A B.C. woman on trial for allegedly murdering her ex-boyfriend said he strangled her several times until she passed out, beat her and threatened to kill her in the bathtub and dismember her body, and that she still loved him, a psychiatrist who interviewed her for hours told her trial on Tuesday.
Paris Laroche, 28, is being tried in B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver for first-degree murder and interfering with human remains in the 2020 death of Sidney Mantee. The 32-year-old’s body was cut into pieces and disposed of in Nanaimo city parks and the Pacific Ocean.
In a series of interviews over five hours, Laroche told a forensic psychiatrist — who was hired by her lawyer to write a report about her — that she was verbally and physically abused. She said Mantee hit her with a shovel and then held the sharp edge against her throat threatening to kill her.
Laroche told Dr. Johann Brink that she couldn’t report Mantee to police or leave because he threatened to kill her, and her family and friends, Brink testified. The psychiatrist, whose task was to provide the court with an assessment of Laroche’s mental status, said she told him as recently as last month that she still loved Mantee.
“She was trapped in a situation where she was subject to psychological and physical fear, she was trapped yet she told me repeatedly that she loved him [Mantee],” Brink said.
It was Brink’s opinion that Laroche had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, such as anxiety, fear, avoidance of sites of previous traumas and heightened startle response, but not full-blown PTSD.
He said she showed symptoms of battered wife or spouse syndrome, with a feeling of being psychologically and physically abused while diminishing the spouse’s abusiveness and accepting the behaviour as normal.
Brink testified about the night before the killing, when Laroche had come home and saw that her cat was spooked and wouldn’t eat or nurse her kittens, and Laroche said she suspected Mantee had abused the cat.
She seemed resigned to the fact that one of them was going to end up dead, and she told Brink that Mantee needed not to be a threat to her or her cats.
He also interviewed Laroche about her family growing up, when she worked in her parents’ janitorial company, as well as her education, work history, substance use, and medical and relationship history.
Brink told the court she and Mantee had a good relationship in the first year of the four they were together, but in the second year Mantee encouraged her to sue her parents for all the unpaid labour she performed. An out-of-court settlement resulted in some money and a van. The van was sold and used to buy a car that turned out to be a lemon.
The couple had financial difficulties after that and Laroche said Mantee held on to his disappointment about how the lawsuit turned out.
The Crown’s Nick Barber cross-examined Brink about his qualifications and his report, questioning why he had submitted it to the defence lawyer before making final changes.
The trial continues.
