A Family Destroyed

"I hate what she did, but I still love my mom because I know she's mentally ill. I know she did it because she's sick."
"I hate that day."
"She didn't want to let me in the house. She said, 'Your father's dying'. I didn't believe her. She said it so often that you just brush it aside. It's like the little boy who cried wolf."
"I called out, 'Dad, Dad', and he didn't answer me, and at that point I got scared. I thought he was dead."
"She freaked out. She was very upset. She yelled that she had to protect his dignity, that they [paramedics] were infringing on his dignity."
"[I didn't want to believe] that my mom played some involvement in his death."
"She told me the reason he killed himself was because of me."
Alex Lane, 24, witness box, first-degree murder trial, Ottawa

Former Prescott councillor Nancy Lane is accused of first-degree murder in the death of her husband, Art Lane, in 2009.  Mike Carroccetto / Ottawa Citizen

The children of Nancy Lane, 51, and Art Lane who died at age 61, and about whom the trial on first-degree murder is proceeding in an Ottawa courtroom, have submitted a claim against the $200,000 life insurance policy on their father's life. There are four sons of the couple. The young man who was testifying at the Elgin Street courthouse was one of their offspring, an older son and daughter were from a previous marriage.

Kim Lane, the accused's step-daughter, was in disbelief when her step-mother informed her quietly after her father's death that he had been deeply depressed and determined to kill himself. The younger woman had great difficulty accepting that to have been the case. True, her father had health problems; diabetes and a heart condition, but she described at the trial how much her father had improved and that he was looking forward to a new job.

Their father, Art Lane, borrowed money from his older son out of necessity, and it brought him great shame. Husband and wife were experiencing very difficult financial episodes, so much so that testimony has it that there was scarcely any food in the house, and no money to pay for essential services; hydro had been turned off and there was no heat in the house.

Nancy Lane, mother of Alex, informed him that his father committed suicide out of embarrassment that he had informed his older brother from a previous marriage that the hydro had been cut off and there was no food in the refrigerator. The young man's deep-seated anger over his father's death led him to become a police informant, against his own mother.

When his father died in October of 2009, he felt his mother was behaving in a truly suspicious manner. Homicide detectives prevailed upon him to help them, and he agreed to wear a police wire in conversations with his mother, a Brockville nurse, former Prescott town councillor. The suspicion was that she wanted her ill husband to die so she could collect his insurance policy.

She had a liaison with a man half her age in the Dominican Republic and wanted to return there to be with him. This was a man she borrowed money for, to be able to send him thousands of dollars, despite the family's delicate financial situation. Alex Lane described on the witness stand having gone to his parents' home to look in on his father. His parents, though separated, still co-habited.

The door, always open, was locked when he arrived. When he knocked his mother responded but refused to allow him to enter. He went off and hours later returned to the house around 6:15 p.m. His mother was gone, the door was open, he walked inside to see his father in bed. His father was in fact, dead. He called 911 and paramedics, firefighters and OPP responded.

His mother by then had returned and refused to allow the paramedics to examine her husband. A month later the young man confronted his mother over his suspicions of her involvement in his father's death. And she told him he was himself responsible, having brought shame upon his father. He and his brother determined between them that until the matter of their father's death and its cause was fully cleared, they would stand in the way of seeing their mother benefit from the insurance policy.

The Crown alleges Art Lane was poisoned by his wife so she could collect on his life insurance and live with a man half her age in the Dominican Republic.