A Quebec woman has been acquitted in the 2009 deaths of her young daughters after a third trial on murder charges. A handout photo from the Laval police department shows Adele Sorella. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - Le Service de police de Laval
LAVAL, Que. – A Quebec woman has been acquitted in the 2009 deaths of her young daughters after a third trial on murder charges.
Adele Sorella was convicted of murder in 2013 and 2019 follow jury trials, but both of those decisions were overturned on appeal.
The third trial was heard before Quebec Superior Court Justice Myriam Lachance in Laval earlier this fall, but without any witnesses or new evidence.
Lachance said today in her ruling, which took nearly three hours to deliver, that there were gaps in the Crown’s theory that led her to acquit Sorella on two counts of murder.
The young victims, nine-year-old Amanda and eight-year-old Sabrina, were found dead in their playroom on March 31, 2009, laying side by side in their school uniforms.
Their bodies bore no signs of violence and the cause of their death has never been determined.
Sorella was arrested the following day after crashing her SUV into a hydro pole.
Her husband and the girls’ father was Giuseppe De Vito, a man with ties to the Italian Mafia who was on the lam at the time of the girls’ deaths and died in prison in 2013 after he was poisoned.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 18, 2023.
