Ontario man convicted of 3 murders started in court after interrupting victim impact statement

OSHAWA, Ont. The grief and guilt that Victoria Pejcinovski felt after her mother and two siblings were killed has made her longing for reality “escape”, court heard a Friday after the man found guilty escaped from the room was escorted to interrupt victim impact statements.

The young woman’s statement was one of several read during a conviction by Cory Fenn, who pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in the deaths of his ex-girlfriend Krassimira Pejcinovski 2018 and their children Roy, 14, and Venellia, 13 .

In the year after she lost her family members at the age of 16, Pejcinovski felt at ease, she said in her victim statement. Then the pain of the loss subsided, and to take care of it, she said, she began engaging in “self-destructive” behaviors, such as smoking and drinking.

“That was the only escape from reality I could get,” reads her statement. “Being a big sister, all I ever wanted to do was protect her. And I felt guilty for a long time because I could not.

The girl was not home at the time of the murders after spending the night at her father’s house.

Last month, Justice Howard Leibowich found that Fenn killed all three victims in a rage on March 14, 2018, in Ajax, Ont., After Krassimira Pejcinovski broke up with him. The mother and her daughter were found shot while the boy was being stretched.

Fenn, who defended himself, argued that he did not have the mental ability to commit the crime, but did not name any defense.

Crown prosecutors have demanded that Fenn not be eligible for parole for 72 years.

Second degree murder carries a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison without parole requirement for 10 years, to be served either consecutively or simultaneously. The Crown said Fenn was not allowed to apply for release for 22 years in Krassimira Pejcinovski’s death, and for 25 years in Venellia’s and Roy’s.

Crown attorney Mike Newell said the time it took for Fenn, after initially attacking his ex-girlfriend, to go to another room and grab the knife he used to kill her, is more appropriate long period of ineligibility.

“It takes this insult to the moral guilt that is close to that of first-degree murder,” Newell said.

Fenn stated that he would like the minimum period of parole ineligibility, although he refused to make submission on Friday.

“Ten years would be perfect, right?” Fenn told the judges when he was found guilty last month.

Fenn watched Friday’s conviction over video from another room in Oshawa, Ont., Courthouse after he was kicked out of the courtroom to interrupt the first victim impact statement.

A family friend read a statement from the children’s aunt when Fenn interrupted.

In the statement, Natasha Pejcinovski said the grief continues to color her every experience, even as people expected her to “deal with” it.

She said she never told her mother, the grandmother of the children, about the murders.

“I had to keep the fact of her deaths from my elderly, medically weak mother for over two years until her death,” she said. “My heart broke every time she asked if I was talking to the kids or Krissy.”

Natasha Pejcinovski also recalls that she chose a pink-and-white dress for her youngest niece to carry in her chest.

“I had to look for a scarf to go with her outfit because the funeral home told me that her neck could not be exposed due to horrific injuries,” the friend read.

Fenn interrupted, “Do not blame me, madam.”

The case will return to court on April 5, when Leibowich will either deliver his sentence or delay his decision while awaiting a key Supreme Court of Canada decision on the constitution of the consecutive sentences.

The Quebec court has reversed the 40-year period of parole ineligibility for Alexander Bissonnette, who pleaded guilty to six counts of first-degree murder after killing six people at a Quebec City mosque in 2017.