MANDEL: Honeymoon is over for married couple on trial for murder

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The romance between these two accused killers seems to be definitely over as the husband and wife pointed fingers at each other in nasty closing submissions at their Hamilton murder trial.

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As the trial drew to a close, Oliver Karafa admitted for the first time — through his lawyer — that he killed cocaine dealer Tyler Pratt, 39, and shot his pregnant girlfriend Jordyn Romano, during their meeting in a Stoney Creek warehouse parking lot on Feb. 28, 2021

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But Karafa maintained that it was not a planned execution to get out of the money he owed Pratt — despite what his co-accused — and wife — Lucy Li has told the court, and he should be found guilty of second-degree murder — not first.

Both Karafa and Li have pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and attempted murder.

Romano, 29, miraculously survived being shot while sitting in her Range Rover but lost her baby. As the star prosecution witness, the former stripper told the court she and Pratt had fronted $470,000 to Karafa in a scheme to sell COVID personal protective equipment in Europe and Pratt was expecting to get paid back on March 1.

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Instead, on the day before, the couple agreed to meet their friends at an industrial warehouse for sale to see if the property could be used for a potential joint marijuana grow-op. But the Crown says they walked into an ambush — 31 minutes later, Pratt had been shot six times and left to die.

Karafa, 28, and Li, 25, fled after the shootings, abandoning Li’s Mercedes containing a blonde wig and bloody clothing in the Muskokas, then catching a cab to Union Station where they travelled to Montreal and then flew to Europe. They were ultimately arrested in Budapest a few months later.

Li testified in her own defence, telling the jury she wasn’t part of any murder plot and had only driven her husband to the meeting because his other ride fell through. She insisted she was a “football field” away when she heard the shots, and Karafa initially told her he’d had to fire in self-defence, and they needed to be on the run, so Pratt’s gangland friends didn’t retaliate.

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Later, while staying in a remote village in Hungary a month before their arrest, Li claimed Karafa confessed that he’d planned to kill the couple all along before they discovered his PPE business was a flop. “It was him or me,” she recalled him telling her.

Karafa’s lawyer Peter Zaduk accused Li of concocting a “supposed confession” in her relentless campaign to distance herself from the shootings and cast her husband as a cheating liar who uprooted her life.

“Throughout this trial, they have attempted to do everything they can to demonize Oliver Karafa in your eyes to make you hate him. It’s been relentless,” he charged of Li and her lawyer.

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Zaduk did some of the same mudslinging himself — reminding the jury that Li is the daughter of an “enormously wealthy” mother from Markham, who even offered to fly her and the arresting police officer back to Canada on a private jet. The jury has heard that unlike Karafa, she waived extradition.

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Karafa wasn’t planning to kill Pratt, his lawyer insisted, but stall him until the PPE profits came in to tame a “volatile, angry, muscular, violent international drug dealer” whose close associate had just been gunned down in Vancouver.

In his closing address, Li’s lawyer, Liam O’Connor, denied trying to demonize Karafa: “He does not need any help,” he told the jury.

Unlike her husband, he said, Li was many things — but not a killer.

“Lucy Li is a distinctly flawed individual,” her lawyer admitted. “She is naive, she is superficial, she is juvenile, she is entitled, she is immature, sometimes vacuous, irresponsible. She has terrible taste in men — not yet a crime — she is full of moral failings.

“Perhaps the stupidest person in the room. Or the planet,” O’Connor added, repeating the words his client used to describe her belief in Karafa. “But she is not someone who murders people or assists in murdering people.”

That would be her co-accused, he insisted. “Karafa is a guy who takes his wife to a murder, a murder he knew obviously he was going to commit.”

Safe to say, there’s no love lost between these two.

The Crown’s closing submission is scheduled for Wednesday.

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