FILICIDE: Ontario: Nadine Bernard sentenced to life in prison for murdering her own child

Jan 14 2011

 

An undated photograph of Jayden Bernard. His mother, Nadine Bernard, pleaded guilty to his murder on Friday, Jan. 14, 2011. She was sentenced to life in prison.

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Bob Mitchell Staff Reporter

On March 11, 2009, Nadine Bernard told a co-worker she would rather kill her baby boy than watch the baby’s father and wife raise him. She meant it. Less than three weeks later, Bernard hooked a hose to the exhaust of her car and put it into the rear window near her 18-month-old son, Jayden, then waited until the carbon monoxide fumes took his life. Bernard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to an automatic life prison sentence on Friday. Jayden was an innocent victim used as a pawn in a deteriorating custody battle, Crown prosecutor Sandra Caponecchia told a Brampton court. Eighteen months old, the baby was born as the result of an affair between Bernard, 34, and Richard Williams, her co-worker at Brinks Canada. Caponecchia described how Williams initially hid Jayden’s existence from his wife, Joy. After she discovered Jayden’s Christening card, Williams ended his affair. Bernard then blocked his attempts to see Jayden — whom he had visited when his wife, a pediatric nurse, was at work — so Williams went to court for access. He won partial custody, devastating Bernard. In addition to killing Jayden, she may have had other plans. When investigators searched her car, they found a handwritten letter. “This is just an early note to wish you and your family a wonderful Christmas. My Christmas gift to you this year is to take everything you love away from you. That includes your wife and kids,” Bernard wrote in the note, which appeared to be for Williams. “The kid outside of wedlock counts too. My plan to destroy you is working perfectly. I will not rest until my plan is executed . . . Payback is a bitch.” Bernard didn’t suffer from any mental illness. By all accounts, she was a hard worker at Brinks and a good mother to her two other children from a previous relationship, who are now 13 and 16. But she was suffering from a depressive episode when she murdered her son, court heard. After a Thanksgiving trip, Bernard made a false report to police that Joy Williams had left a threatening note on her car. After being denied access to Jayden, Williams got a court date for March 12, 2009 and access was granted for every Thursday and Sunday. Bernard refused. She quit her job on March 23. Three days later, instead of delivering Jayden as agreed, Bernard purchased a 10-foot black dishwasher hose and a roll of duct tape at a Home Hardware store and drove her son to the underground parking garage at 1 Robert Speck Dr. in Mississauga. Bernard and Williams worked in the building and Jayden also attended the daycare there. Bernard entered the parking garage at 9:36 a.m. and parked her car in a spot at 11:36 a.m. and connected the hose between the exhaust pipe and the rear window where Jayden’s car seat was located. Surveillance footage shows the car remained in its spot throughout the day and night until the next morning, when Bernard moved it to another spot, the hose no longer attached. She called 911 at 7:50 a.m. She declined to perform CPR after telling the operator her baby was dead. Bernard also tried but failed to kill herself. Police found her confused; she had urinated in her clothes. She told officers that she had fallen asleep with Jayden in her arms. A sticky note taped to the centre console of the car read: “Mom and Dad. I am sorry. This is the only way I could protect Jayden from Richard and Joy.” Defence lawyer John Struthers agreed the case was a tragedy for both families but insisted what happened that day was totally out of character. He said Williams misled her about his family situation. She believed her lover had had a vasectomy; her pregnancy was unplanned. For Williams, the heartache, anguish and guilt will never end. “What God allows this evil to be perpetrated on our children?” Williams said while delivering his victim impact statement. “Which God heard his silent cry for help while this monstrosity was set on him and didn't allow him to be saved? “What God allows such an angel to be surrounded by so much hate and evil until it suffocates him? “It breaks my heart to know that after four months of being denied access to my son by his mother, it was at a funeral home that I gave him his last hug.” Bernard didn’t apologize before Justice Bruce Durno passed his sentence. She declined to say anything at all. “She committed ultimate abuse of trust in killing an innocent, young, and defenceless child,” Durno said. As Williams put it: “The ultimate act of murder was to break the loving bond of a father and son . . . the pain is as raw as the very first time my son slept over in his tiny urn with the night light on in his room.” http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/article/922274--mother-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-for-murdering-her-own-child