HALIFAX — Nicholas Butcher has told his second-degree murder trial that he fatally stabbed Montreal-born yoga instructor Kristin Johnston by accident.
Butcher said Friday the pair had been sleeping in a bed inside her Halifax-area home on March 26, 2016, when he awoke to someone stabbing him in the throat.
He said it was dark and he couldn’t see who it was, and he was able to flip the person over and got ahold of the knife, and stabbed the person.
“I reached over and I turned on the lamp and the person that was beneath me was Kristin and she was dead,” Butcher, breaking down on the stand, told the Nova Scotia Supreme Court jury.
“I just killed her by accident, just not even knowing what’s going on.”
Butcher said he then tried to slit his wrist with the knife.
“I thought to myself, ‘I have to die too. I can’t live having killed someone,’” said Butcher, wearing a navy suit, white collared shirt and navy tie with diagonal stripes.
He said that didn’t work, so he went to the bathroom and retrieved a razor blade and slit both his wrists and laid down “to die.”
Butcher says it felt like an “eternity,” so he got a mitre saw and cut his right hand completely off.
He said he fell unconscious briefly, and when he woke up, “I could feel my hand, but it wasn’t there.”
Court has heard that Butcher called 911 and told the dispatcher he had killed his girlfriend, tried to kill himself and had cut off his hand.
Butcher told the court his “body” was moving towards the phone to call 911, but that his mind was telling him to lay down and die.
Butcher said the struggle was “really short.”
“Remarkably short. It was so quick. It happened so fast,” he said.
Medical examiner Dr. Marnie Wood testified that Johnston’s death was caused by sharp force injuries to her neck that led to a fatal amount of bleeding, and that the injuries were consistent with being caused by a single-edge blade.
Police have testified a steak knife was on the bed next to Johnston’s body.
Dr. Jonathan Trites, a head and neck surgeon, testified that along with Butcher’s amputated hand, he also had 13 sharp wounds on his neck.