A killer is found not criminally responsible. The Crown and defence agree the system is broken

Warning: This story contains details of murder and mental illness.

For defence lawyer Marni Munsterman, the “discomforting and alarming” detail that stood out in the large volume of evidence about Adam Rossi — who was found not criminally responsible on Friday of the second-degree murder of Sommer Boudreau, and interfering with her remains, in the Ottawa Valley a year ago — was one of his more recent hospitalizations.

That hospitalization, for mania stemming from his bipolar disorder, occurred before he killed Boudreau, 39, in his duplex in Deep River, Ont., in early December 2022.

A psychiatrist was contemplating a community treatment order for Rossi with long-acting injectable medication, something that could have helped after he kept deciding to stop taking the antipsychotic pills that court heard quickly eased his symptoms.

“For whatever reason, that didn’t happen,” Munsterman said.

She called it a “travesty,” and said it shows “how broken our system truly has become” in providing support to people with mental illness.

‘A freight train to inevitability’

Crown prosecutor James Bocking, after going through Rossi’s 10 most previous hospitalizations — to gasps from Boudreau’s family and supporters in the gallery — said his mental health records read like “a freight train to inevitability.”

“I defy anyone to read them and think otherwise,” Bocking said.

But the knowledge that Rossi is unwell “brings no solace” to the Boudreau family and “changes nothing” for them, he added.

“They are still casualties, and maybe Mr. Rossi is too, of a system and a decadent philosophy that places an emphasis of the paramountcy of the rights of the individual over all else,” Bocking said.

They were the kind of comments not typically heard from lawyers in court, and Superior Court Justice Ian Carter made note of it in his brief remarks near the end of Friday’s hearing at the Renfrew County courthouse in Pembroke, Ont.

He thanked counsel for “stepping outside their normal roles” and speaking “from their hearts about what they’ve seen in the system.”

Victim’s family comes together

Sommer Boudreau’s mother, Carrie Boudreau, her brother Christopher Halliday, two of her three children — Tyee and Tia Boudreau — and about a dozen other supporters sighed audibly, cried, leaned on each other’s shoulders and reached out to hold hands throughout the proceeding.

Some wore T-shirts emblazoned with Sommer Boudreau’s picture and the words “Justice for Sommer,” and all wore purple ribbons honouring victims of violence against women.

Rossi’s mother, sitting alone on the other side of the gallery, mostly looked down at the floor as the graphic evidence was heard, and later paid close attention to the testimony of a forensic psychiatrist with a furrowed brow.

Rossi cried, and spent most of the time staring at the wall of the prisoner’s box or straight ahead, sometimes hunching forward to place his elbows on his thighs and look straight down.

During one break, Carrie Boudreau and Halliday said they’d tried to write victim impact statements but couldn’t. All that could come out were rage and anger, they said, and those kinds of statements aren’t allowed.

In the end, it was Tia Boudreau who spoke for the family, with Carrie, Tyee and guardian Shallen Dearing by her side.

“I want to believe that the system will do what it is supposed to, but knowing that you will one day walk the streets, and knowing [my mother] won’t ever do so again, doesn’t sit well with me,” she said.

“I hope you do take all the help that you are given and do better.”

Illness means he couldn’t understand it was wrong

The judge, prosecutors Bocking and Conor Kyte, and Munsterman all agreed Rossi did not have the mental capacity to understand that killing Boudreau and then cutting off one of her hands sometime between the nights of Dec. 10, 2022, and Dec. 11, 2022, was wrong.

They had just met when Rossi was in the midst of mania and psychosis stemming from his repeatedly diagnosed bipolar disorder. Court heard he had mostly led a secluded life after 2015, but in the days leading up to Boudreau’s killing he was seen acting bizarrely at businesses in Deep River, where he had moved from Barrie, Ont., just a few months prior.

As had happened repeatedly in his past, Rossi had earlier been taking antipsychotic drugs — but stopped.

A forensic psychiatrist who was the first to see and treat Rossi after his arrest, and who later assessed his mental health, testified on Friday.

Dr. Neil de Laplante said he believed Rossi was among the most ill patients he’d ever seen when they first spoke by phone a few days after his arrest.

Rossi was so “violent and dangerous” at the jail, de Laplante said, that he crossed ethical lines to treat him and verbally ordered a prescription for antipsychotics.

