a 36-year-old federal government employee, is also charged with assault with a weapon (a wooden spoon), and his father, 44, who at the time was an RCMP officer working in counter terrorism, is also charged with sexual assault causing bodily harm and three counts of assault with a weapon (handcuffs, a stick, and a barbecue lighter).

His father has confessed to chaining up his son and burning him with a barbecue lighter. He’s also confessed to hitting him so hard his son was left with a broken tooth.

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It was a Florida vacation nowhere near ordinary, with their 11-year-old son tied up and left hungry in a room while his Ottawa parents hit the beach.

“(My father) wouldn’t untie me to go to the washroom. I had to go on myself,” the boy told an Ottawa Police detective in a June 13, 2013 videotaped statement.

The boy’s videotaped statement was shown at his parents’ child-torture trial on Thursday. The boy watched silently on his second day of horrifying testimony.

The boy, who spent months chained up in his Kanata basement, escaped on Feb. 12, 2013 in search of water. He was fed only peanut butter, bread and water, usually twice a day. He weighed only 50 lbs. on the day he escaped and doctors said he almost starved to death.

In the interview with Det. Johanne Marelic, the boy spoke about the Florida trip and detailed the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father in their Kanata basement.

The boy said his father, a counter-terrorism RCMP officer at the time, homeschooled him because he had “impure thoughts.” When he got some answers wrong, his dad “would go crazy” and start hitting him, the boy said.

The boy said his father forced him to do continuous push-ups as a form of punishment but the emaciated boy was sometimes too weak. His failure to summon strength brought with it more violent punishment.

“He kicked my head on the floor. I was, my nose was bleeding, I fainted, then I woke up and my nose, I was bleeding on the floor,” the boy told the detective.

Another time, he said he almost drowned when his father dunked and held his head under water in the toilet bowl. “I was drowning … and he’d say ‘I hate you!'”

Other times, the boy said his father would lift him off the ground by the throat “and choke me.”

The boy said his father started chaining him up in the basement in 2013 shortly after the Florida trip. His father videotaped disturbing interrogations of his shackled and naked son, forcing him to confess so-called sins like kissing a girl up in a tree.

In the June 2013 police interview played in court Thursday, the boy is asked if his stepmom ever visited him while he was shackled in the basement, and the boy replied: “Almost every day.”

The boy also told police that his stepmom tried to calm his father down but there was no stopping him.

He also told police that his father drugged him up against his will, giving him pills for “crazy people” that made him sleepy. The boy was forced to use a bucket as a toilet and he slept on the basement floor in chains.

Now 13, the boy was set to resume his testimony on Thursday after a break but his father didn’t want to return to the courtroom.

His lawyer, Robert Carew, told the judge his client wasn’t in the right “physical or mental state” to continue with the trial and court heard that the accused wanted to drive to Montreal to see a psychologist.

Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger said he was “stuck between a rock and a hard place” and granted the abrupt adjournment, but warned that come Friday morning, he will be expecting to hear “concrete evidence” about the “medical emergency.”

The boy’s father, 44, and stepmom, 36, are on trial for forcible confinement, assault and failing to provide the necessities of life. They are both free on bail.

His father, since suspended from the RCMP, is also charged with aggravated sexual assault.

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An 11-year-old boy who almost starved to death in 2013 has forgiven his father, now on trial for torturing the boy in the basement of their Kanata home.

“I miss the good times, not the evil times. I forgive him but I still feel pain in my heart. I still feel sad. I really hate him but I had fun times with him,” the boy, now 13, testified Wednesday.

The boy’s father, 44, and stepmother, 36, are charged with aggravated assault, forcible confinement and failing to provide the necessities of life.

That the father, a counter-terrorism RCMP investigator at the time, could switch between flying a kite with his son one day and shackling him to a post in the basement the next left the boy confused, the court heard.

The boy weighed only 50 pounds on Feb. 12, 2013, the day he escaped the basement in search of water. A neighbour started walking him back to his home, but when he slumped in a snowbank and complained of back pain, the neighbour’s husband called 911.

