Dramatic video played in a Toronto courtroom on Thursday that showed a taped confession from a man suspected of bludgeoning his common-law wife to death and affixing a page from the Bible to her chest with a knife in a north-end Toronto apartment.
In the video, Patrick Kirk Barrett, 41, tells investigators that he used a hammer to strike 28-year-old Lucita Charles multiple times.
“I went to the kitchen and I just grabbed the hammer and I went back and hit her,” Barrett told police.
He said he “lost it” and tore a page out of The Book of Jeremiah from the Bible, placed it on his wife’s chest and drove a kitchen knife through it.
“Please, I didn’t mean for it to happen,” Barrett told police, sobbing. “I never put a hand on her before.”
Barrett later asked the detectives to apologize to Charles’ mother for him.
Charles, a St. Lucia native who had moved to Canada to provide a better life for her son with cerebral palsy, was found dead in her apartment near Jane Street and Lawrence Avenue in June 2010.
Barrett was arrested three days after the murder.
Barrett attempted to plead guilty to manslaughter on Thursday, but the court rejected the plea.
He pleaded not guilty to second degree murder.
The Crown alleges Barrett was violent and controlling and lashed out against Charles when she attempted to end the relationship.
In the video Barrett claims to be a devout Christian and blames God for leading him down the wrong path. He says the rage had been building inside him.
With files from CTV Toronto’s John Musselman
