KAMLOOPS, B.C. — A B.C. father who admitted to killing his three children is being cross-examined by the Crown about his motives.
Allan Schoenborn has described the slayings of 10-year-old Kaitlynne, eight-year-old Max and five-year-old Cordon while testifying at his trial on three counts of first-degree murder.
Defence lawyers argue the killings were the result of mental illness, and on Wednesday painted him as a loving but extremely paranoid father who believed the children were being abused.
Prosecutors contend the killings were an act of vengeance against the children’s mother, from whom Schoenborn was separated.
Crown lawyer Glenn Kelt asked Schoenborn about his accusations that his estranged spouse was cheating on him with at least three men, and Schoenborn said he felt angry, confused and certain she was lying to him.
He recounted several incidents where he accused Clarke of cheating on him, including with her own brother. He said she denied the accusations.
Kelt asked several times whether this made him feel angry.
“I feel angry, yeah, I feel angry because I can’t get to a truth,” he said.
Schoenborn told the judge, who is hearing the case without a jury, that he had in the past doubted that he was actually the father of his youngest son.
Schoenborn explained that while his two older children bore a remarkable physical likeness, his third wasn’t as close.
“It’s harder to accept Cordon as my son,” he said.
Schoenborn testified that in the 15 years he and Clarke were together he sometimes feared she was being “oppressed.”
“I think she’s being told what to do and how to act...by the drug dealers, by the scum.”
The children’s bodies were found by their mother in their Merritt, B.C., home on April 6, 2008.
The 41-year-old father recounted in his testimony Wednesday how he swung a slashed Kaitlynne to death with a cleaver, and suffocated the two boys.
He has testified that he believed the children were being sexually abused, and he felt he had to kill them rather than let them continue to suffer the abuse.