A Winnipeg serial killer's message to his ex-wife before his latest killing spree said he could face 3 life sentences.

WARNING: This story contains sad details.

A week before he was arrested, a confessed serial killer in Winnipeg posted a Facebook message to his ex-wife asking her to forgive him if he went to jail, his trial heard Thursday.

It was one of a number of messages the court heard Jeremy Skibicki sent the woman in May 2022, when the two had been estranged for a long time, including one around midnight on May 9 that year telling her he “might not get caught yet,” but “could get three life sentences “.

Skibicki is on trial for first-degree murder in the deaths of four women believed to have been killed between mid-March and mid-May 2022. The messages he sent his ex-wife came days before investigators say she killed him. the last of his victims.

Skibicki, 37, is charged in the deaths of three First Nations women – Rebecca Contois, 24, Morgan Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26 – as well as the death of an unidentified woman. Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe or Buffalo Woman, community leaders. He is also local and is believed to have been in his 20s at the time of his death.

Contois is believed to have been the last of the women killed on May 14 or 15, 2022. Skibicki was arrested by police on May 17 – a day after police found Contois' partial remains in rubbish bins near the accused's North Kildonan flat. Most of his remains were later found in a Winnipeg landfill.

The court heard the morning before he was remanded in custody, Skibicki sent another message to his ex-wife: “Lots to do today. Take care baby.”

Prosecutors said the women's deaths were premeditated and racially motivated, and that Skibicki, who lived in shelters in Winnipeg, abused vulnerable women before killing them and dumping their bodies in dumpsters.

The remains of Harris and Myran are believed to be at another landfill outside Winnipeg, while police have not said where Mashkode Bijikiikwe's remains are.

Although Skibicki was initially arrested in connection with Contois' death in May 2022, he unexpectedly confessed to that murder and three others that police had not previously known about.

Skibicki admitted to police that he strangled, suffocated or drowned the women, before dismembering some of them and having sex with their bodies before disposing of the remains.

Skibicki's legal team will argue that while he admits to killing the women, he should not be charged because of his mental disorder.

“Similar” abuse and violence: Crown

Skibicki's ex-wife, Métis, testified as part of Crown's use of similar facts in the trial, with prosecutor Christian Vanderhooft highlighting the violence and abuse against vulnerable indigenous women, which is “so shocking, they are unlike each other. mode of operation in the criminal.”

Skibicki's defense team has agreed to allow similar facts to be presented at trial and said it plans to get its own expert to comment on some of the evidence later.

The defendant's ex-wife said that after receiving Facebook messages from Skibicki in May 2022, she decided to call him because, knowing what he had written to her and how their relationship had been, she “felt something was very wrong.”

She said Skibicki wouldn't tell her what happened and told her she would be forced to flee if she admitted what she had done. The woman said she prayed for him after that.

“I knew he did something really bad, so I asked him to tell the truth,” said the soft-spoken woman, wearing rose-colored glasses she said she had to wear because of a concussion from the incident. With the participation of Skibitsky.

He told her that “no matter what he did, who or what he was, he would be clean so he could get closure,” she said.

Reports of ex-wife abuse

The woman told the court that she had not seen Skibicki for some time when they started messaging in May 2022. She said she was abused in her sleep during her relationship and was regularly sexually assaulted.

The woman, who the CBC is not naming because she is a survivor of sexual abuse, said Skibicki passed out after taking sleeping pills at night and said she had a fetish called “Sleeping Beauty Syndrome” and regularly sexually assaulted her. He said he liked her to be “like a rag doll… limp and lifeless.”

She said she met Skibicki in February 2018 at the Siloam Mission shelter in Winnipeg. He went back to her apartment with her and two of her friends. He said he remembers Skibicki telling friends he “really enjoyed it.”

Although the relationship was quickly “volatile” and Skibitsky was “very controlling,” the woman said she would marry him later that year. When asked why, she felt “stuck”. In court, he was battling methamphetamine addiction at the time.

The woman later said she had obtained an order of protection against him. But after recovering from addiction, he had nowhere else to go, so he returned to it.

She said she got pregnant twice during their relationship, and at one point Skibicki talked about moving her out of a town where no one knew where she lived, saying he needed to get her off drugs.

The woman testified in court that she also once tried to suffocate Skibicki with a pillow and locked her against her will in her apartment, where she removed the phone line and sat naked for days laughing and spitting.

According to him, he also showed pornography of a man who killed a woman and performed sexual acts on her body. Skibicki also said that if something happened to her, she planned to keep his remains in a closet and have sex with them, “until my body started to stink too bad,” she said.

The woman said she became more protective after that and “set up protections with my family and friends so they always know where I am.”

She said one of their last confrontations before they left was when Skibicki came at her with a butcher's knife, but did not stab her at the last minute. Not long after that — in March 2021 — she said her mother called her asking if she wanted to do laundry. He went and never came back.

She said she knew Skibicki had moved into a new apartment in the North Kildonan area of ​​Winnipeg where he killed the four women, but she never accepted his invitation to visit.

“When I returned, I felt that I couldn't leave anymore,” he says.

During the cross-examination, defense attorney Leonard Tyler asked the woman about Facebook messages Skibitsky sent in May 2022, including May 10, 2022, in which the defense attorney told her the defendant was “manipulating her by Satan.”

Tyler also asked the woman about her testimony during her petition for a protective order against Skibicki, in which she said Skibicki “looked like Jekyll” and was being “controlled by three people.”

He also attached to the motion Facebook posts in which the defendant “decided to become a holy crusader,” Tyler noted.

“I would suggest that you do this out of concern for his mental health. Do you agree with that?” – said the lawyer.

“No, I'm not,” he said.

Skibicki's trial continues on Friday before Chief Justice Glenn Joyal of the Crown Court. The court is expected to hear from a woman who told police that Skibicki was once in her apartment “like a lion … with prey in his mouth” but was let go.

The court is also expected to hear from a man holding a 2022 jacket he prepared to sell after receiving it from the unidentified woman Skibicki killed.

The trial is expected to continue until June 6.

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