MEDICINE HAT — A girl who helped kill her parents and younger brother when she was 12 years old has received a positive review of how she is doing as she serves a 10-year sentence.
Justice Scott Brooker read a report by her case workers and treatment specialists Tuesday that said the now 17-year-old is progressing well and poses the lowest possible risk to reoffend.
It says her school grades are in the 90s and she is planning to attend university in the fall.
The girl cannot be identified because she was a young offender.
She is living in a secure group home in Calgary, where she is being allowed on excursions as long as she has an escort. It’s expected she could be moved to open custody within the community in November.
She is to be fully released under an intensive reintegration program when she turns 22.
“The program ... is working in this situation because we’ve consistently seen better and better reports, specifically what the judge described today as a glowing report, which I think is a fair assessment of her progress so far,” said her lawyer Katherine Beyak.
The girl was convicted along with her boyfriend, Jeremy Steinke, of murdering her family in their home in Medicine Hat, Alta., in April 2006. Court heard at her trial that she was angry at her parents because they didn’t want her going out with the much-older Steinke, who was 23.
He is serving a life sentence with no parole eligibility for 25 years.
The teen was not in court Tuesday, but appeared via closed-circuit television. Her next sentence review is set for August and Brooker asked that she appear in person. But the girl expressed some reservation about returning to Medicine Hat. A case worker wrote that “she might not be emotionally ready.”
Brooker said he would consider having her appear via video again or move the review to Calgary.
Beyak said moving the girl from closed custody in Edmonton to the youth facility in Calgary last summer was a positive move.
“She’s still serving a custodial portion of her sentence, but she’s not physically in a solicitor general’s facility per se. She’s not in jail,” said Beyak. “It’s similar to a conditional sentence order that you would see for an adult sentence.”
Court heard during both trials that the girl and Steinke plotted how they would kill her family before running away together. She left a window open for him so he could get into the house. He stabbed her parents in the basement so often and so violently that blood was spattered on the walls, the carpet and an exercise machine.
Her brother died in his bed when his throat was slashed. The girl testified in her defence that Steinke killed the boy, but Steinke only ever admitted to killing the parents.
The two then left the house and went to a party. They were discovered in Saskatchewan the next day.
(Medicine Hat News, CJCY, CHAT, The Canadian Press)
Cannot be identified un the Youth Criminal Justice Act