Dad of slain B.C. girls resisted pleas to seek help for depression, sister testifies

Just a few days before Andrew Berry's young daughters were found stabbed to death, his older sister tried to make contact with him, driving to his apartment in Oak Bay.

"I had a gift for the girls," the sister told B.C. Supreme Court on Wednesday, choking up at the memory.

It was the 2017 holiday season, and the sister said she'd been trying to make Christmas plans with her brother since November, but he hadn't responded to her messages.

When she arrived at his apartment building that evening, she could see that all the lights were out — his hydro had been cut off. She tried the buzzer, but no one answered.

That was Dec. 19, according to the sister, an RCMP officer, who cannot be named because of a publication ban.

Less than a week later on Christmas Day, six-year-old Chloe and four-year-old Aubrey Berry were found dead in that same Oak Bay apartment. Their father was lying in the bathtub with a black eye and stab wounds.

Andrew Berry is now on trial on two counts of second-degree murder in their deaths. He has pleaded not guilty to both charges.

'Let me see how this unfolds'

His sister told the court Wednesday that shortly after her failed attempt to see her brother on Dec. 19, she learned he'd been without electricity for three weeks and might be in danger of eviction. 

According to text messages read out to the court, she pleaded with Berry right up until Christmas Eve to bring the girls to her house for their holiday visits.

He didn't give a definite answer, saying, "let me see how this unfolds."

The trial has heard about Berry's problems with gambling and how his relationship with the girls' mother, Sarah Cotton, fell apart in the years before the tragic homicides. He'd also cut off contact with his parents, believing they were "meddling" in his family affairs, his sister testified.

His access to his kids was interrupted on a number of occasions. It happened after Berry was arrested for domestic violence in 2013, and then during two investigations by the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

His sister had been concerned for awhile about Berry's mental health, according to her testimony, but her concern turned to alarm after she learned he'd quit his job as an economist for BC Ferries in the spring of 2017.

She said she believed there were two things that held special importance in her brother's life  — his kids and his work. That's why she was so anxious when he quit his job.

"For him to just give up his job was a very extreme decision, and it concerned me because I didn't understand why and there was no discussion about it," Berry's sister testified.

'He was just so opposed to talking to anybody'

She said she called a community mental health service in Victoria and asked them to reach out to her brother to check on his well-being. When they couldn't locate him, she went on her own

"I told him that it wasn't surprising to me that he would be depressed because of everything that had happened … and that I felt that he needed to get help for this," she testified, breaking into tears.

She said she suggested he see a doctor or a counsellor, but he refused, calling mental health professionals "quacks."

"He was just so opposed to talking to anybody about his mental health. For him, he felt he was perfectly fine," his sister told the court.

Later, he cashed out more than $40,000 from his pension and asked his sister to deposit it into her bank account, explaining that his was frozen. She testified that she reluctantly agreed to the arrangement in the spring or summer of 2017, taking out cash for him when he needed it or transferring it to a man Berry had introduced as his neighbour.

By that fall, the money was gone — some went to bills, but Berry's sister said she believed he'd lost much of it to gambling. 

Her testimony will continue Thursday morning.