Marc Leduc has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the deaths of Pamela Kosmack and Leeanne Lawson.


Background

59-year old Marc Leduc, although looking much older in the prisoner’s box, is on trial for the first degree murders of 39-year old Pamela Kosmack and 23-year old Leeanne Lawson.

In opening statements, Crown Attorney Lisa Miles laid out her case, “he had both the means and opportunity to kill.”

Miles says Leduc knew both women, Kosmack from a neighbourhood pub, Lawson from a downtown shelter.

The two women were both victims of brutal killings. Both crimes the Crown described as eerily alike. Kosmack was found dead along a Brittania area bike path in June 2008. Lawson was found murdered in September 2011, across from the Shephard’s of Good Hope where she was living. Both women were found face-down and half-naked, badly beaten, bitten and both forcibly inserted with foreign objects.

Both murders had gone unsolved, until Leduc was forced to give a DNA sample in relation to another case in 2012. Police, through the DNA, were then able to link him to the murders of both women.

The Crown says the likelihood of that DNA belonging to another person other than Leduc ranges from 1 in 98 trillion to 1 in 890 quadrillion depending on the evidence.

Miles went on to describe the accused as a man obsessed with the murders, pointing out police investigations found several Google searches on his computer pertaining to Kosmack and Lawson, “even four years after he was searching the internet for both murdered women and the investigations.”

Family members of the victims were obviously shaken in court, shedding tears during the Crown’s opening statement.

Miles told the court, “There is no secret here that both women had struggled with addiction and turned to the sex trade. They were vulnerable.” Still, she says, the women were loved and mourned by their friends and family and that they deserve justice.

The Crown’s first witnesses were a dog walker who discovered Kosmack’s body, a police officer and a paramedic. The jury is made up of six men and six women. The case is scheduled to last eight weeks, but lawyers predict it may be done in half the time.