Killing was practice run, accused suggests
‘I didn’t think anybody cared about her,’ Saretzky told police of elderly victim
LETHBRIDGE The murder of Coleman senior Hanne Meketech was a trial run for the slayings of a Blairmore dad and daughter, murder suspect Derek Saretzky suggested to police.
And Saretzky told RCMP Staff Sgt. Mike McCauley he killed Meketech because he didn’t think she’d be missed.
“Was it practice for the next one a little bit?” asked McCauley in a March 2, 2016, interview with Saretzky, who nearly six months earlier confessed to the murders of Terry Blanchette and his daughter Hailey Dunbar-Blanchette.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Saretzky said, of the Sept. 9, 2015, killing of Meketech, which occurred five days before Saretzky allegedly murdered Blanchette, 27, in his Blairmore home and kidnapped his two-year-old daughter Hailey Dunbar-Blanchette, before killing her in a nearby campsite.
Saretzky said he entered Meketech’s home, hit her head with a baseball bat and stabbed her.
“No real reason,” he told McCauley when asked about killing the senior.
McCauley asked whether he did anything with Meketech’s blood, after he earlier confessed to drinking Hailey’s blood and draining her father’s. “Why not her blood?” McCauley asked.
“You did stuff with the others ... the blood of the people, how come not hers?” McCauley asked about Saretzky’s earlier confessions, involving the bodies of Blanchette and his daughter.
“I don’t know, didn’t think about it,” said Saretzky.
“Why’d you pick her?” the officer asked. “I didn’t think anybody cared about her,” Saretzky told the officer.
Meanwhile, jurors heard Saretzky led police to the scene where he strangled Hailey before dismembering and burning her body.
Jurors watched disturbing admissions by Saretzky as he showed McCauley the still-smouldering fire pit where he says he burned Hailey’s remains. “It’s right there,” Saretzky said on the video, as the police cruiser pulled into the campsite on Grassy Mountain Road.
He said he started the fire with books and wood before taking Hailey to the spot where he killed her.
“So you choked her here?” McCauley asked after being led to a spot on the campsite. “Yeah,” said Saretzky, who calmly noted he then drank her blood.
This led Crown prosecutor Photini Papadatou to seek an adjournment because at least one juror became visibly upset.
On the drive back Saretzky discussed Hailey’s father, Terry Blanchette. The accused said he saw Blanchette a month before bludgeoning and stabbing him in his Blairmore home. “He gave me a really dirty look,” Saretzky said.
He said Blanchette had attacked him with a bat a couple years earlier, likely over Saretzky’s friendship with Hailey’s mom, Cheyenne Dunbar.
“He kept on following me and stalking me,” Saretzky said. “So it was payback at least?” “Yeah, I guess,” Saretzky said.