He testified that all the evidence was clear: Rossi was in the grip of mania and paranoid delusions caused by his bipolar disorder when he killed Boudreau and cut off her hand, and that he should be found not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder.

That evidence included Rossi’s lengthy history of mental illness and hospitalizations, the grisly and bizarre crime scene, and a transcript of a 911 call Rossi made alerting police to check his duplex the night Boudreau’s body was found.

It also included footage from the body-worn cameras of the officers who responded to Rossi’s 911 call, the nearly 24-hour long, rambling, incoherent statement Rossi gave to police, and testimony from witnesses in Deep River about Rossi’s strange and unsettling behaviour in the days leading up to the killing.

Met at a local bar

The night Boudreau was killed, they had just met at a bar.

According to a statement of facts, Boudreau was talking to another man about her Indigenous roots, the history of Deep River, her family and music when Rossi chimed in and asked to sit with them.

Boudreau agreed, and Rossi sat down next to her. They spent time in a group talking, heading outside for smokes and shooting pool.

At one point Boudreau remarked that she didn’t have enough cash to attend a show. Rossi said he had money at his house.

One man who worked at a local print shop took a picture of Rossi at the bar because he remembered Rossi from a strange interaction at the shop a few days earlier and wanted to show colleagues he’d run into him again.

The man had intervened when he sensed a female employee was growing uncomfortable in an interaction with Rossi, who had shown up there for what seemed like no reason.

The photo of Rossi at the bar, taken at 7:40 p.m., showed Boudreau standing at the very edge of the frame.

Playfight turns violent

Rossi and Boudreau left the bar at about 8 p.m., got into Rossi’s van and drove to his rented duplex. Rossi said he thought Boudreau was romantically interested in him because she placed her hand on his arm at one point.

He became increasingly paranoid as the evening wore on, according to the statement of facts. It started in the van, when he thought Boudreau might not be who she said she was.

At the duplex, they began to laugh, dance and jokingly wrestle, according to Rossi. He said he became worried that Boudreau was stronger than him, that she was becoming aggressive, and finally that she was “an assassin sent to kill him.”

He grabbed the mortar of a mortar and pestle — a heavy bowl used for grinding — and struck her in the head with it several times.

The cause of her death, according to forensic pathologists, was “destructive blunt force head injury with multiple fractures and traumatic brain injury.”

Afterward, he dressed Boudreau’s body up in his own clothes to make it look like he was dead, not her. He also staged things to give the impression that the home was boobytrapped.

He had “been watching the Saw films and wanted the residence and bedroom to resemble scenes from that franchise,” according to the statement of facts.

Rossi used knives, tape, string, white powder and green dish soap to create unsettling scenes throughout the duplex, on the floors and the walls.

It was so disturbing, one of the police officers who attended still suffers from PTSD and hasn’t been able to return to work, Bocking told court.

Unsettling encounters in the community

Earlier that day, Rossi had unsettled several people, including a grocery store employee who that morning had declined his offer of a date.

Then Rossi walked to a house about eight blocks away, and acted erratically and rambled as he spoke to the family returning home from church.

He asked for flowers, saying he needed them for a girl he felt he had a “spiritual connection” with, according to the statement of facts. He showed them writing on his hand and wrist that he said attested to that connection.

After they gave him a bouquet of dried flowers, he asked for a hug and walked away.

The family “felt uneasy and discussed locking their doors,” the statement of facts said.

That afternoon he went to a dog-grooming shop close to the grocery store, asked for the names of employees, got into a large dog cage and asked people how he looked. He asked for a bow to be placed in his goatee, and said he was going to try to ask a girl out on a date again, but this time with flowers.

He returned to the grocery store later that afternoon and asked an unknown employee to place the bouquet, a cookie and envelope marked “confidential” in the break room for the employee who had rejected him.

When that employee returned to work, she threw them out.

What happens now

Instead of going to prison, Rossi will eventually be sent to a secure provincial psychiatric facility operated by the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Care Group either in Ottawa or Brockville, Ont.

But because there is a shortage of beds in Ontario, that will probably take months, court heard Friday. Rossi will remain in custody at Ottawa’s jail until he can be transferred to a secure inpatient forensic treatment unit.

Rossi is now under the jurisdiction of the Ontario Review Board — an independent tribunal that will decide whether to keep him in custody in a psychiatric facility, or discharge him with or without conditions.

A risk assessment and sexual behaviours assessment were ordered to be conducted before his first appearance before the board. A date for that appearance has not yet been set.