Editor's note: The following story contains graphic details heard in court that some readers may find disturbing.
The man arrested for the murder of a Collingwood woman in June 2022 has pleaded guilty and confessed gruesome details about beating her in her bedroom, strangling her to death with his bare hands and living in her home with her body for five days.
John Collins appeared before a judge Thursday where he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Kinga ‘Kay’ Kriston, a Collingwood real estate agent found dead in her Alyssa Drive home on June 10, 2022.
The original charge against Collins was first-degree murder.
Madam Justice Michelle Fuerst convicted Collins of second-degree murder, but did not deliver a sentence yet. He is set to return to court next month.
A statement of facts agreed upon by Collins’ defence lawyers, David O'Connor and Brenda Lawson, and the Crown attorneys, Lynne Saunders and Jenna Dafoe, laid out what the prosecution referred to as “a brutal murder of the gravest and most degrading kind.”
The Barrie courtroom heard that on June 4, 2022, Kriston was murdered by the man she was living with, John Collins, inside her home.
Collins, who was 57 at the time, told police he argued with Kriston, 55, before passing out on the couch, then woke up and retrieved a golf club from the garage. He went into Kriston’s bedroom and got into bed with her, touching her backside. When he heard her say a phrase similar to “you better think long and hard about what you said to me tonight,” he stood up and started beating her with the golf club, striking her four or five times.
Collins said Kriston pleaded with him to think about his son.
Collins dropped the golf club and punched Kriston in the face several times, they both rolled onto the floor. He later told police he noticed “she wasn’t dead yet.”
He strangled her with his hands until she died.
“This is the hand that I used,” Collins said during his time in police custody, the day of his arrest. He gestured to his right hand and observed it was swollen.
Kriston’s body, half-clothed, lay on her bedroom floor until June 10, five days after she was violently murdered. A friend was concerned because he had been trying unsuccessfully for days to reach Kriston, so he stopped by the house on Alyssa Drive to check on her.
Although Collins was inside the house, he wouldn’t open the door, but the friend had the key code and walked in.
The friend discovered Kriston’s body in her bedroom and called police from the house at 8:19 a.m.
“It was clear to all from the condition of her body that Kinga had been dead for some time,” reads the statement of facts.
The house was strewn with empty liquor bottles and in disarray. A pair of grey track pants and a T-shirt stained in blood were found in a bedroom. A golf club with blood on it had been left on top of a coat rack in a main-floor hallway.
While police were inside the house, Collins left, triggering a police search.
The court heard that Collins was found sitting in the grass in a nearby field, where he promised officers not to give them any trouble.
At the time of his arrest, police identified Collins as an Orillia resident. He once worked in finance and later as a real estate agent, but he did not have a job or a home of his own in June 2022.
Collins began confessing to the murder immediately after his arrest and before police asked him any questions.
He said he was “sorry” and that he “just snapped.”
“I killed her, I’m not going to lie to you guys,” Collins told one of the officers who took him into custody, court heard.
Police determined Collins was under the influence of alcohol and did not interview him right away. But while they were investigating him for evidence, Collins again said he was “totally guilty,” that he wanted to go to jail, that he was drunk and stupid, and that he lost his family, his kids, and he murdered somebody.
On the afternoon of June 10, 2022, a detective sergeant began interviewing Collins on the record.
After being served his requested assorted sub and chocolate milk, Collins spoke to police in an interview that lasted more than two hours, repeatedly telling the detective that he killed Kriston, and provided details of his crime.
By the end of the interview, Collins asked for medical attention. He was admitted to the hospital, where he stayed under police guard for several days to manage his alcohol withdrawal. After leaving the hospital, he was taken to the medical unit of Central North Correctional Centre in Penetanguishene, then later to general population.
Collins did attend court on Dec. 14, but did not speak except to answer yes or no questions and to enter his plea.
The submissions made during the plea hearing included victim impact statements from Kriston’s brother, her ex-husband with whom she shared a daughter, and from the friend who discovered her body.
“I never wanted to know the name of the man who killed my only sister,” wrote Kriston’s brother.
He referred to her death as a “horrendous crime,” and said it haunts him, keeping him awake at night and depressed during the day.
The victim impact statements also expressed grief over the loss of Kriston, described as beloved, respected and well-liked in her communities. In Collingwood, hundreds of people turned up for a vigil at Sunset Point on June 15, 2022.
Kriston’s ex-husband spoke of their daughter, who was 17 and on the cusp of graduating from high school when her mother was murdered.
“There was an empty seat at our daughter’s graduation,” said Kriston’s former husband.
“It would be easy for us to wallow in our feelings of anger and hatred,” he told the court. “But we are going to rise above it and not allow ourselves to be defined by this horrific event. We are committed to supporting our daughter daily to thrive and flourish as her mother wanted her to.”
The friend who discovered Kriston’s decomposing body said part of him died, too.
“People say my personality has changed … it has … I’ll never be whole again,” he wrote in his statement.
He also said he felt “regret that never leaves” thinking about what would have been different if he had gone earlier to check on her.
Collins’ defence lawyers, David O’Connor and Brenda Lawson, pointed out Collins’ self-identified alcoholism, noting he was in a residential rehabilitation program with Teen Challenge before he moved in with Kriston. He left the one-year program after about one month.
The defence noted Collins’ family history of alcoholism and emphasized his remorse and guilty plea.
Letters of support for Collins from his ex-wife, his pastor and his ex-sister-in-law reiterated his alcoholism, but specified that Collins was once ambitious, generous and a family man.
His ex-wife said she was the one who drove him to the Teen Challenge rehabilitation centre. She said she heard from him about six weeks later when he said he didn’t have to work, and all would be looked after by his new girlfriend, who had a fancy house and a new car.
Collins' pastor said he had been attending church regularly in Niagara Falls when he was accepted into the Teen Challenge program.
“None of this is any excuse,” Lawson told the court. “It’s just a sad state of affairs.”
The Crown raised Collins' 1995 conviction for assault, which was considered domestic violence against an ex-wife, and said there is case law supporting parole and eligibility periods in the upper range for cases of domestic violence.
The Crown pointed out that Kriston was murdered in her own home, where she had a right to feel safe, and by a person in a position of trust because of the intimate relationship, that murder by strangulation is an aggravating factor in case law for sentencing, that Kriston was unarmed and defenceless, and that Collins left Kriston’s body in the room for someone else to find instead of calling for help himself.
“Kinga Kriston knew that her life was in grave danger … this court does not have to hear from her to understand the terror that she would have felt in that moment,” said the prosecution.
While the mandatory sentence for second-degree murder in Canada is life imprisonment, a judge can decide when the person convicted of the murder can be eligible for parole.
In a joint submission from the prosecution and defence, the Crown attorneys asked Justice Fuerst not to allow eligibility for parole for 16 years.
Collins is due back in court on Jan. 9, when Justice Fuerst is expected to deliver a sentence.
