Loved It to Death

Donna Jones was a civil servant in Ottawa with her own home and a close circle of friends. In 2005 she met Mark Hutt, a player on her baseball team, and he soon moved into her house. Her friends grew alarmed at how he treated her and begged her not to marry him, but the wedding went ahead in September 2007.

Over the next two years the abuse grew worse. Hutt beat her, burned her and shot her with an air gun. On November 24, 2009, during an argument in the kitchen of their Barwell Avenue home, he poured boiling water over her, scalding about 40 percent of her body. He did not get her medical help. Instead he kept her in the basement while infection set in. On the morning of December 6 he finally called 911, saying she had stopped breathing, but the evidence showed she had been dead for hours.

The autopsy found nine fractured ribs and 29 air gun pellets in Donna’s body. A medical expert testified that with proper treatment she would almost certainly have survived. A police officer had been due to meet her about the abuse the day after she died. In June 2013 an Ottawa jury deliberated less than a day before finding Hutt guilty of first-degree murder, and he received the mandatory life term with no parole for 25 years.