The man who murdered three women in one day around the Ottawa Valley nearly a decade ago — a case that became a flashpoint in the fight against domestic violence in Canada — has died in custody.
Basil Borutski, 66, died at Millhaven Institution on March 28 “of apparent natural causes,” according to a media release from the Correctional Service of Canada.
The women he murdered were:
- Nathalie Warmerdam, a nurse, mother of two and former partner of Borutski’s. He was convicted of threatening her family in 2012 and she had a video surveillance system, a domestic violence panic button and a shotgun in her bedroom at the time of her murder.
- Anastasia Kuzyk, who worked in real estate and previously tended bar at a popular tavern in Wilno, Ont. He had been convicted of assaulting and choking her in 2013 and 2014.
- Carol Culleton, who had retired just four days before her murder and who was disturbed by Borutski’s possessive behaviour after she had hired him to fix up her cottage.
He was on probation for threatening Warmerdam’s son and their dog when he beat Kuzyk and he was on probation for the offences against Kuzyk when he murdered her, Warmerdam and Culleton on Sept. 22, 2015.
Borutski had been serving an indeterminate sentence that began Dec. 6, 2017, for two first-degree murders and the second-degree murder of Culleton.
Eighty-six recommendations, many of them sweeping in scope, were made by the jury at the inquest into their murders.
“As in all cases involving the death of an inmate, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) will review the circumstances,” it said in the release.
