The younger boy’s account tied daily punishments, basement confinement and fear inside the home to the case now before a judge.
MILTON, Ontario — Long before lawyers traded final arguments in the murder trial of Becky Hamber and Brandy Cooney, the case was shaped by the child who survived it: the younger brother who told police and then a courtroom what life had been like inside the house.
His testimony matters because it supplied the day-to-day picture that medical charts and text messages could not provide on their own. Prosecutors say the younger boy’s account helps explain how a 12-year-old identified as L.L. could end up dead in December 2022 after alleged years of confinement, restraint and deprivation in the Burlington home where the two women were caring for the brothers and trying to adopt them. The defense says the testimony must be weighed carefully against behavioral problems in the home, gaps in memory and the women’s insistence that they were trying to manage children in crisis, not abuse them.
The younger brother, now 13, described a home where punishment was woven into ordinary hours. He told investigators and later the court that he and his brother were often locked in basement bedrooms, forced to wear wet suits and subjected to control measures that included zip ties and restrictions on speaking. He said the older boy sometimes took blame to protect him. That testimony reached back before the death and gave the court a child’s view of how the household functioned when no outsider was present. It also helped explain why the police case widened after the funeral, when the younger brother began describing the conditions he said both boys endured. Prosecutors have treated him not as a side witness but as the person who opened the door to what they say had been hidden in plain sight.
From there, the Crown used other witnesses to test and reinforce parts of his account. A pediatrician testified that L.L. weighed 48 pounds at the time of death, less than he had weighed years earlier. A therapist said she had concerns about restraint practices before the child died and denied that she had endorsed the use of zip ties. Investigators added records and photographs from the home. Prosecutors then paired those accounts with text messages they say showed disgust toward the boys, including references to the adults as jailers and messages discussing the possibility that the older child might die. Together, the Crown argued, those records gave the younger brother’s testimony a wider frame and showed that his description of life in the house was consistent with the physical evidence and the adults’ own words.
The defense tried to move the center of gravity away from the child witness. Lawyers for Hamber and Cooney argued that the brothers had severe behavioral and mental health needs and that the women were trying to manage aggression, self-harm risk and persistent toileting problems. Cooney testified that wet suits and other restrictions were not punishment for punishment’s sake, but part of an effort to keep the boys safe and protect the home. Defense counsel also argued that child welfare workers and health professionals had visibility into the family and did not take decisive action to stop the practices now being described as abusive. In that telling, the younger brother’s account is only one part of a much more complicated household story, not a complete explanation of it.
The chronology of the case gives his testimony added weight. Authorities were called to the home in late December 2022 after L.L. was found unresponsive, soaking wet and covered in vomit in the basement. He later died, and the exact medical cause has remained uncertain, with hypothermia and cardiac arrest linked to severe malnourishment among the possibilities discussed in court. The criminal case grew over the months that followed, with police interviews, expert reports and eventually charges that include first-degree murder, confinement, assault with a weapon and failing to provide the necessaries of life. The trial began in September 2025 and unfolded without a jury, placing all factual findings in the hands of Justice Clayton Conlan.
In a courtroom filled with professionals, the younger brother’s evidence kept returning the case to the level of routine human experience: eating, sleeping, speaking, being watched and being afraid. Even when prosecutors focused on thousands of pages of texts, they used his testimony to explain what those messages meant on the ground. Even when defense lawyers stressed legal doubt, they had to address the details he supplied about rooms, restraints and his brother’s visible decline. His role in the case is not only emotional. It is structural. He is the witness whose version of family life forced the court to decide whether this was a failed caregiving arrangement or a sustained pattern of criminal abuse.
The case now awaits the judge’s next update on April 24. By then, the testimony of the boy who survived will still be one of the key records the court must measure against everything else.
Author note: Last updated April 18, 2026.