MANDEL: Triple killer Cory Fenn should spend at least 72 years in prison

Article content

For his savage butchery, a life sentence should really mean life.

Article content

For the vicious murders of his girlfriend Krissy Pejcinovski and her teenaged children Roy and Vana, the Crown wants Cory Fenn to spend 72 years in prison before being eligible for parole.

Essentially, the rest of his days, for the triple killer who is now 33. It’s the least he deserves.

Fenn, who blamed a cocaine-induced psychosis, was found guilty last month of three counts of second-degree murder in the brutal March 14, 2018 rampage in Pejcinovski’s Ajax home after she tried to end their rocky relationship.

He faces an automatic life sentence with a minimum 10 years before parole.

“Each one of those lives deserves justice,” cried Krissy’s boss, Sherry Robinson, during Fenn’s sentencing hearing Friday.

Fenn broke 17 of Krissy’s ribs, smashed her jaw and cheekbone and tried to strangle her before getting a knife to stab her until she was dead.

Article content

He strangled her son Roy, a 15-year-old rising hockey star with the Don Mills Flyers, in his bed. And he attacked Vana, 13, when she ventured to her basement apartment, slashing her throat, stabbing her multiple times in her chest and stomach and then stuffing her under her bed. She died 12 hours later in hospital.

But Fenn believes he’s the one aggrieved.

In one of many bizarre tirades that eventually got him ejected from the courtroom to watch from the holding cells, the killer told Ontario Superior Court Justice Howard Leibovich that he’s found God and is going to sue for the “nightmare” of incarceration during the pandemic.

“I’m a king, I’m a sovereign king. I’m seeking restitution,” he declared. “Anything I did is history, that history is erased.”

Article content

Tell that to Victoria Pejcinovski, who only escaped her family’s massacre because the 16-year-old slept at her dad’s house that blood-soaked night.

She has tried to drown her survivor’s guilt by self-destructive smoking and drinking.

“There are no words to describe the pain of losing someone. Losing all three of three at eleven was unimaginable,” she wrote in her victim impact statement. “I didn’t want to live without them.”

Her mother worked so hard at giving them a better life, her brother was so kind-hearted and her sister was her best friend.

“Never in a million years did I think that she would die in my arms,” Victoria said of her younger sister.

During another emotional statement, Fenn had the gall to interrupt again when the children’s paternal aunt described having to buy a scarf for the funeral to hide the knife wounds he’d inflicted on Vana’s neck.

Article content

“Don’t blame me, lady,” he yelled. “Blame the Queen, not me. I’ve been set up … Guys, I didn’t kill nobody.”

The judge had Fenn removed as more pain was shared in that Oshawa courtroom.

Krissy’s boss had gone to her home when she didn’t show up for work as a spa aesthetician. Breathing heavily and with blood on her foot, Fenn answered the door and told her Krissy was sick.

He had likely stabbed Vana just minutes earlier.

Robinson now suffers from PTSD, panic attacks and crippling guilt. Krissy often sought her advice from her, but not when it came to Fenn.

“Could I have done something that would have made her listen?” she asked the court.

“Then the incapacitating guilt that has been the hardest to treat: The ten minutes. That ten minutes,” she sobbed, “that made the difference of saving Vana if I’d only got there sooner. That guilt still haunts me.”

Article content

Crown Michael Newell called for 22 years before parole for Krissy’s murder and 25 years each for Roy and Vana, to be served consecutively and not concurrently, for the “long, brutal and gratuitous” violence against three vulnerable victims.

Krissy “was naked, alone and defenceless. He was a massive powerful man,” Newell said. “She must have been terrified and in terrible pain.”

And why kill those innocent children?

Fenn’s amicus curiae, a lawyer appointed to assist the self-represented killer, urged the judge to hold off on a sentencing decision until the Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of consecutive periods of parole ineligibility, which is being argued next week in the case of Quebec City mosque shooter Alexandre Bissonnette.

Leibovich reserved his decision until April 5.

In the meantime, Fenn asked him for a law dictionary.

“I want to get my law degree while I’m locked up,” Fenn said.

Hopefully, he’ll have 72 years behind bars to work on it.

[email protected]