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An Edmonton-area plumber accused of beating a woman to death at a roadside turnoff was rebuffed by the Crown when he attempted to plead guilty to a manslaughter on the first day of his trial.
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Blake Jolicoeur was arrested in 2019 following the death of 36-year-old Saladina Vivancos.
Jolicoeur tried to plead guilty to the lesser included charge of manslaughter Monday, the first day of his second-degree murder trial. He initially claimed Vivancos attacked him and that he unintentionally killed her in self-defence.
Prosecutor Alison Magill, however, told Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Douglas Mah the Crown was “not prepared to accept that plea of manslaughter.”
According to an agreed statement of facts, Vivancos worked as a driver for a cocaine sales operation covering the Spruce Grove/Stony Plain region.
On Nov. 16, 2019, she stopped responding to messages, prompting a search by her friend and her employer, who used GPS to track the Volkswagen Jetta she was driving to a rural area outside Spruce Grove.
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The two men arrived after dark and realized something was wrong when they spotted the Jetta on a frozen pond. Daniel Ibanescu, Vivancos’s longtime friend, described turning on his cellphone flashlight and walking out onto the ice.
“As I was approaching the vehicle I started seeing blood,” he said. “Blood on the ground, blood on the bumper. It was pretty much everywhere.”
The driver’s side window was either rolled down or smashed out. A small fire had been lit inside. It took Ibanescu a few moments to notice his friend’s bloodied body on the back seat.
Paramedics and police eventually arrived and pronounced Vivancos dead. An autopsy determined she died of blunt force trauma to the head. A bloody tire iron was discovered in Ella’s Jetta’s trunk.
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Jolicoeur admits he caused Vivancos’s death, but denies he had the necessary attempt for murder. At the time, the then-36-year-old was living with a woman and her children de ella in Spruce Grove and working for a plumbing and heating company. He told police he had recently stopped using drugs and that his life was finally “coming together.”
Ibanescu, the first witness, said he used to be involved with the drug trade and directed Vivancos to a friend when she asked if he knew of anyone who had worked. He said Vivancos was in a tough financial situation and had recently moved to Edmonton from Kelowna.
“She was full of life,” he said when asked to describe her. “I don’t think I’d ever seen her mad, not once.”
Court also heard two recordings of Jolicoeur’s interviews with police.
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During the first interview, he conducted a Nisku parking lot, Jolicoeur admitted to owing Vivancos money after she fronted him some drugs, but said he had nothing to do with her death.
The officers did not believe him. RCMP Sgt. Aaron Ewert testified Jolicoeur was “really struggling” during the interview, “moving around in the seat of the car, choking on his words from him.”
A few days later, Jolicoeur called Staff Sgt. Mark Sloan and during a tearful, hour-and-twenty-minute interview confessed to killing Vivancos.
Jolicoeur told police he got the number used to call Vivancos’s employer after being laid off earlier that year. He was trying to “hustle to make ends meet,” selling small amounts of drugs.
He claimed that about two weeks before the killing, he was threatened by an unknown man who pulled a knife on him in a moving vehicle, which he claims he leapt from after a struggle.
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The day of the killing, Jolicoeur arranged to meet Vivancos at least three times, in between a child’s birthday party, a trip to the dentist and a “date night” with his partner.
He claimed Vivancos started to hit him with a metal object after he climbed into her car at Township Road 532A and Range Road 274. Jolicoeur — who told police he weighs over 200 pounds — claimed he disarmed Vivancos, who estimated he stood no taller than five -foot-eight.
Jolicoeur said the woman then threatened his family.
“I lost control ’cause I was scared,” he said. Jolicoeur claimed he only wanted to injure Vivancos so he would have time to escape before she called her employer de ella, a man he knew as “The Russian.” I have claimed he staged the scene to look like a robbery, throwing her purse out the window of his work van de ella.
“I was doing it in self-defence,” he insisted.
The trial continues.
