OTTAWA -- Women and law enforcement had been conspiring to ruin Basil Borutski's life for decades, the accused killer told police the day after three of his female Ottawa Valley acquaintances were found dead in 2015.
"The whole judicial system sucks the big one," Borutski is heard saying on a videotaped police interview from Sept. 23, 2015.
The interview -- the first piece of evidence submitted by prosecutors in Borutski's trial -- came after 66-year-old Carol Culleton, 36-year-old Anastasia Kuzyk and 48-year-old Nathalie Warmerdam were found slain at their homes in three different locations in Renfrew County, about 200 kilometres west of Ottawa.
Culleton was strangled with a television cord, and Kuzyk and Warmerdam were both shot. Borutski had relationships with all three women and lived with both Warmerdam and Kuzyk. In 2012 he was convicted and sent to jail briefly for offences against Warmerdam and her son and in 2014 he was convicted and sent to jail for offences against Kuzyk.
Throughout the first 90 minutes of the videotaped interview, Borutski sits with his arms crossed, often with his eyes closed, and constantly accuses police of "malicious prosecution" in previous criminal cases -- including the two that involved Kuzyk and Warmerdam.
He says he talked to a lawyer overnight but doesn't want any "crooks" to talk to anymore and accuses the police who arrested him of refusing to give him food or water, or let him take his medication.
"That wasn't nice," Borutski said.
He told police he was on oxycodone for chronic pain and was also being treated for depression, a hernia, leg cramps and athlete's foot.
In the video, Borutski takes Ontario Provincial Police Det. Sgt. Caley O'Neill through a convoluted tale of relatives, friends, his ex-wife and former girlfriends who all conspired to accuse him of things he didn't do and police officers who engaged in corrupt investigations that landed him in jail.
"The most horrible thing you can do is put an innocent person in jail," he's heard to say.
Borutski said a 2011 conviction for drunk driving was the result of being framed by police who saw his fake criminal record, decided he was guilty, and put alcohol into the breathalyzer before he blew into it.
His ex-wife accused him of raping her and assaulting her only because she wanted custody of their kids, he said.
Warmerdam accused him of threatening her son only after she realized he wasn't going to come into a lot of money because a judge sided with his ex-wife and didn't give him a penny.
Kuzyk,. he said, was mad because she wanted more from their relationship; he didn't because she was 20 years younger than him and he saw her more as a daughter than a lover.
"Women use the system to their advantage financially, for every reason they can," he said.
Throughout the interrogation, O'Neill makes an effort to befriend Borutski, but at times his patience is clearly tested -- particularly after the accused complains repeatedly that the lies of women had sent him to jail.
"You going to jail for a while kind of pales in comparison to being dead, don't you think?" O'Neill says at one point.
After about 90 minutes of the video, the judge stopped it to break for the day. Borutski does not directly reply when O'Neill tries to get him to explain why he killed the women, though he doesn't correct his assertion that he did kill them.
Borutski only corrects O'Neill when he refers to their deaths as "murder."
"I didn't murder anybody," he said.
He says he is in custody "for killing, not murder."
Borutski, who is representing himself, has refused to participate in the trial. He does not speak when spoken to and doesn't look at any of the documents given to him, although on Thursday he could be seen looking up at the video screen, watching intently.
