The mother of a Nanaimo man killed and dismembered by his partner in March 2020 had harsh words for the killer as she gave an impassioned victim impact statement in B.C. Supreme Court Friday.
“You’re a mother’s worst nightmare,” Emma Mantee, mother of murder victim Sidney Mantee, said Friday as she stood in the witness box and looked directly at Paris Laroche seated in the prisoner’s dock.
“You hit him with a hammer and it took him a few hours to die. That tore me to pieces.”
“Why didn’t you let him die without cutting him up?” she asked Laroche, who sat motionless.
During the trial, court heard Laroche hit 34-year-old Mantee in the head with a hammer and slit his throat while he slept. She kept his body in their apartment and dismembered his remains over months before disposing of body parts in Nanaimo city parks and in the ocean.
Laroche confessed to the killing to undercover officers who posed as family members wanting revenge against Mantee for abusing their fictitious sister and daughter.
Her defence lawyers told the court Mantee had threatened to kill her, and she lived in constant fear for her life, arguing a manslaughter charge would be more appropriate than a first-degree murder charge, which requires proven premeditation.
Laroche had been charged with first-degree murder, but Justice Robin Baird found her guilty of the lesser charge of second-degree murder in July 2024.
The case returned to court Friday for Crown prosecutor Nick Barber and defence lawyer Glen Orris to make sentencing submissions.
Barber suggested a life sentence without possibility of parole for 15 years, while Orris proposed 10 years.
Barber said Laroche had time in the course of events to reconsider what she was doing.
“After using a hammer to bludgeon Mr. Mantee, Ms. Laroche used a knife to kill him,” Barber said, noting Mantee could no longer respond after the hammer blow.
“She decided to go further and kill him with a knife.”
He called it a “very hands-on and personal attack.”
Then, he said, Laroche misled the police and Emma Mantee, a charade she kept up until she spoke with the undercover officers.
“‘I wanted it to be quick. I wanted him to go to sleep,’” Orris said Laroche told undercover officers.
And, Barber said, there has been no diagnosis of major mental health problems. Nor does Laroche have a criminal record.
“What Ms. Laroche has done here is very disturbing and an affront to the whole community,” Barber said.
Offered the opportunity to address the court, Orris said his client declined.
Baird said Laroche would be getting a life sentence, the only remaining issue being the period of parole ineligibility.
Baird stressed that a life sentence means that Laroche, while incarcerated or on parole, will be under supervision for the rest of her life.
The judge said he would pass sentence Feb. 6.
Mother’s statement
Emma Mantee said she saw a notice about her son being missing on Facebook. She said when she contacted police there was initially indifference, and was asked if Sidney was involved with gangs.
Emma Mantee said Laroche told her Sidney had moved to Victoria, something she disbelieved immediately.
Soon, she received a call saying parts of her son’s body had been found on two area islands.
“What you did to him was like skinning an animal,” Emma Mantee told Laroche. “You are the evilest person I know.”
She said her son was a champion pow-wow dancer.
“My life has changed,” she said. “I will never get texts from him again or hear his beautiful laughter again.”
“You have no conscience.”
–With files from Roxanne Egan-Elliott, Times Colonist