Doctors said the boy had almost starved to death.

On Wednesday, his sixth day on the stand, the boy testified that his stepmother sometimes tried to calm his father down, notably on the day his father pointed a loaded gun at the boy’s head.

The stepmother’s lawyer, Anne London-Weinstein, established on cross-examination that her client not only tried to stop her “out-of-whack” husband but was one of the few in the boy’s world who comforted him. The stepmother told police in an interview that she had no control over her husband’s abuse.

The father, since suspended without pay from the federal police force, has admitted to Ottawa police that he shackled his son in the basement, burned him and rationed his meals to two peanut butter pitas a day.

The trial continues Thursday.

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A 19-year-old Ottawa man has been sentenced to seven years in prison for his part in the 2014 kidnapping and torture of an autistic grocery clerk who was held in a dog cage for 2½ days.

Traveonne Mattis dropped his head in his hands when the judge pronounced the sentence Wednesday. After time credited for pre-sentence custody, he will serve an additional 5½ years for his role in the sadistic kidnapping.

The 24-year-old victim was befriended online by a woman who offered her “virginity” to him, court heard. But when the clerk met the woman at his Centretown apartment, two men stormed in and threatened him at knifepoint before looting the apartment for an iPhone, laptop computer, movies and other items that they would later sell at a Toronto flea market for $300.

The victim was taken to a Cumberland basement and held in a cage for 63 hours. His captors fed him cold cuts and yogurt through the cage and scraped his back with a steel brush, and then rubbed a cloth soaked with gasoline and bleach into his wounds.

But their plan to demand a $300,000 ransom for his return failed miserably when his father didn’t pick up the phone after four tries. They drove their prisoner blindfolded and bound to a remote forest, where he was beaten and left for dead. When he regained consciousness he followed a river until he found a house, where someone called 911.

“I had faith in me,” the clerk told the Citizen on Wednesday.

He said he’s still haunted by his ordeal.

Mattis pleaded guilty to the kidnapping and torture charges in a case branded by Crown Attorney Matthew Geigen-Miller as “sheer terror.”

Others charged in the kidnapping remain before the courts.

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One of Ottawa’s notorious teen pimps jailed last year for her role in a ring that beat, drugged and forced girls as young as 13 into prostitution is in trouble with the law again.

The girl, described by jailers as a model inmate who made a “180-degree turn”, has been arrested on two counts of crack-cocaine trafficking and one count of proceeds of crime.

The girl, now 18, was released from youth jail in 2014 after serving seven months for her part in what a judge called a vile enterprise. She was sentenced to three years but after being credited for pre-sentence time served, she served only seven months.

The girl, a one-time class valedictorian and cheerleader, told her probation officer that she wanted to go to university upon release and had a healthy RESP to pay for it. In youth jail, the girl made school a priority and started getting 80s again.

One youth jail teacher reported that the teen pimp was a “pleasure to have in the classroom.” The girl took at least 16 programs in jail, from financial literacy to anger management. Her probation officer reported that she had “significantly matured,” according to 2014 court filings.

A jail official said she showed compassion and leadership. In his glowing account, the youth jail official described the teen pimp and child pornographer as “helpful, thoughtful, engaging, extremely intelligent, and someone who makes friends fast. He also mentioned the convict’s great sense of humour and “infectious smile.”

He went on to say she was an asset to youth-jail programs, and reported that staff continually recognized her as caring and supportive. In another fawning account, a male jail official reported that she was “rounding out to be a very nice young lady.”

No matter how much her jailers thought of her during her time in jail, she couldn’t stand it and described it as “horrible” in a pre-sentence report. She told authorities she didn’t like jailers “controlling every aspect of your life” and complained that she didn’t have any friends inside.

The convicted teen pimp, now facing charges of selling crack-cocaine, told her jailers that she had nothing in common with her fellow inmates, describing them “as drug addicts from the North.”

She said she found it interesting to talk to them but that their experiences with hard drugs sounded “scary” and she couldn’t relate. The girl, who pleaded guilty to prostitution recruiting charges, luring and child pornography, was arrested on drug trafficking charges in August and is scheduled to appear in court on her fresh charges in October.

