A female arsonist who has expressed admiration for killer Paul Bernardo wants to take the rare step of consenting to being a dangerous offender – Canada's most serious criminal designation.
"I am very confident in what I am doing," Michelle Erstikaitis, 30, told Ontario Superior Court Justice Todd Archibald on Tuesday.
Erstikaitis said she wants to plead guilty to a series of charges, including mischief, armed assault and threatening, and would not oppose the Crown's bid to have her declared a dangerous offender, which would lock her up indefinitely.
She is accused of assaulting her boyfriend with scissors and throwing a glass plate at him during a dispute in Toronto last January.
His injuries were not grave, but she was then serving the last months of a six-year sentence as a long-term offender – on top of two years in prison – after pleading guilty to arson in a 1999 fire at a Hamilton apartment building.
Long-term offenders are closely monitored in the community as the next rung below dangerous offenders in terms of risk to the public.
In June 1999, Erstikaitis was convicted of threatening to kill the mother of Leslie Mahaffy, one of three girls murdered by Bernardo and Karla Homolka.
At the time, Erstikaitis expressed admiration for Bernardo and said she believed him innocent.
At Tuesday's hearing, the judge urged her to speak to a lawyer before pleading guilty.
"I don't need a lawyer. I'm sick and tired of them and I know just as much as they do," said Erstikaitis, who fired her previous lawyer.
"I have a bit more intelligence and education than the average criminal. I have read Martin's Criminal Code twice," she said, invoking her right to defend herself.
The judge put the matter over until Friday with a view to appointing an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, to assist the defendant.
Erstikaitis has said she wants to plead guilty because her case is a lost cause. "I'll write a book about it. I'll be the only female dangerous offender ... I'll write a lot of nasty s--- about everybody who's done this." Among the rare female dangerous offenders in Canada's past was the first, Marlene Moore, who committed suicide in 1988.
