MANDEL: 'Voices' commanded him to kill his husband, court hears

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They were a power couple — Rupert Brown was a respected doctor; Leahain Malcolm was a trained lawyer and investigator — and after meeting in Jamaica in 2016, they wed in the U.S. two years later and came to Canada in 2020 to claim refugee status.

Likely because their gay union would face persecution back home.

While they awaited the outcome of their asylum claim here, Brown wasn’t working as a doctor and Malcolm had applied to be accredited as a lawyer by the Law Society of Ontario.

But in January 2021, the LSO turned him down. Two months later, Brown, 38, was found stabbed to death in their Eglinton Ave. W. walk-up and Malcolm, 28, was under arrest for murder.

At the opening of his judge-alone trial, where Malcolm has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, the couple’s downstairs neighbour recalled being woken from her sleep at 3:25 a.m. on Feb. 27, 2021 and hearing a man’s voice from the third floor above her, begging, “Help, help, help.”

A short time later, Malcolm calmly called 911.

“I was hearing voices and I killed my spouse,” he said on the recording played for Superior Court Justice Heather McArthur. “I think he’s dead.”

He could then be heard slapping him to check.

The ambulance operator asked how it happened. “No, when I get a lawyer, I’ll tell you what happened,” Malcolm replied.

He was then asked about his spouse’s condition. “I don’t know, I’m not a doctor,” he said. “There’s a lot of blood.”

He told 911 that he’d used a kitchen knife but he wasn’t holding it. “It’s on his body.”

When the ambulance operator tried to give him instructions on how to stop the bleeding, Malcolm interrupted him. “He’s dead.”

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The 911 call taker asked what the voices had told him. “They said he was a demon and he was going to kill me,” Malcolm explained.

She asked if he had any mental health issues. “Yes I do. I’m going to hang up.”

He then stopped answering their questions.

Meanwhile, Toronto Police Const. Kevin Moore had been dispatched at 3:27 a.m. and arrived about five minutes later at unit 304.

He found a gruesome sight.

The officer walked into the blood-soaked apartment and agreed with defence lawyer Andrea VanderHeyden that his first words were “Oh, Jesus.” He then warned the arriving firefighters about what they were about to see.

“It’s pretty bad,” Moore told them.

“We can agree it’s a pretty bad scene, all things considered, right?” the lawyer asked. “It’s a little bid disturbing, right.”

The 22-year veteran agreed that it was.

Horrific photos shown in court — but not to family members watching on Zoom from Jamaica — show the site of what looks like a massacre. Blood is smeared everywhere in the bedroom: on the parquet floor, the radiator, the yellow walls, the bed’s grey sheets, and the wooden dresser.

Brown’s body lay on his back with “numerous” stab wounds, a bread knife and chef’s knife beside him. Also on the floor were torn and blood-stained documents from a cognitive behaviour therapy group at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

Police found several prescription pill bottles dispensed to Malcolm, including aripiprazole, used for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. In the kitchen was a stockpot that oddly contained scissors and three knives, apparently from an empty butcher’s block on the counter.

And on the living room window ledge was a textbook on criminal law.

The aspiring Ontario lawyer answered the door, in a tank top and shorts stained with blood, and was immediately handcuffed. Moore agreed the accused killer appeared calm but didn’t respond when asked repeatedly if he understood he was under arrest for murder.

Instead, all he asked was, “Is he dead?”

The trial continues.

mmandel@postmedia.com