TORONTO -- The wife of a man accused of killing his teenaged daughter two decades ago told his trial Monday that her husband was an abusive spouse who controlled everyone in his family.
Elaine Biddersingh -- who is also charged in the case and faces a separate murder trial next year -- testified that her husband, Everton Biddersingh, hit his daughter, confined her in a tiny closet and rationed her food when he was angry with her.
"He beat her with a belt and say she don't have no manners, she must have respect," said 54-year-old Elaine Biddersingh. "What he used to do to me, he started to do to her. Sometimes when she moves around you could see she was in pain."
Everton Biddersingh has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the death of his 17-year-old daughter, Melonie, whose frail, charred body was discovered in a burning suitcase in an industrial area north of Toronto 21 years ago.
He and his wife weren't arrested until March 2012 after a tip to police led to the identification of Melonie's remains.
Speaking slowly, often with long pauses before answering questions from a Crown prosecutor, Elaine Biddersingh, who has been out on bail since her arrest, told the jury about her life with her husband.
In the early years of her marriage, she said he frequently hit her and called her names like "stupid," "ugly" and "dumb."
"It was fearful," she said when asked to describe their relationship. "He didn't waste any time starting to beat me, punching my face, kick me, spit in my face."
In 1991, Melonie and two brothers came from Jamaica, where they were born, to Canada to live with their father and their stepmother, court has heard.
Biddersingh said she felt "very happy" about the children's arrival, planned to care for them like her own and noted that all three were healthy and happy when they arrived.
Jurors have heard that the children weren't sent to school and were allegedly mistreated. Melonie's younger brother, Dwayne, died accidentally in June 1992.
Biddersingh said she tired of her husband's treatment of her a few months after the children arrived, and left the family home for six weeks, staying with her mother and keeping Melonie and her own two young sons with her.
When she and the children returned, her husband's abuse of Melonie took a sharp turn for the worse, Biddersingh said, explaining he resented his daughter's behaviour while she had been away.
"He put it like she's showing off...he would beat her," she said. "Food was rationed. Because she don't have any manners, she disrespected him."
Her husband also didn't allow Melonie to have friends "because he doesn't like to see anyone happy," she said.
Melonie's older brother, Cleon, also had his food rationed, Biddersingh said, noting that when her husband was away, she would give the two children some extra food at times.
Cleon has testified, however, that it was his stepmother who maintained control over the food, with his father doling out physical punishments.
Biddersingh said she also noticed Melonie's appearance started to change over time.
"She lost some weight. In her face she looked sad. She looked thinner," she said. "She was moving slower, when she came she was a bubbly person, so it was a difference."
When asked if Melonie had injuries to her body, Biddersingh said she never had a chance to closely inspect her stepdaughter.
Melonie was tasked with helping care for Biddersingh's youngest child, and had to wash clothes in the apartment bathtub when ordered to do so by her father, she said. The teenager was also ordered by her father to stand in a tiny closet for hours, Biddersingh said, and eventually often slept on the apartment floor.
One evening in 1994, Biddersingh said her husband told her Melonie was dead, and took her to the hall closet to show her the teen's body.
"Melonie was there on the floor," she said. "He touch her with his foot, she was stiff."
Biddersingh said she first suggested calling police but was talked out of the idea by her husband, who said the authorities would take her children away.
At that point, a news story about a body in a suitcase happened to be playing on television, she said, triggering an idea for how to dispose of Melonie's body.
"He decide to put her in a suitcase," she said, adding she had no idea how her stepdaughter died, nor did she know how the teen sustained 21 fractures discovered in an autopsy.
Biddersingh said her husband made her join him and Cleon as they drove to Vaughan, Ont., where they set fire to the suitcase -- a version of events which differs from Cleon's testimony, in which he said he never accompanied his father and stepmother, and was told his sister had run away.
