Niagara winemaker’s killer found not criminally responsible

The killer of renowned Niagara winemaker Paul Pender has been found not criminally responsible for his actions on the night of the fatal stabbing in February 2022.

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In a Cayuga courtroom on Wednesday, Superior Court Justice Michael Bordin said there was “substantial evidence” that an underlying mental disorder caused Bradley House to stab Pender, who opened the door of his cottage near Lake Erie to help a stranger in obvious distress, only to end up dead minutes later.

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“There is substantial evidence that Mr. House’s internal makeup was what led to the psychosis,” said Bordin, who called Pender’s death “a Good Samaritan’s nightmare.”

House, a 33-year-old Hamilton man, had pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.

A ruling of not criminally responsible, or NCR, is not an acquittal, as House was found to have caused Pender’s death.

But instead of going to jail, House will be remanded to a secure psychiatric facility and be subject to the supervision of the Ontario Review Board, a body of legal and medical experts that annually reviews the risk posed by offenders deemed not criminally responsible for their actions — and decide what level of freedom they should enjoy.

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“I find that Mr. House continues to pose an ongoing risk to the public,” Bordin said while delivering the reasoning for his verdict, which took over two hours to read aloud.

The judge referred to Section 16 of the Criminal Code, which says offenders are not criminally responsible for acts committed “while suffering from a mental disorder that rendered the person incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act or omission, or of knowing it was wrong.”

Bordin was persuaded that an underlying mental illness – thought to be schizophrenia – caused House’s psychotic break the day he killed Pender, not the cocaine and oxycodone that House, a regular drug user, had taken earlier that day.

In his judgment, Bordin recounted evidence of House’s paranoia and hallucinations, which included seeing what House described as “spirits” and believing he was being followed and spied on.

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House’s delusions came to a head the night Pender died, when House bolted from the construction site in Selkirk where he had been working and charged into a snowstorm, falling down an embankment and grabbing a twig to dislodge a camera he thought was implanted in his head .

Guided by the testimony of two forensic psychiatrists called as expert witnesses, Bordin accepted House’s claim that he has no memory of running to Pender’s cottage and stabbing the winemaker with a kitchen knife House had grabbed from the counter to dig out the imaginary twig from his ear .

That House’s delusions “did intensively over time” before the killing and persisted months afterward – continuing even when free of the influence of narcotics, and while House was taking anti-psychotic medication – suggests the presence of a “disease of the mind” that made him “not capable of knowing that what he did was morally wrong,” Bordin said.

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“Paul Pender sought to help Mr. House, but he became incorporated into Mr. House’s delusion,” the judge said,

Members of the Pender family were in the courtroom but declined to speak with reporters after the verdict was handed down. Crown prosecutor Gabe Settimi also declined to comment.

Defense co-counsel Beth Bromberg said justice was best served by an NCR finding in this case.

“He’ll get the help he needs, and that ultimately provides the best protection for the public – and hopefully one day will return him to his family,” Bromberg told reporters outside the courthouse.

The review board “will be very careful to ensure public safety,” she added, noting a guilty verdict would have denied access to comprehensive psychiatric and drug treatment for House and increased his risk to reoffend.

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While testing, House said he was “extremely sorry” for “destroying” Pender’s family and causing pain to House’s wife and their five young children.

“It’s clear that he’s still shocked by what happened and still extremely remorseful and devastated by the whole thing,” Bromberg said.

Bordin’s ruling should provide some answers to residents started by the randomness of what she described as a “terrifying incident,” she added.

“I think the public will be wondering, how could this happen? Was this pure evil that caused this to happen? How could it be?” Bromberg said.

“And the answer is mental illness. Psychosis. It’s not that someone was bad, it’s that someone was ill.”

Bordin granted a request from the Crown to order House not to communicate with Pender’s widow, Allison Findlay, his children and other members of his family, along with the neighbors who witnessed the attack.

Pender was an award-winning winemaker with a “gentle and kind way” who “packed so much living into one life,” according to his obituary, which described the family’s lakeside cottage in Haldimand County as “his favorite place.”

JP Antonacci is a Local Journalism Initiative Reporter based at the Hamilton Spectator. The initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

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