*Caution: This story contains graphic details some readers may find upsetting.
GUELPH – Passing through an enclosed porch, a red door led into the main residence. A bay window is to the right, and to the left, dried blood ran the length of a hallway leading to the master bedroom.
It was there, lying face-down in a pool of blood, 74-year-old George Gemin was found on Canada Day just over three years ago.
The blood was George’s own. His head had been smashed with a ball-peen hammer and his neck strangled with a red nylon dog leash.
Blood was seemingly everywhere, according to photo evidence and testimony given during a jury trial that began in Guelph Superior Court on Sept. 11.
The trial was not a “who-done-it” – George’s 34-year-old grandson Kyle Gemin confessed days later to having killed his grandfather the night of June 30.
It was whether Kyle intended to kill his elderly grandfather that became the central argument for defence and prosecution lawyers.
Crown prosecutors Robert Butler and Andrew Allen barely mentioned that Kyle suffered from a mental illness, his defence lawyer Cydney Israel told the jury.
Even those who had minimal interaction with Kyle seemed to notice something was off, court heard.
“The focus of this case is whether Kyle’s mental illness affected his ability to match his intent to his action,” Israel said.
The defence argued the Crown’s case was “an attempt to bookend a snapshot of time.” The Crown failed to show “the whole picture,” Israel said.
Kyle could certainly appear normal, court heard; even calm, reasonable and sensible.
But out of sight were his disordered thoughts, Israel said, adding “paranoia and hallucinations stalk Kyle’s psyche.”
“We know that Kyle both exhibited normal, quiet, cooperative behaviour, and delusional, paranoid, feces-smearing belligerent behaviours,” Israel said, referring to an incident during Kyle’s pre-trial custody at Milton’s Maplehurst Correctional Complex.
The evidence of psychosis and long-standing mental health issues leading up to, and during the killing, was overwhelming, court heard.
The defence argued evidence raised doubt about whether Kyle intended to kill his grandfather, or was reckless with this actions on that Tuesday night.
“In this case, we aren’t even suggesting a not-guilty finding; we’re submitting to you that the appropriate charge [Kyle] should be convicted of is one of manslaughter,” Israel told the jury.
The essential difference between second-degree murder — what Kyle was charged with and pleaded not guilty to — and manslaughter lies in the intention behind an action.
Causing a death and doing it unlawfully are enough for a manslaughter conviction, but to secure a conviction on a murder charge, the Crown is required to prove the death was intentional.
In March and April of 2020, police were twice called to George’s home in the tightly packed trailer and mobile home community of Maple Leaf Acres.
The park sits at a dead-end road, near Belwood Lake, about a 10-minute drive northeast from Fergus, past farm fields and estate properties obscured by rows of conifers.
It’s the sort of place where people stare if they don’t recognize you, and wave when they do.
Golf carts are used to navigate narrow gravel roads with street names like Friendly Boulevard, passing by signs with family names indicating who’s living in the homes and trailers with names like “Fun Finder” and “Freedom Express.”
It’s the sort of place where it would be almost impossible to not hear the commotion next door.
Kyle had moved into a mobile home at the park with his grandfather, who worked as a tool-and-die maker, until his gruesome death.
The two didn’t always get along, and on the second visit by police in April, court heard George had accused Kyle of assaulting him during an argument.
Though George didn’t want to make a formal complaint, he told police Kyle’s mental health issues were escalating, and that his grandson needed to be removed and calmed down before returning to the home.
The interaction was brief; Kyle never was removed.
The officer made a referral to a mental health crisis team, but notes from a crisis coordinator suggest Kyle ultimately declined help.
George decided to sell the home, court heard, with plans to move away from Kyle and start a new chapter.
But the move would never come.
The blue and white “for sale” sign was still in the window when George was found by police on July 1, 2020 – a bloody ball-peen hammer lying next to him, his skull fractured, and his left ear nearly severed from his head.
“Maybe what I did wasn’t really a homicide, maybe it was self-defence,” Kyle told police in a six-hour interview later recorded at the Rockwood detachment.
Portions of the interview were read aloud from transcripts and played for the jury on video screens.
“He reached into the drawer to pull a knife and I’m pretty sure I took, I took all the whoever looked I left the red pot, teapot was down on the ground,” Kyle told police in disjointed, rambling speech.
“I knew what he was doing,” Kyle begins to say in an expletive-filled diatribe about his grandfather, before concluding, “and I think he was trying to kill me.”
In various conversations at Maplehurst and with police, including when he was initially arrested at the side of a road after reportedly rummaging through mailboxes, Kyle communicates in verbal onslaughts where fact is married with fiction, and details range from the grounded and mundane to the absurd and obscene.
The defence relied on Kyle’s non sequiturs about his imaginary Hungarian prostitute girlfriend Sabi, or the zombie apocalypse, or that his blood was the fountain of youth, in an attempt to sow doubt about Kyle’s statements.
“Beyond the fact that he killed George, which we accept, he is the most unreliable reporter … you simply cannot believe everything he says beyond a reasonable doubt, because much of what he says makes no sense,” the defence stated, referring to him at different points as “crazy” and “clearly bananas.”
Crown attorney Robert Butler argued Israel had exaggerated her client’s mental health problems, and said Israel’s “terrible spin” was “not a thoughtful approach to the evidence.”
Much of what the defence focused on, Butler contended, was blown out of proportion.
“To paint him out as this raving individual is not accurate,” Butler said.
The prosecutor suggested Kyle displayed intellect in attempting to diminish his responsibility, when he provided police with five varying interpretations of what may have happened that night.
“What does a man intend to do when they hit a guy 15 to 20 times in the head, fracturing his skull … he severed his ear, he broke his face,” the prosecutor said.
Court heard that Kyle punched his grandfather, sprayed him in the eyes with bug spray, choked him, hit him with a kettle, strangled him with a dog leash, and upon hearing him struggling to breathe, used a ball-peen hammer to end his life.
Butler noted Kyle at one point considered employing a piece of hickory wood to use against his grandfather, but opted instead for the more-lethal hammer.
“He knows this other thing is more consistent with killing you, so that intent is clearly there,” Butler argued.
Once George was wounded, Kyle didn’t call for help, court heard.
“He put him out of his misery,” Butler said. “At that moment … Mr. Gemin decides to kill him; he has the intent to kill him.
“There is only one, true verdict in this case, I’m going to suggest to you, and that is murder.”
By 7:20pm on Oct. 19, the jury returned from an afternoon and evening of deliberations.
Nearing the end of a month-long trial, Kyle was found guilty of second degree murder.
Israel asked for the jury to be polled by the judge and each of the 12 jurors agreed with the verdict.
It was at that moment jurors learned of Kyle Gemin’s future, with the judge bound to sentence him to life behind bars.
“That is the sentence I must, and will, impose in this case,” Superior Court Justice Gordon Lemon said.
Kyle has returned to Maplehurst where he will remain until a sentencing hearing.
He is expected back in court in December, when submissions from lawyers will be made.
The timeline for Kyle to be eligible for parole has yet to be determined by Lemon, who accepted recommendations from the jury.
The judge can impose a timeline ranging from 10 to 25 years before Kyle can have his case heard before the Parole Board of Canada.
Because Kyle will serve a lifetime sentence, he won’t be eligible for statutory release, a legal provision allowing most offenders to serve the final third of their sentence outside of prison.
