Serial killer Jeremy Skibicki will be sentenced at the end of August after he was found guilty in the 2022 slayings of four Indigenous women earlier this month.
Skibicki’s sentencing hearing will be held Aug. 28 at 10 a.m., a senior court official said Wednesday.
Court of King’s Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal found Skibicki, 37, guilty on July 11 of four counts of first-degree murder for the slayings of Rebecca Contois, 24, Morgan Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26, and an unidentified woman known as Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe or Buffalo Woman.
The Manitoba Law Courts building (John Woods / The Canadian Press files)
Skibicki targeted the Indigenous women at downtown shelters in early 2022.
Skibicki’s six-week trial began in May, and he had pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disorder. Joyal rejected that defence, finding Skibicki understood the planned and deliberate killings were legally and morally wrong.
The automatic sentence for a conviction of first-degree murder is life with no ability to apply for parole for 25 years, but Joyal reserved sentencing in July to allow families of the victims to prepare victim impact statements.
Those statements will be read in court on Aug. 28, before Skibicki is sentenced. He will serve his time in a federal prison.
The killings became emblematic of the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
The serial killings also sparked widespread protests after Winnipeg police decided not to search the Prairie Green landfill north of the city, where the remains of Harris and Myran are believed to have been deposited. Police concluded the search would be too dangerous and difficult because of the large volume of waste, including toxic material, that had been dumped and compressed.
The federal government eventually funded studies that concluded such a wide-scale search was feasible.
In July 2023, then-Progressive Conservative premier Heather Stefanson said her government would not support a search because it would put workers at risk without a guarantee of success. The Tories later campaigned on the issue, drawing condemnation.
After the fall election, NDP Premier Wab Kinew put up $20 million for the search, as did the federal government. The excavation and manual search is expected to begin this fall.
The Assembly of First Nations has since called on the province to call a public inquiry into the police investigation of the killings.
erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca
Erik Pindera
Reporter
Erik Pindera is a reporter for the Free Press, mostly focusing on crime and justice. The born-and-bred Winnipegger attended Red River College Polytechnic, wrote for the community newspaper in Kenora, Ont. and reported on television and radio in Winnipeg before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Erik.
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