Quebec mother acquitted of daughters' deaths after third murder trial

Quebec mother Adele Sorella has been acquitted in the killing of her two daughters in 2009 after a third trial.

Sorella, 57, had previously been found guilty of first-degree murder in 2013, but the conviction was overturned on a technicality by the Quebec Court of Appeal.

In 2019, a jury found her guilty of second-degree murder.

However, the defence appealed the decision, and the Court of Appeal overturned the conviction again.

The third trial was heard before Quebec Superior Court Justice Myriam Lachance in Laval earlier this fall without any witnesses or new evidence.

Lachance said in her ruling Monday, which took nearly three hours to deliver, that there were gaps in the Crown's theory that led her to acquit Sorella on two counts of second-degree murder. 

"Our thoughts are going to Sabrina and Amanda that died almost 15 years ago," said Crown prosecutor Marie-Claude Bourassa. "And all the people that were implicated both in the investigation, but [also] all the people that were touched by the two young girls when they were discovered, and all the proceedings for the last 15 years."

Laval police (SPL) discovered the bodies of Sabrina, 8, and Amanda, 9, inside the playroom of the family's home in Duvernay, on Montreal's North Shore, on March 31, 2009.

The young victims were found lying side-by-side in their school uniforms; there was no sign of violence on their bodies.

The death was ruled asphyxiation, but the cause was never determined.

The prosecution has argued the two girls likely suffocated in a hyperbaric chamber used to treat juvenile arthritis.

The judge agreed that the defence opened the door to reasonable doubt, noting there was no direct evidence Sorella ever put her children in the hyperbaric chamber.

Sorella was arrested the day after her daughters' bodies were found when she crashed her SUV into a hydro pole.

The defence also pointed out that Sorella suffered from deep depression and mental illness at the time.

Sorella's ex-husband, Giuseppe De Vito, was a convicted felon with ties to the Italian Mafia.

He was on the lam at the time of the girls' deaths and died in prison in 2013 after he was poisoned.

-- With files from CTV News' Stéphane Giroux and The Canadian Press.