He called her ‘babygirl.’ She called him ‘moonchild.’ Now this ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ are on trial for first degree murder in the death of a rival lover
After meeting at age 15 in the Oakwood-Vaughan area, David Obregon Castro and Sarai Lopez Iglesias felt a deep bond when they reconnected in their late 20s.
They shared turbulent upbringings and Latino backgrounds. Obregon Castro lived in shelters and group homes as a teenager who turned to drug dealing to earn a living. Emigrating as a child from Ecuador to Canada with her dance instructor mother, Lopez Iglesias also had a far from idyllic youth in Toronto. She was sexually abused by someone considered a family friend, and ended up in foster care, on and off again.
By 2017, each had a child with other people.
They called each other pet names. She was babygirl" and luna." Lopez Iglesias called Obregon Castro moonchild."
There were differences. While he didn't get past Grade 11, Lopez Iglesias earned a college diploma as a youth worker.
Not only was their relationship doomed, but the pair are now pitted against each other in what the prosecution is calling a love-triangle murder trial in a downtown Toronto courtroom.
For the last 10 weeks, a Superior Court jury has been hearing the intimate details of their toxic union as the prosecution tries to prove they conspired and killed Abbegail Elliott after she spilled the beans about her brief fling with Obregon Castro while Lopez Iglesias vacationed in Mexico.
Elliott, who was 21, was stabbed to death on the balcony of her Annex apartment.
Obregon Castro and Lopez Iglesias, both 29, are charged with first-degree murder; he is also facing weapons charges.
It is the Crown's theory that both accused are angered by Abbegail's disclosure. It leads to a fight between the two women, retaliation by Obregon Castro, and a plan by both accused to murder Abbegail Elliott on May 23, 2018," prosecutors Karen Simone and Anna Leggett wrote in their opening address.
In the days after their arrest, the two swore allegiance to each other in jailhouse letters, now trial exhibits. The handwritten letters capture the volatility and heightened emotions of what Obregon Castro described in court as their love-hate relationship."
The first time you hurt me holy f--- I can't even begin to tell you how much it f----- cut me, but then there's the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth," Lopez Iglesias wrote in large printed letters, referring to his philandering.
Yet, she vowed to stay real to you till the day I die," signing off, Somos (we are) Bonnie and Clyde, LOL," a reference to the notorious criminal couple shot to death by Texas and Louisiana police in 1934.
I truly love you, and do anything in the world to show how much I do. I owe you my loyalty," Obregon Castro wrote back.
After the prosecution closed its case last month, Obregon Castro entered the witness box prepared, promised his lawyer, Alana Page, to tell some hard truths" about himself.
And he did.
Obregon Castro said he was chopping," selling drugs like cocaine, heroin, tranquilizers, MDMA, opioids and cannabis at the University of Toronto and other downtown locations, armed with a gun. He said this on his first day on the stand, wearing an oversized oatmeal-coloured turtleneck, his short black hair and goatee as dark as his eyes. Throughout his testimony, he showed no emotion as he answered questions concisely without inflection.
He said he belonged to the L.A. Boys, which he described as his family and friends," rejecting the Toronto police characterization that it is a violent street gang.
After he hooked up with Lopez Iglesias in 2016-17 - he wasn't sure exactly when - she did not have a problem with his lifestyle.
Nonchalant," he said, describing her attitude.
But she wasn't so relaxed about his chronic cheating, going through his phone and becoming irate after finding him messaging other young women on social media.
There were breakups, reconciliations and back-and-forth allegations of infidelity.
I'd kick her out, saying we need to be away from each other," he testified.
Things often got heated - though just how physically aggressive he became is in dispute at this trial.
Defence lawyer Breana Vandebeek, who represents Lopez Iglesias with Nathan Gorham, told the jury Obregon Castro pressured her to use drugs, inflicted violence and it escalated over time, beginning with punches and slaps, and, on one occasion, using the butt of a gun to hit her in the head."
Much of the trial has focused on the tumultuous few weeks leading up to the killing.
Jurors have heard Obregon Castro was becoming increasingly violent - leaving Lopez Iglesias conflicted, Vandebeek said. On one hand she was terrified of Obregon Castro, so terrified that she anonymously reported him to CrimeStoppers. On the other hand, she was pregnant and cared for him."
Things took a turn for the worse after Lopez Iglesias returned from a trip to Mexico in May 2018.
