A jury has convicted a plumber’s assistant of suffocating an 83-year-old widow during a botched burglary in search of Nazi daggers, then burning her body to hide the evidence.
Richard Mackenzie, 36, faces an automatic life sentence with no eligibility for parole for 25 years after a jury came back Tuesday night with a verdict of guilty of first-degree murder after almost two days’ deliberations.
With its verdict, the jury apparently found that Mackenzie made a conscious decision not to remove a duct tape gag that he had placed over Ann Zeidenberg’s mouth to silence her screams, or that he stopped her from removing it herself as she panicked and threw up.
Defence lawyer Lorne Sabsay had argued that his client, who did not take the stand, was not the killer. In fact, it was likely that two other intruders had killed Zeidenberg, Sabsay said.
But Crown prosecutor Hank Goody alleged that it was Mackenzie who gagged Zeidenberg, then covered her body with debris and lit it on fire in the basement of her bungalow on March 18, 2004.
Mackenzie had been part of a crew doing drain work the previous September on Zeidengberg’s home, north of Bathurst St. and Eglinton Ave. W., when he stole a Nazi dagger from her late husband’s collection of war memorabilia, Goody alleged.
Her family, which is Jewish, had sold most of the collection, but was storing the dagger and four similar weapons in the basement for fear of them getting into the wrong hands.
The Crown alleged Mackenzie unsuccessfully tried to sell the stolen dagger to an acquaintance before eventually selling it to an antique dealer.
He came back looking to steal the other four – which the family had already disposed of – and Zeidenberg, a retired teacher, likely caught him in the act, Goody said.
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