MONTREAL — A Quebec woman was acquitted Monday in the 2009 deaths of her young daughters after a third trial on the same murder charges, leaving unanswered the question of who killed the girls.
Adele Sorella was convicted twice of murder in the girls' killings, in 2013 and 2019, following jury trials. Both of those decisions were overturned on appeal, however, resulting in a third trial that took place without witnesses and before a judge alone.
The victims, nine-year-old Amanda and eight-year-old Sabrina, were found dead in their playroom on March 31, 2009, lying side by side in their school uniforms. Their bodies bore no signs of violence and the cause of their deaths has never been determined, but the pathologist ruled out simultaneous natural deaths.
In her lengthy ruling delivered Monday, Quebec Superior Court Justice Myriam Lachance acquitted Sorella on two counts of murder, saying the entirety of the evidence was circumstantial and that the Crown had gaps in its theory. As well, the judge said she couldn't rule out an organized crime role in the killings, a theory the defence had put forward.
Prosecutors had argued that Sorella was the only one who could have killed the two girls, as she kept them home from school and was alone with them for more than four hours on the morning they died. Prosecutors theorized that she killed her daughters in a hyperbaric chamber, which had been used to treat juvenile arthritis in one of the girls.
But nothing linking the girls to the chamber was found. Lachance recognized that Sorella likely knew how to operate the chamber, but the judge said there was no evidence she knew how to use it to kill someone.
An expert testified that the girls would have had to be in the chamber for 90 minutes before the oxygen ran out and they asphyxiated. But the judge noted that there were no signs the girls had been given any substances that would have subdued them or kept them otherwise incapacitated inside the chamber.
As well, the judge said the girls' bodies would have had to have been carried downstairs to the playroom where they were found. Sorella's physical condition, including her balance issues, makes it improbable she carried them on her own, Lachance said.
Just before 2 p.m. on the day the girls died, Sorella left messages for her brother and brother-in-law to come to the home — and to make sure her mother didn't. Sorella was arrested the following day after crashing her SUV into a hydro pole; she said at the time she couldn't remember what had happened to her girls.
The Crown argued the crash was a suicide attempt, but Lachance concluded it was not. Sorella suffered from major depression and attempted suicide three times after her husband, a known gangster, vanished. But the car crash, the judge said, was inconsistent with Sorella's previous attempts to kill herself.
Her defence argued that organized crime members could be behind the deaths. Lachance said that theory was not far-fetched and left her with a reasonable doubt that Sorella killed the girls.
Sorella's husband and the girls' father was Giuseppe De Vito, a man with ties to the Italian Mafia who was on the lam at the time of the girls' deaths. He was sought by police in Operation Colisée, a major strike on the mob in 2006.
The judge noted that Sorella had told family she was concerned about her safety and that of the girls because her husband was going underground. According to her family, she became suspicious and paranoid.
But despite having been in hiding from the authorities, De Vito had access to the home, the judge said. He had also met his wife and children a few times while in hiding. The court also heard that an elaborate video camera surveillance system had been disconnected before the girls' deaths.
De Vito was arrested in 2010 and was killed by poisoning in a maximum-security prison in 2013.
Sorella was first convicted in 2013 of first-degree murder in the deaths of the girls, but that ruling was overturned on appeal in 2017. At her second trial in 2019, a jury convicted her on two counts of second-degree murder, but that decision was overturned after the Court of Appeal faulted the trial judge for refusing to accept the argument that organized crime could have played a part in the deaths.
Sorella was granted bail in July 2020 pending the outcome of the appeal and third trial.
After the ruling, prosecutor Marie-Claude Bourassa said her thoughts were with the two young victims who died 14 years ago. She said the prosecution service would study the decision before commenting further.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 18, 2023.
Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press
