Article content continued

“I don’t get it … the courts have accepted a lie,” argues Tammy. “How can you savagely stab someone to death without intent?”

Brayton’s father, Colin Bullock, of Sudbury, said he is “filled with rage” over the outcome of the case, adding, “can you drive that bulldozer over us again.”

Sitting recently in a family member’s Barrie home, eyes red from tears, lack of sleep, and cold rage, the parents share their torment.

The room is thick with their sorrow.

The hardest thing, added Colin, who lives across from a school, is watching other parents play and laugh with their children.

“There are no words for the pain of losing a child to murder … None.”

At the initial trial, a jury heard how on a cold, foggy, winter night, Nick lured his young cousin into the woods in the south end of Barrie and viciously stabbed him to death. He walked out of the woods to a nearby recreation hall, washed away the blood and threw the bloodied knife in the trash.

With an alibi in mind, he walked to a convenience store, and even though he had a wad of cash in his pocket, he used a debit card to buy two Cokes – one for him and one for Brayton, he would later tell police. He changed his bloody clothing, then called on his friends and told them, “hurry, some guys grabbed Brayton and dragged him into the woods.”

He lead them directly to the body, where he feigned shock and grief and rolled around in the blood-soaked snow next to his cousin, to throw off police evidence.

Nick was defiant, a loner, refused to go to school, dabbled in drugs, lived from couch to couch and he resented his cousin, who was an A student, the trial heard.