Witnesses are testifying in court today about the murder two years ago of a former Red Deer city councillor.
Timothy Bruce Guilbault, 58, was beaten to death on Nov. 3, 2012, at a family cabin in Red Lodge Estates, located along the Red Deer River west of Bowden.
His son, Aaron Timothy Guilbault, 33, is on trial for first-degree murder before Justice Monica Bast in the Red Deer Court of Queen’s Bench, represented by defence counsel Patty MacNaughton.
The question before Bast is not whether Aaron Guilbault killed his father, but whether his mental state was such that he cannot be held criminally responsible for his father’s death, said MacNaughton and Crown prosecutor Maurice Collard.
In an agreed statement of facts presented at the outset of the trial, Collard said Tim Guilbault was attacked after arriving at the cabin to meet his son.
He was hit at least twice with an aluminum baseball bat and left lying face down on the floor, inside the entry to the cabin.
Red Deer schoolteacher Caroline Guilbault fought through tears as she told the court about discovering her father’s body two days later.
She said she went to the doorstep that leads to the basement and had to give her eyes a moment to adjust after coming in from the bright sunlight.
She saw something that she mistook at first for a duffle bag.
“It was my Dad, and he was laying face down on the floor. There was blood everywhere.”
Guilbault testified that she went outside, where her fiance was waiting, to call 911. She was on the phone with a dispatch operator when she decided to go back in to see if father was still alive.
She reached down to feel an exposed area of his back.
“He was so, so cold. I knew then that he wasn’t with us any more.”
Paul Mansell of Red Deer, who became acquainted with Aaron Guilbault in college, said the accused called him, distraught, on the day of Tim’s death.
During a 90-minute discussion that night, Aaron talked about his troubles with his father and how Tim had interfered with his efforts to connect with a woman he described as a soul mate, sent by God.
Mansell said he suggested to Aaron that he get away from his father for a while.
“He told me he would never be with able to be with his soul mate as long as his dad was alive. He told me that be killed him that morning.”
Aaron Guilbault has been in custody since his arrest in Stettler two days after his father’s death.
He was declared fit to stand trial after a psychiatric assessment a few months after his arrest.
A senior employee of Nova Chemicals, Tim Guilbault was elected to Red Deer city council in 1986. He resigned from council later, after accepting a new job in Calgary,