Two men were found guilty of first-degree murder in the 2015 killing of Nicholas Brophy Nov. 19 in a Winnipeg courtroom.
A jury convicted Mark Bradley Thomas, 22, and Zach Edwin Linklater, 24, for murdering Brophy, 18, who disappeared in September 2015 while walking home from a friend’s house in Thompson. His body was found just outside city limits on April 26 of the following year. Linklater and Justin Baker, who pleaded guilty to second degree murder in Brophy’s killing and testified for the Crown in this trial, were arrested four days later. Thomas was arrested a little over a week later.
“I'm just so happy that he had justice tonight,” Danielle Brophy, Nicholas’s aunt, told the CBC after the verdict. “It was a long three years, and we stood by his side, whether he's beside us or not. We fought for him, and we won tonight."
Although first degree murder carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Chris Martin granted the Crown’s request to delay sentencing and allow it to be held in Thompson so that people in the community can prepare and present victim impact statements, the CBC reported.
A forensic anthropologist told the court that Brophy suffered six skull fractures and multiple blunt force trauma wounds, most likely from a metal baton that was found nearby. Friends and family testified how they became worried on the night of Sept. 8, 2015 when Brophy stopped responding to texts around 11 p.m.
Court also heard testimony about how Thomas told undercover police officers, who testified without revealing their identities, about the murder while in a cell at RCMP headquarters in Winnipeg and being transported to Portage la Prairie. Baker told the court that he and Thomas and Linklater had jumped Brophy as he was walking home and taken him to a wooded area where he was choked and then beaten with the metal baton police found.
Thomas’s and Linklater’s lawyers did not call any witnesses in their clients’ defence but said Baker, who is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 10 years, was a liar trying to make a deal to save himself.
