Trial opens in killing of Toronto trans activist

Julie Berman, 51, met Colin Harnack, 29, for the first time on the morning of Dec. 22, 2019, when Harnack stopped on Jarvis Street to chat with her as she drank a coffee, a Crown prosecutor said Monday in an opening address to a Toronto jury.

Berman and Harnack went back to Harnack’s room in an Annex rooming house. Four hours later, Berman was dead from severe blunt force trauma to the head.

Harnack told first responders and police, including in a more than two-hour-long statement, that Berman tried to attack him with a dumbbell and then used it to strike herself in the head until she died, prosecutor Anna Leggett said, outlining the evidence she expects the jury will hear. Two15-pound dumbbells were found by first responders in the room with Berman’s blood on them, she said.

The prosecution will be asking the jury to find this was not “suicide by dumbbell” but an intentional killing by Harnack, Leggett said.

Harnack, now 32, is on trial for the second-degree murder of Berman, a well-known Toronto trans activist.

Leggett told the jury they will hear from police officers who arrived at the scene, the first responders who tried to save Berman’s life and other people living in the rooming house.

One heard loud bangs and a woman scream, then more loud bangs, Leggett said. The tenant who was with Harnack when he first met Berman was the last person to see her alive other than Harnack — the three of them had a beer together during the four hours and he left them alone again, Leggett said.

When the tenant’s landlord woke him up because of the noise coming from Harnack’s room, Harnack poked his head out of the door and apologized for the noise, Leggett said. Shortly after that, Harnack told him “something bad had happened.” Leggett said the jury will hear from a forensic pathologist who will testify that Berman’s injuries could not have been entirely self-inflicted.

The trial continues and is set to take four weeks.