BOWDEN, Alta. — A man who strangled his wife and concealed her body in a wall of their home after enduring what he described as years of domestic abuse is scheduled for his first parole hearing today.
Allan Shyback was convicted of manslaughter and indignity to a body in the 2012 death of Lisa Mitchell.
He was originally sentenced to seven years in prison, but the Alberta Court of Appeal increased it to 10 years.
Shyback testified at his trial that he killed Mitchell in defence as she attacked him with a knife.
He said he panicked, put her body inside a plastic bin and cemented it into a basement wall of the Calgary home they shared with their children.
Last fall, the Appeal Court, in adding more time to his sentence, noted the severity of Shyback’s crimes.
“For two years, the respondent led the deceased’s family to believe that she was alive and there was some hope of her returning. He maintained this deception until the Mr. Big operation revealed the truth,” Justice Jack Watson wrote on behalf of the three-member panel.
“It was particularly cruel for the respondent to suggest to the children that their mother had abandoned them but might return one day, even though he knew she was entombed in the basement of the house in which they were all living.”
An undercover police operation began in 2013 and ended with Shyback’s confession and arrest in Winnipeg.
The parole hearing at Bowden Institution, south of Red Deer, Alta., will assess any risk he may present to the community if he is released. In most cases, board members give their decision and reasons the day of the hearing.