The Crown declared on Monday that it no further evidence to present in the lengthy murder trial.
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Guy Dion, half of the couple charged with the murders of two brothers from Montreal, has taken the stand in his trial.
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The 50-year-old was called to the witness stand Monday morning after the Crown declared it had no further evidence to present to the jury hearing the lengthy trial at the Gouin courthouse.
Dion and his wife, Marie-Josée Viau, 46, are charged with first-degree murder and conspiracy in the deaths of Vincenzo and Giuseppe Falduto, who disappeared without a trace at the end of June 2016.
Dion began his testimony by answering questions from his lawyer, Nellie Benoît. He confirmed that photos the jury saw earlier in the trial were indeed images of the couple’s farm. Dion said he has lived on the property since he purchased it in 1993.
Benoît and defence attorney Mylène Lareau informed the jury that they will not be making an opening statement before they mount a defence.
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The key prosecution witness in the case, an informant whose name cannot be published, testified that he shot the brothers inside a garage on the farm in Saint-Jude, a rural town near Saint-Hyacinthe, on June 30, 2016. He also testified the couple helped plan the hit, made noise to drown out the sound of the gunfire and that Viau burned the bodies before the victims’ remains were dumped in a river near their farm.
Dion said that a revolver found in a safe inside the couple’s home when police searched it in October 2019 belonged to him. He said he originally kept the firearm in a hockey equipment bag inside the garage, but transferred it to the safe.
“That was after the murders,” Dion said.
The last witness to testify for the Crown on Monday, before Dion took the stand, was Dacky Thermidor, a Montreal police investigator who was cross-examined by Benoît and Lareau.
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Their questions involved a claim made by the informant. In August, the informant said that a man named Joshua Di Perna, 32, was an accomplice when he killed Montreal Mafia leader Rocco Sollecito on May 27, 2016, or a month before he killed the Falduto brothers.
While using records from a database, Thermidor confirmed that Di Perna was actually detained at the Rivière des Prairies Detention Centre on May 27, 2016 for an unrelated event. Thermidor also confirmed that Di Perna was transferred to the Montreal Detention Centre a few days later.
One of the defence lawyers cross-examining the informant earlier this month had challenged him on this point and had argued it was impossible for Di Perna to have taken part in Sollecito’s death. The informant insisted he was right.
The couple are not charged in connection with Sollecito’s death.
This story will be updated.
Man charged in Montreal Mafia double homicide case testifies in his defence - Montreal Gazette
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