She learned Obregon Castro had had sex and become involved with Elliott, a troubled young woman whose life choices the prosecutor warned jurors they'd find disturbing.
Elliott sent Lopez Iglesias a dick pic" that Obregon Castro had shared with her. Lopez Iglesias texted her friend: that's what I got from Abbey," adding: I'm gonna kill her."
That led to a physical confrontation between the two women, on May 21, in the rear parking lot of 70 Spadina Road. Lopez Iglesias came out on the losing side, with her nose bloodied and face bitten. The jury has seen a voluminous number of vulgar social media exchanges between the two young women.
Enraged that a male friend of Elliott's had intervened in the fight, striking Lopez Iglesias in the face with a pipe, Obregon Castro, standing at street level, fired a couple of shots towards the Spadina apartment balcony, trying unsuccessfully to exact revenge," the prosecution said.
Obregon Castro also accosted an innocent man walking on the sidewalk who he suspected had struck Lopez Iglesias with a pipe. He hadn't.
You put the gun under the man's chin, right?" Gorham asked Obregon Castro during his lengthy cross-examination.
It's possible. I don't recall that."
Gorham was incredulous.
How could you forget sticking a gun under some poor guy's chin, who's just walking down the street. How could you forget that?"
The man wasn't injured, nor was anyone hit by the bullets fired by Obregon Castro's gun aimed up at the balcony.
Chips," one of Obregon Castro's childhood friends, wasn't so lucky.
The jury heard that shortly before Elliott's death, Obregon Castro stabbed and slashed Chips across his face and put him in hospital. His sin? Giving Lopez Iglesias a ride in this car. (Obregon Castro testified that wasn't the only reason he poked" Chips - and that it was part of an ongoing thing.") After that, Obregon Castro slashed Lopez Iglesias's tires, and told her to go check on her little friend," referring to the wounded Chips.
Also during that period, Obregon Castro shot a rival dope seller twice in the legs, something he called giving someone a leg warmer." Gorham spent a great deal of time going over these incidents, showing the jury bloody photos and repeatedly accusing Obregon Castro of having a hair-trigger temper" and a willingness to kill people in order to respond to disrespect."
Not true," Obregon Castro responded flatly.
There's no dispute that by May 23, neither Lopez Iglesias nor Obregon Castro liked Elliott.
They went to her fourth-floor apartment - he said not to kill Elliott but to reclaim his belongings, along with a necklace Elliott grabbed from Lopez Iglesias during their fight.
What happened there will be up to the jury to decide.
Obregon Castro admitted he fired two shots inside the small unit - but testified he did not stab Elliott. When he heard on the news that a young woman at 70 Spadina Ave. had been critically stabbed, Obregon Castro said he was shocked and confused."
I didn't have a knife. I didn't stab her," he told the jury.
He stopped short of directly implicating Lopez Iglesias. Me and her never discussed what happened," he said, adding she never confessed to me."
Her lawyers have set the stage, however. Vandebeek told the jury last week their client had nothing to do with Elliott's death. She did not step foot on the balcony; she did not stab, or encourage or assist in the killing."
Instead, Lopez Iglesias will point the finger directly at Obregon Castro.
She saw him walking toward the balcony. She saw him take out his knife," Vandebeek said. She saw a conflict on the balcony between Obregon Castro and Elliott, and then she saw Elliott fall to the floor. She did not stab, and had nothing to do with her death."
Lopez Iglesias has not yet testified.
Back in 2018, Obregon Castro penned a jailhouse letter to Lopez Iglesias that said, I know I did a really bad thing." Gorham produced the letter at the end of his cross-examination of Obregon Castro.
You were referring to killing Abbegail Elliott and having my client brought along for the ride," Gorham said. That's what you were confessing to, right?"
Obregon Castro responded, Absolutely not," and said he was referring to his serial philandering.
Simone, the prosecutor, suggested during her cross-examination of Obregon Castro that he was driven to kill to restore honour.
You and your partner - your Bonnie to your Clyde - killed Abbegail Elliott and executed your plan to do that on May 23, 2018," she said.
No, I don't agree."
The trial is expected to last at least two more weeks.
Correction - Nov. 21, 2021: Prosecutor Anna Leggett delivered the opening address to the jury. A previous version misstated that it was prosecutor Karen Simone.
Betsy Powell is a Toronto-based reporter covering crime and courts for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @powellbetsy