What a pathetic excuse for a mother she was.
It will be for the judge to determine whether Becky Hamber is also a murderer and if, together with her wife Brandy Cooney, she killed the emaciated 12-year-old boy they had planned to adopt.
But as she was grilled for the second full day by Crown attorney Kelli Frew, Hamber was confronted with endless examples of why she was a parent from hell.
Hamber, 46, and Cooney, 44, have pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the Dec. 21, 2022 death of the older boy as well as not guilty to confinement, assault with a weapon – zip ties – and failing to provide the necessaries of life for the younger one.
The dead boy, found soaked in his wetsuit on the floor of his cold, sparse room, weighed the same amount as he had at just six years old.
Hamber agreed the boy was “essentially skin and bones” by the fall of 2022.
Frew suggested he was restrained in the frigid basement on a flimsy daycare bed meant for a toddler, often with no blanket or pillow.
“Sometimes,” Hamber responded.
“Were you not concerned that he was exceptionally cold down there given the environment you and your wife created for him to live in?” Frew asked.
Hamber insisted she was.
It was an environment, she assured the Crown, where neither she nor Cooney ever physically assaulted the boys who came to live with them in their Burlington home in 2017. She was then shown a text exchange from three months before the older boy died where Cooney said she “pinned” the child they called “d—face.”
Frew suggested Hamber had been watching the assault on the cameras they’d installed throughout the home when she responded: “You strangled him and threw him down. I totally get where you are coming from and agree but still …”
Perhaps she wasn’t very critical considering her own actions detailed in an exchange in June 2022 where Hamber complained the younger boy was a “whiny loser” but she’d “handled” him: “Sucker punch to the throat,” she wrote.
Hamber told Frew she “would never do that” and guessed, somewhat nonsensically, that she must have been paraphrasing one of the boy’s lies about her.
For the last year of his life, Hamber was accused of locking the older boy in his basement room virtually all the time – except for restroom breaks so infrequent that he constantly complained of a painful bladder from having to hold in his urine. Hamber claimed it was from masturbating too much because she could see him moving on the camera.
The prosecutor asked how that was even possible – he was zip-tied into a rubber wetsuit, sometimes with a zip-tied bathing suit underneath – and how would that cause bladder pain?
“What medical professional did you consult to come up with that theory of anatomy?” Frew asked pointedly.
“I didn’t,” Hamber shrugged.
Hamber maintained she did let the boy out of his locked basement room in 2022 but admitted it depended on his behaviour and conceded it was “rare.”
Prosecutors allege the brothers were sometimes confined for 18 hours and not fed their first meal until late in the morning or early afternoon.
No wonder they were hungry.
Frew took Hamber to a December 2021 recording where she was punishing the older boy by forcing him to stand without moving in his room.
“Why are you standing in your room all day long?” she can be heard asking the child.
“Because I’m saying I’m hungry,” he responded.
Frew also suggested the moms were using Benadryl as a sedative to keep the boys quiet and sleeping from the time they were put to bed at about 6 p.m.
The prosecutor took her to a 2021 text, where Hamber wrote her wife, “We need to knock him out at night.”
In a Christmas Eve text, she advised Cooney to use benadryl and melatonin: “Benadryl all the time.” And later added, “Big a– loser.”
Hamber said she didn’t remember the texts and the drug must have been used for allergies.
Frew challenged her on the “tens of thousands of dollars” in damage Hamber said the boys caused to their home during their bad “behaviours” and tantruming. It was a complaint the mothers made often to childcare workers and even received Home Depot vouchers as a result.
The prosecutor suggested Hamber and Cooney were the only ones who seemed to have witnessed this violent, out of control behaviour she’s described.
“When damage was done, wasn’t it because he was locked in his room and angry because he was hungry and not given any food?” Frew asked.
Hamber, of course, disagreed.
Her cross-examination is expected to conclude Friday.
