The first day of closing arguments for Crown counsel in the trial of Andrew Berry, an Oak Bay father accused of murdering his two young daughters on Christmas Day 2017, is concluded today.
Six-year-old Chloe and four-year-old Aubrey were found dead in Berry's Beach Driver apartment that day. Berry was discovered naked in his bathtub with serious wounds.
The 45-year-old has pleaded not guilty to two second degree murder charges.
Friday morning, Crown Counsel, Patrick Weir, launched into the prosecutions closing submissions. Weir described Andrew Berry as wallowing in self-pity and anger by Dec. 24, 2017.
He said that as Dec. 24 rolled into the morning of Christmas Day, Berry was without hope and was filled with bitterness.
He had no job or job prospects and believed that he was going to lose custody of his daughters after he dropped them off at their mother’s house at noon on Christmas Day.
It is with that backdrop that Crown alleges that Berry snapped and stabbed his daughters to death, before trying to kill himself.
Weir told the jury Berry stabbed his daughters over and over, and struck Chloe in the head with her own baseball bat.
Crown said when Berry then tried unsuccessfully to take his own life, he was "destined to survive the nightmare he’d created.”
Crown counsel told the jury that the motive for the crimes flowed from the “unrelenting bitterness” he harboured for the girls’ mother, Sarah Cotton, as well as his own mother.
On Thursday, Berry's Defence counsel maintained that the Oak Bay father never harmed his children and that his apartment was staged to look like a murder-suicide.
Crown counsel concluded its closing submissions on Friday afternoon and the judge, Justice Gropper, will give her charge to the jury on Tuesday.
After that, the jurors will be sequestered as they deliberate, deciding on whether the 45-year-old is guilty or not.
Live updates from court can be found here:
