Woman’s murder was premeditated, Crown contends
Jeremy Gough stalked his estranged girlfriend and then made the conscious decision to murder her after he was convinced she was dating another man, a Crown attorney said Thursday.
“That was your motive … it was pure jealousy,” Crown attorney Tyler Shuster said during his cross examination of Gough in Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines.
Gough, who has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, insisted he had no idea Jessica Scanlon was seeing another man.
“I loved Jessica,” the 41-year-old said. “I loved Jessica right up until the day that she died.”
Scanlon, 29, was found dead in the basement of her Chetwood Street home in St. Catharines on Feb. 23, 2015. She had been bludgeoned and stabbed 24 times.
The day before she was murdered, the Crown contends, Gough was convinced there was another man and set a plan in motion to murder the mother of his two young children.
“You wanted to have Jessica but you didn’t want anyone else to have her,” Shuster said.
“No, I wanted my family,” Gough replied.
Shuster pressed the defendant on the dozens of Facebook messages he sent Scanlon, pleading with her to get back together for the sake of the family.
Scanlon’s reply was always the same — their relationship was over and he should move on.
The day before she was killed, however, the flurry of messages stopped.
“There were no more relentless, pleading messages to reunite,” Shuster said.
That’s because, he told the jury, the defendant had made the decision to kill her.
He questioned why Gough, a man so wracked by grief over the end of his 10-year relationship, would create an account on Plenty of Fish, an online dating website, less than a month after the breakup.
Gough said he wasn’t necessarily on the site to find someone to date but he did hook up with a woman he called “a friend with benefits.”
Court heard Gough kept his “intimate and casual relationship” with the woman a secret from Scanlon, yet questioned her repeatedly about whether she was dating other men.
“You were not only obsessive about Jessica but you were possessive of her,” Shuster said. “You wanted to control her.”
Gough testified earlier he attacked Scanlon with a small bat known as a fish bonker after she told him she was moving in with another man and leaving Niagara.
The Crown contends Gough unlocked the basement door the night before the murder then snuck in the house that morning and lied in wait for Scanlon to return from dropping their children off at school.
Gough has admitted he caused her death but insists he didn’t intend to kill her.
“Yes, it was a horrible way she died. I’m sorry for that but I never intentionally went there to kill her.”
He said remembers striking her in the head with the fish bonker, but he has no recollection of stabbing her.
After the beating, Shuster suggested, Gough read text messages between Scanlon and her new boyfriend on her cell phone.
“You selected the biggest of the kitchen knives and went back in the basement because you saw what was on that phone,” the Crown said. Gough disagreed. “I do not remember doing this to her. I do not remember ever having a knife in my hand.”
Less than 15 minutes after the attack, Gough drove to a nearby Tim Hortons and purchased food.
“Within minutes of beating and stabbing Jessica to death … how could you possibly eat breakfast?” Shuster asked.
“I’d only had chocolate milk before and maybe a muffin, if that,” Gough replied.
He later disposed of some of the clothing he was wearing, as well as the fish bonker. He also helped his “friend with benefits” move into a new apartment, had a nap and then acted surprised when school officials called him to say Scanlon had not picked up their children from school.
“I wouldn’t say I wanted to get away with it,” Gough said. “I didn’t want to be accused of it. I was ashamed.”
The trial continues today before Judge Joseph Henderson.