Dicarlo can apply for parole in 15 years

Blake Ellis/Local Journalism Initiative

A 46-year-old Sarnia man will serve a life sentence with no chance of parole for 15 years, in the Jan. 14, 2021 murder of his fiancé.

‘I can’t exact an appropriate price for her death,” said Superior Court Justice Bruce Thomas in making his ruling in Sarnia court on May 26. Joseph

Dicarlo pled guilty to second-degree murder on March 23. He was previously charged with first-degree murder, but made the plea to the lesser charge.

Natalie Bartlett, 39, bagged up the dishes, pots and pans into a garbage bag at 11 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2021 in a dispute over who should clean up. She emptied the bag onto the bed of her fiancé in the spare room.  Dicarlo gathered up the dishes a short time later and placed the dishes on Bartlett’s bed.

She was dead 90 minutes later and Dicarlo was calmly talking to a 911 dispatcher saying an amb was needed at his Lee Court home in Sarnia.

Bartlett’s body was found on the floor of the home’s garage, just in front of a red chair, which has multiple bullet holes.

The couple was in the garage when Dicarlo left to retrieve a nine-millimeter handgun that was in a safe in the master bedroom, before returning to the garage. He then shot her eight times, emptying the gun at close range, except for one bullet which he placed beside the weapon on a stool in the garage.

Dicarlo and Bartlett were in a three-year relationship before her death. He had accused her of cheating while she accused him of a physical assault, something which he denied. She had moved out of the home with her two young children to London where she enrolled her two girls into school.  

The separation came to an end when Dicarlo asked Bartlett to marry him on Dec. 17, 2020 and she agreed. The family reunited, but tensions were back as the couple argued just days later.

Dicarlo had texted his fiancé that he wanted her out of the house just days before the murder.

The couple was sleeping in separate bedrooms a week before the murder. She was giving him the silent treatment just two days before her death, just waiting for him to erupt so she could call the police.

Dicarlo has been in jail since the evening of the murder serving over 16 months before being sentenced.