Alleged Serial Killer: I Killed 4, but Don't Blame Me

An accused Canadian serial killer has admitted to killing four Indigenous women but claims he is not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder. Jeremy Skibicki, 37, had pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of 24-year-old Rebecca Contois, 39-year-old Morgan Harris, 26-year-old Marcedes Myran, and an unidentified woman given the name Buffalo Woman, and was expected to face a jury trial in Manitoba this week before his lawyers relayed the confession on Monday. "At this point, the accused is now admitting that he killed all four women," Crown prosecutor Chris Vanderhooft told Manitoba's highest trial court, per the Guardian.

Prosecutors in Winnipeg have since agreed to a judge-only trial to begin as soon as Wednesday and last a month. "We are no longer concerned with proving the accused has committed these offenses, but rather whether he is criminally responsible," Vanderhooft said, per APTN. The development means a 2022 video confession, part of a 20-hour interrogation of Skibicki, is no longer under a publication ban, the CBC reports. According to the outlet, detectives were asking questions about Contois' disappearance when Skibicki suddenly confessed to killing three more women. Detective Greg Allan, to testify Wednesday, told the court he had no knowledge of the other murders until that moment.

Skibicki, who claimed to suffer from borderline personality disorder and methamphetamine addiction, said he strangled, choked, or drowned his victims, most of whom he met near Winnipeg homeless shelters. Buffalo Woman was killed on March 15, 2022, followed by Harris on May 1, Myran on May 4, and Contois on May 15, police say. Skibicki confessed to performing sex acts on their bodies before dismembering some of the victims and disposing of their remains in garbage bins. Contois' partial remains were found at Winnipeg's Brady Road landfill soon after her death. The remains of the three other victims are believed to be in the Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg, still to be searched, per APTN. (More serial killer stories.)