Her release in 2014 was supported by a probation officer who said she would benefit from a structured life, plus counselling for an “adequate time period.”

At the trial, court heard that one of the teenage girls thought about killing herself and another left town because she didn’t feel safe in Ottawa, where she was beaten, drugged and forced to have sex with johns. The mother of one victim said the crimes “changed our lives forever.”

She told court at the teen pimp’s sentencing that her daughter was too afraid to go to school, and felt “worthless and disgusting.”

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In the days before her husband stabbed her to death on July 25, 2013, Melissa Richmond was worn down and torn about ending her troubled marriage, but in the end she decided it was the best, most honest thing to do.

Her words, drawn from her texts and testimony from her secret lover, were heard by the jury on Friday at her husband’s first-degree murder trial. Howard Richmond, 52, has admitted to killing Melissa, 28, after a midnight rendezvous in the parking lot of the South Keys Shopping Centre, a 30-minute drive from their big home in Winchester, just south of Ottawa.

His defence team has urged the jury to find him not criminally responsible because he was in the throes of chronic post-traumatic stress disorder and couldn’t form the intent to kill, let alone know it was wrong. Richmond was diagnosed with PTSD in 2011 after witnessing too many horrors on the battlefield.

Melissa texted her lover, Jeff Thornton, saying she felt like she had just run a marathon and was “tired, worn down and done”, and, at the same time, said metaphorically that her husband was just starting the race when she was already out of breath at the finish line.

“I’m so tired and beaten down,” she texted Thornton. “I keep going back and forth.”

She didn’t know whether to leave him or not.

And, the jury heard, Howard Richmond tried to make it easy for her to leave.

In a proposed separation offer, the jury heard that Richmond agreed to cover all of Melissa’s debt, sign over his military pension and buy her a new car.

She told her mother she was scared about making ends meet on her own, and told Thornton that she was terrified to live alone for the first time in her life.

The jury heard earlier this week that Melissa also feared that her husband would kill her if he ever found out about what Ontario Superior Court Justice Douglas Rutherford described as a “torrid” affair. Richmond stabbed his wife to death with a screwdriver and knife, and left her body in a ditch just after midnight on July 25, 2013. He reported her missing the next day.

In the days after he killed his wife, he presented himself to police as a grieving husband bent on killing his wife’s killer, the jury has heard.

The trial continues Monday with Thornton back on the stand.

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Melissa Richmond had always dreamed of travelling the world but figured it was out of her financial reach.

So in July 2013 when her husband said he had figured out a way for a two-year, around-the-world trip, she was, in her own words, shocked.

“I was shocked he even suggested it … a dream, pretty much a fantasy. I didn’t think it could ever be done,” she texted her secret lover.

Less that two weeks later, Melissa, 28, was killed on July 25, 2013.

Her husband Howard Richmond, a military man on medical leave at the time, stabbed his wife to death with a knife and screwdriver after a midnight rendez-vous in the parking lot of the South Keys Shopping Centre, a 30-minute drive from their big house in Winchester.

Richmond has admitted that he killed his wife but his legal team – Joseph Addelman and Jason Gilbert – is asking the jury to find him not criminally responsible because he was in the throes of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Richmond, 52, was diagnosed with PTSD in 2011 after three tours of duty in Afghanistan.

The jury heard Melissa’s voice in texts read into the court record on Monday. The prosecution says she was killed after making plans to leave her husband.

Melissa’s lover, Jeff Thornton, told court that she told him she’d end up dead if her husband ever found out about their torrid affair.

The trial continues Tuesday.

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The mother of a critically injured teen had to hire lawyers to force Ottawa police officers to allow her to visit her own son in the hospital.

On Monday afternoon, Pierce James, just 18, accidentally shot himself in the head at his home on Wiggins Private in Sandy Hill.

With a bullet lodged in his head, he was rushed to The Ottawa Hospital’s Civic campus, where he remains in a medically induced coma and underwent brain surgery Friday afternoon.

