Killer weeps as father describes her descent into mental illness
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — A former top Newfoundland athlete wept as her father and former boyfriend described her descent from a happy, healthy young woman to a murder suspect now on trial for killing a man with a hammer.
Anne Norris has admitted to killing Marcel Reardon, 46, in St. John’s in May 2016, but her lawyer claims the 30-year-old is not criminally responsible because of a mental disorder.
Her father, Gary Norris, is the province’s former top civil servant. Testifying this week at her first-degree murder trial, he described her as a confident, athletic and social child but after 2011 began to display strange behaviours.
He told Supreme Court in St. John’s that over a two- to three-month period in 2015, he found a baseball bat under her bed, a steak knife, a BB gun, and a box cutter in her purse.