Natalie Bartlett’s mother struggled with crippling grief in the months following her daughter’s gruesome, point-blank shooting death at the hands of her fiancé.
Already dealing with tips of insomnia and lethargy, Ann Truppe thought at one point she was having a heart attack so she went to the hospital to get tested.
“They told me my heart was fine – it was just broken,” she wrote in a victim-impact statement read Thursday in a Sarnia courtroom.
A half-dozen emotional statements were read during a lengthy sentencing hearing for Bartlett’s killer, who was handed life in prison with the possibility of parole after 15 years. Bartlett’s family members recalled the 39-year-old mother of two young girls as a beautiful, blue-eyed, boisterous woman who could light up a room.
“I always loved how she spoke to her girls and I could see how they loved their mother,” Bartlett’s aunt, Trudy Truppe, said.
Chelsie Abraham, the young girls’ aunt, told the court how the children – the eight and 11 year olds were sleeping upstairs the night their mother was murdered – have struggled in the year-plus since.
“Her daughters will be forever affected by this in ways that we don’t even know yet,” Bartlett’s brother, Thomas Bartlett, said.
Joseph DiCarlo, a 46-year-old avid hunter, fired the entire magazine of a loaded nine-millimeter handgun at their mother from close range inside their Lee Court home shortly after midnight on Jan. 14, 2021. Paramedics and police discovered her body riddled with at least eight bullets, but there were no signs of an altercation leading up to the sudden shooting and evidence pointed to Bartlett being on her phone while sitting in a chair at the time of the attack.
“This was an ambush,” assistant Crown attorney Suzanne LaSha said. “She was entirely defenseless.”
DiCarlo, an employee at his father’s construction firm, Trel of Sarnia Ltd., was arrested that night and charged with first-degree murder. More than a year later, DiCarlo pleaded guilty on March 23 to second-degree murder, but his sentencing was adjourned to Thursday to get a pre-sentence report.
With that report in hand, Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas finally sentenced DiCarlo to life in prison – the mandatory punishment – and ruled he’ll be eligible to apply for parole after 15 years. Defense lawyer Patrick Ducharme had suggested 10 — the minimum — to 12 years while LaSha asked for 18 years. The maximum is 25 years.
Thomas, though, pointed out that’s only when DiCarlo will first be eligible to apply and he may not be successful then — or ever.
Standing in the prisoner’s box wearing a gray suit jacket, white shirt and dark pants with a well-groomed beard and short hair, DiCarlo apologized to Bartlett’s family.
“I realize an apology means very little at this point,” he said as he read from a prewritten statement without a hint of emotion.
DiCarlo briefly detailed their seven-year relationship and explained how he loved her, but she contributed to both his best and his worst days.
Then he added: “Natalie did not deserve to die.”
“Clearly a significant understatement,” the judge responded.
LaSha, citing the pre-sentence report, said DiCarlo has shown very little insight into what he did and had even tried to blame Bartlett while turning himself into a victim.
“He has pled guilty, but he seems incapable of taking meaningful responsibility for his actions,” she said.
He also has a lengthy history of being jealous, controlling and manipulative and accused partners of infidelity, the report said. Yet DiCarlo was talking to another woman about moving in with him shortly after he proposed to Bartlett on Dec. 17, 2020.
Ducharme repeatedly said his client, who had no prior criminal record, was taking full responsibility and pleaded guilty immediately after the charge was reduced from first- to second-degree murder. He was also not doing well mentally or physically in the weeks leading up to the sudden shooting and was drinking heavily that night.
“He was struggling with life, for sure,” he said.
The couple briefly separated the previous fall and, despite the mid-December proposal, their relationship deteriorated quickly. Not speaking to each other and having a passive-aggressive fight about dirty dishes, they both ended up in the garage that Wednesday night — a place they used to regularly drink and hang out together.
While the children were sleeping, DiCarlo went up to the gun cabinet and safe in his upstairs bedroom, grabbed a loaded nine-millimetre handgun and came back downstairs. The entire magazine was used except for one bullet, which was left sitting on a stool next to the gun. DiCarlo called police at 12:26 am and said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice they needed an ambulance.
“An inexplicably violent offense,” Thomas said.
DiCarlo, who’s been in jail since his fiancée’s death as he was denied bail, had one year and four months of pre-trial custody credit. He can’t contact 13 people while he’s in prison and is banned from weapons.
The incident marked the second of four homicide investigations in Sarnia during a two-plus-week stretch in mid-January 2021.
Both families declined to comment after the judge’s decision.