The mother of three stillborn babies found stored away at a London home pleaded guilty to three charges Wednesday and was sentenced to three years probation.
Guilty," Jennifer Sinn, 33, of London, said quietly after three charges of offering an indignity to a human body stemming from last June were read to her in the Ontario Court of Justice.
The babies' bodies were found last June in a London home in various stages of decomposition and each assigned to their box-- one in a cardboard box, one in a black plastic tote and the other in a red tote box.
Sinn told a psychiatrist she had stored the corpses away for years because she didn't have any money to bury them and
didn't know where else to put them."
Justice John Skowronski heard Sinn had been in a volatile relationship" for many years with Michael Marquette, the father of three of her four children. Her oldest is from a previous relationship.
Marquette, who was not in court and had moved to Nova Scotia with one of the couple's sons, alerted police to the grisly discoveries last June after the couple had moved to London from Brampton.
Marquette told police he did not open the totes until the couple had moved to London and did not know the contents.
But defence lawyer Jeanine LeRoy said Sinn told a psychiatrist the babies were stillborn and that Michael knew."
LeRoy said Sinn had kept the corpses and didn't seek help
because of the real lack of support from Mr. Marquette, and finally the abuse she and the children suffered at his hands."
Sinn said she told Marquette about the babies but his reply was it wasn't his problem," LeRoy said.
She was abused to the point that she really didn't know what she was supposed to do," Le Roy said.
Skowronski called the domestic relationship toxic."
The boxes were already under suspicion during a couple of resi d e nt i a l moves in Brampton, where the family was evicted from its home and their belongings put in storage.
Assistant Crown attorney Meredith Gardiner, reading from an agreed statement of facts from the Crown and defence, described how Marquette had seen two tote boxes in the units that were wrapped in garbage bags and taped.
He didn't think anything of it.
His parents helped him move the boxes into a Brampton apart-m
ent and were struck by the
very strong, foul odour" coming from them.
Sinn came with Peel Regional
Police officers to retrieve them.
Marquette's father opened one box and, with his previous experience in the meat-packing field, thought the smell was rotting flesh.
In the box he saw a wet garbage bag and felt it. He did not open it or the second tote.
They were turned over to Sinn, who told the police it was a rotting roast she was keeping out of spite" because Marquette refused to cook it.
[...]Inside one, he found a bloodied shirt and some mucus and a strong odour.