His mother Julie James was just minutes away down the street when her son got shot in circumstances that remain unclear. In fact, she was walking home when her son’s friend broke the news about the shooting, she said.

And when she went to see her son in the intensive-care unit earlier this week, Ottawa Police officers refused to let her in the room to see her son.

The teen’s mom agreed the cops guarding her son’s room were just doing their job, but argued that “they could have been more diplomatic about it.” She ended up hiring Ottawa lawyers Samantha Robinson and Joseph Addelman to plead her case to see her son, who is suffering from a “catastrophic brain injury,” according to James.

On Thursday, a judge granted her the right to visit her son. According to her sworn affidavit filed in court, the mother says the Ottawa Police refused to let her see Pierce and told her that if he regains consciousness he will be charged with firearms offences.

“The Ottawa Police has denied me all access to (my son),” James swore in the affidavit.

“I am requesting on compassionate grounds to be allowed to visit my son at the hospital while he goes through treatment for a catastrophic brain injury.” The judge who heard the case granted the order.

“The police left us no choice but to file a relief motion,” said Addelman. “We’re happy the judge granted the order, and that the family can now be by his side,”

Addelman said the shooting was accidental. Ottawa Police are still investigating and interviewed the boy’s mother on Thursday night.

The police told the boy’s mother not to talk to the press, she said.

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

When the RCMP arrested Ottawa twin brothers Ashton and Carlos Larmond in January on charges of terrorism, investigators searched Ashton’s home and seized a handwritten journal titled the Book of Jihad, the Citizen has learned.

RCMP investigators believe that Ashton Larmond, 24, is the author of the journal and have sent it for forensic testing.

The RCMP also seized what they consider a shopping list for terrorism: survival gear, 1,000 rounds for a 9mm semi-automatic Glock pistol, extreme weather clothing — notably a Canada Goose parka — and a GPS.

The evidence has not been tested in court and it should be noted that while investigators believe the notes were authored by Ashton, they were seized from a Vanier home he shared.

According to the RCMP charges, Ashton Larmond instructed and facilitated others to wage terrorism abroad when he couldn’t do so himself after his passport was invalidated in September 2013.

Passport Canada revoked Larmond’s passport on Sept. 18, 2013, just over two weeks after his mother called Ottawa Police to report that her son had booked a flight to go fight jihad and had already packed his bags.

Ashton Larmond grew up in an abusive home and proved himself in the corners of rinks in Ottawa’s east end as a tough hockey player. He was also a heavy drug user who suffered from depression, according to what his mother told investigators in a 2013 interview.

Larmond’s alleged radicalization came fast, going from almost overdosing on Ecstasy on Halloween 2010 to converting to the most extreme form of Islam a year later. Ashton, the dominant twin, helped teach his brother Carlos the religion and they used the code word “Jason” when talking about jihad, according to police.

In the 2013 interview, the accused terrorist’s mother told RCMP that her son had said he was willing to die for his faith. Another family member told the RCMP that Ashton’s plan was to allegedly sneak into Syria to fight with his comrades in ISIL.

Related

• Ashton Larmond and John Maguire built friendship based on extremist views
• On the day Parliament was attacked, Ashton Larmond boasted of 'bigger plans'

While Ashton Larmond was arrested and jailed in January, he had known for a while that the  RCMP and CSIS were watching his every move. Back in early 2014, almost a year before his terrorism arrest, he agreed to an RCMP interview. The Citizen has learned that in the interview he said he was upset that his passport had been revoked, that he knew Canadian ISIL fighter John Maguire, and that Maguire was in Syria but didn’t know what he was doing there.

In the interview, Larmond denied that he wanted to blow up an RCMP building and said he wasn’t stupid like the “Toronto 18 guys.”

The Mounties knew he had purchased a flight to Turkey in 2013 and when they pressed him, he said he simply wanted to study Arabic in Saudi Arabia after backpacking in Turkey.

None of the terrorism charges have been tested in court and the twin brothers are in a Toronto jail awaiting trial, scheduled for October 2016.

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