deadmonton 2005 - nina courtepatte - briscoe-laboucan trial - february 8th, 2007

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Nina Louise Courtepatte, 13, died from blunt force trauma on April 3rd, 2005.


Charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault were Michael Erin Briscoe, now 36, Joseph Wesley Laboucan, now 21, and three teens not identified by provision of the Youth Criminal Justice Act.


One male teen, aged 19 and nicknamed "Pyro", pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in youth court in Stony Plain on December 8th, 2006. He was to be sentenced as an adult in April 2007.


Briscoe's girlfriend, now 19 and named "Cindy" in this narrative, went to trial March 12th, 2007. Pyro's girlfriend, now 17 and nicknamed "Buffy", had a trial date set for May 1st, 2007.


<< february 7th, 2007 | briscoe-laboucan trial | february 12th, 2007 >>



The trial continued with Pyro on the stand for a third day.


As part of his grilling from defence lawyers, the Court heard about the teen's youth.


Pyro said his mother abandoned him to the child welfare system when he was 12, and that he remains angry at her for doing so.


He had begun drinking a year earlier, and by 13 he was abusing drugs.


He dropped out of school and made a living as a drug runner, getting paid in cash and drugs such as crystal meth and ecstasy.


Turning 15, he became a mall rat who who ate for free in restaurants by dining and dashing, and getting his cigarettes by using a “grab and go” style of shopping at convenience stores.


Pyro said got his nickname because he liked to set fire to things, including once, his own apartment building.



Joseph Laboucan's defence lawyer Laurie Wood focused his attack on the witness by exploring the "mall rat" theme.


Court had heard Pyro implicated others in the attack when he found out his co-accused had broken the mall rat code of silence and were telling police he was a key figure in the attack on Nina.


“You weren't going to implicate anyone until you knew they had broken the code,” Wood suggested to Pyro.


“That's correct,” he replied.


Pyro described how there were two groups of mall rats, but both were bound by the “mall rat code.”


“Everyone in the mall, they're pretty much all family. They take care of each other.”


He agreed with Wood that he felt betrayed by the others, particularly by Laboucan.


“You were mad enough to make up a whole bunch of lies about Joe Laboucan, weren't you,” suggested Wood.


“I'm still mad, but I'm not lying about it anymore,” said Pyro.


Wood then put it to Pyro that he was still lying.


The teen protested, saying he had been baptised a year earlier.


Wood pointed out to the witness that he admitted to lying at Briscoe and Laboucan's preliminary hearing and at his own trial in December 2006.


Pyro told Wood the lying is over: “I want to make sure I tell the truth and nothing but the truth.”


However, as the trial continued, the defence seized on the further contradictions in Pyro's testimony.


At his trial in December, the teen stated he had swung the sledgehammer into Nina's crotch to cover up evidence of his involvement in the sexual assault.


During his current testimony, he overlooked the incident. When reminded of his own trial statements, Pyro said it may have happened but he didn't remember.


The defence suggested Pyro hadn't figured on getting caught and was suddenly forced to come up with a way to explain the presence of his DNA on Nina's body.


Pyro had already told the court he had known Nina for a few years and had sex with her on a number of occasions, including in a downtown back alley and only a few days before she was killed.


He now testified that after his arrest, he called up a friend nicknamed Flash and tried to get Flash to tell police he had previously seen Pyro and Nina having sex.


Flash initially agreed to the plan, Pyro said. “At first he did, then he changed his mind.”


Pyro then elaborated on his plan to avoid getting caught and convicted. He admitted that while he was in the Edmonton Young Offender Centre, he tried to get letters to Briscoe's girlfriend Cindy.


The letters outlined to Cindy what she should and shouldn't say to the police, that he wasn't part of the gang that killed Nina and was in the Callingwood neighbourhood the day she was killed.


“Say you dropped me off at Mac's in Calllingwood,” he wrote, “and say you only punched her once there, for it would be assault, not murder, and that you and [Nina's friend Jane Doe] went back to the car and you did not know they were going to kill her.”


It was Pyro's plan that another inmate was to sneak the letters over to Cindy. However, the letters were intercepted.


Pyro said that he just wanted to tell Cindy what to say because she was a mall rat, and like him, would have lie to save herself.


“She lives the same way I have,” he said.


Pyro said living by the mall rat code meant you stood up for other rats, never telling the police what any of them had done.


When he learned others weren't abiding by the code, Pyro then told police details about Nina's rape and murder to implicate the unfaithful mall rats. He testified some of the details were true and some not true.


“As I see it I'm no longer a mall rat. They're no longer my friends,” Pyro said.


As the cross-examination of the teen finished, Laboucan's lawyer Laurie Wood reminded the court his client and Nina were involved in a passionate kissing session in the backseat of Briscoe's Ford Tempo on the trip out to the golf course.


Wood suggested that this might explain why Laboucan might have been a contributor to the DNA found on Nina's body.



The trial continued February 12th, 2007



A list of persons named in this case can be found at the bottom of the main Briscoe-Laboucan trial page.