‘Tragic offence’ — Windsor spouse killer pleads guilty to manslaughter

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A Windsor man who had previously served stints in jail for assaulting his common law wife confessed in court on Wednesday to stabbing her to death last year.

Originally charged with first-degree murder, Wellington Charles Holland, 63, pleaded guilty this week to manslaughter in the Nov. 14, 2023, killing of Janice Madison, 67, in their shared Remington Park home.

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“This is a tragic offence,” Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas said. He described it as a case of “intimate partner violence … that offends us all.”

The judge ordered a pre-sentence report on the offender and set a Jan. 13 sentencing date.

Police were called to a disturbance at a house in the 1400 block of Southdale Drive in the city’s Remington Park neighbourhood at about 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2023.

Responding officers discovered a 67-year-old woman, Janice Madison, suffering from stab wounds. She was transported to hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Holland, arrested at the scene, was described as extremely intoxicated. His blood alcohol content at the time of the offence was estimated at between 260 and 335 mg/100 ml of blood — about triple the legal limit — according to an agreed statement of facts read in court Wednesday by assistant Crown attorney Bryan Pillon.

According to that statement, Holland told two sisters who initially arrived at the scene, and then to officers who were alerted: “She just kept yelling and yelling, and I just couldn’t stand it anymore.”

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Madison was discovered curled up on the floor in an upstairs bedroom. She had wounds to her hands and stabbing cuts to the ear and abdomen.

According to one of the sisters, he was downstairs on the couch, “the drunkest we’ve ever seen,” crying and slurring his words and having urinated himself.

Given the “plausible defence of intoxication,” Holland’s lawyer Robert DiPietro Jr. later told reporters, it was the judge who had suggested a possible guilty plea to the lesser offence of manslaughter during pre-trial discussions.

Holland had been committed to stand trial on a second-degree murder charge. Murder convictions carry an automatic life sentence. There is no minimum punishment for manslaughter convictions (although it is four years where a firearm is used), but the maximum is imprisonment for life.

Pillon and DiPietro told reporters there won’t be a joint position on a suggested penalty, but agreed they would be asking for a prison sentence of somewhere between 10 and 15 years.

Family members of the victim were in court Wednesday. The judge asked for victim impact statements ahead of the January hearing, where they will be read into the record.

Holland has a previous criminal record, including convictions in November 2019 and twice in February 2022 for assaulting Madison, with whom he’d been in an intimate relationship for about four years, including the last three in their shared Remington Park home. He was also convicted on a mischief charge related to Madison in September 2022.

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