N.B. woman dismisses Romeo Cormier’s testimony
Posted June 29, 2011 3:16 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A New Brunswick woman dismissed testimony from her alleged abductor that they plotted together to fatally shoot her husband, saying instead that if she had access to a gun, it would be Romeo Cormier who would not be “sitting there today.”
The Crown recalled the woman to the witness stand Wednesday after Cormier, who is charged with kidnapping her and holding her against her will for nearly a month, concluded his testimony earlier in the day.
The 55-year-old woman — whose identity is protected by a publication ban — said there was never a plan to kill her husband, contrary to Cormier’s testimony.
“That never happened. My husband and I have a great relationship,” she told Crown lawyer Annie St. Jacques.
“Why would I kill my husband for something like Romeo Cormier?”
Cormier, 63, sat quietly taking notes and showed no visible reaction to her testimony.
He testified this week that he met the woman in 1993 in Newfoundland while he was a courier.
He said they later bumped into each other on a number of occasions in Moncton between 2006 and January 2010, describing her as an “acquaintance” of his.
He told the Court of Queen’s Bench that she enlisted him in a plot to kill her husband on Feb. 26, 2010. He said they went to her home that night and were looking in the bedroom window when the woman somehow cut her hand and a car pulled into the driveway.
Cormier said they decided to call off the plan and return to his apartment.
On Wednesday, the woman rejected Cormier’s version of the events of that night.
“That never happened,” she said.
The woman said it wouldn’t have been possible to look into the bedroom’s two windows because they were “eight feet and nine feet off the ground.”
Cormier told the court he sometimes played consensual sex games with the woman that involved tying each other up, saying on at least one occasion he used a sock and duct tape to gag the woman.
He said she was free to come and go and had access to a variety of weapons in the one-room basement apartment, including a .22-calibre handgun which he said he taught her how to use.
“There was never no gun in Romeo Cormier’s room and he never showed me how to use a gun,” the woman said.
“If that ever happened, he wouldn’t be sitting there today.”
A gun was never found by police. When questioned about that in court earlier this week, Cormier suggested the gun may have been stolen.
The woman testified last week that she did not know Cormier until he allegedly grabbed her on Feb. 26, 2010, at knifepoint outside the Moncton mall where she worked.
She said she was held captive in Cormier’s home for 26 days until she escaped while he was out at a food bank.
A neighbour and a courier truck driver testified that the woman appeared scared when they saw her run into the street wearing just a T-shirt, underwear and socks on the morning of March 24, 2010.
The courier drove her to an RCMP detachment in Moncton.
A police officer testified she had a sock and a piece of duct tape attached to her neck.
Cormier has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping, forcible confinement, sexual assault, assault with a weapon, theft and uttering death threats.
Crown lawyer Marc Savoie asked if Cormier had a criminal record, which prompted the accused to begin listing a number of offences including armed robbery, drug possession and theft, dating back to 1984.
At one point, Cormier began giving specific details concerning a liquor store robbery, but Judge Zoel Dionne interrupted.
“You need to control the witness,” Dionne told the Crown.
“I will do my best,” Savoie replied.
Cormier said he had spent much of his life in conflict with the law. Savoie then asked him whether he had lived a “life of dishonesty.”
“Yes,” Cormier replied.
The trial is adjourned until Monday for closing arguments.
