‘I miss my baby so much,’ mother tells sentencing hearing
Man, 24, found guilty in three Alberta murders
LETHBRIDGE, ALTA .• The grandmother of a twoyear- old girl killed by triple murderer Derek Saretzky says she can hear screams when she imagines what the child’s final moments must have been like.
Terry-Lynn Dunbar delivered an emotional statement at Saretzky’s sentencing hearing describing the loss of her granddaughter Hailey Dunbar-Blanchette.
“I can hear her screaming in my mind begging for her mom and her dad … The horror she must have endured haunts my every moment,” she told court in Lethbridge, Alta., Thursday.
“Don’t allow this man the opportunity to do this to another family again.”
Dunbar says the family has been through hell and she will never get to hear Hailey say “I love you.”
In her victim impact to the court, read by Crown prosecutor Photini Papadatou, Hailey’s mother Cheyenne Dunbar said she cries daily over the brutal slaying.
“My life as I knew it has ended,” Dunbar wrote.
“The loss of my baby and her death has torn my life apart,” she said in the statement.
“I cry for my daughter every day. I miss my baby so much, she was my world and everything to me, she was my reason for living,” Dunbar said. “Being a mother was a blessing that was stolen from me.”
The statements by the girl’s mother and grandmother were just two of several Justice William Tilleman heard in connection with the slayings of Hailey, her father and Coleman, Alta., senior Hanne Meketech.
Saretzky, 24, was convicted Wednesday of three counts of first-degree murder in the Sept. 9, 2015, killing of Meketech, 69, and the slayings five days later of Terry Blanchette, 27, and Hailey.
Crown prosecutor Michael Fox asked Tilleman to make findings of fact based on the jury’s verdict that Meketech was a practice run for the other murders and Hailey was Saretzky’s ultimate target.
Fox said Tilleman should impose a 75- year period of parole ineligibility on Saretzky in the form of three consecutive periods of 25 years for each victim.
“Hailey was in fact the ultimate target,” Fox said, in de- tailing what he said were the aggravating circumstances of the case.
He said the fact Blanchette was killed in a similar fashion to Meketech suggested the senior’s killing was a trial run.
During final arguments on Monday, defence lawyer Patrick Edgerton said the idea the Meketech killing was a practice murder came from the mouth of RCMP Staff Sgt. Mike McCauley, who suggested it in a March 2, 2016, interview with Saretzky.
But Fox said the evidence supported McCauley’s theory.
“The similarities suggest it was in fact practice,” Fox said.
He noted both victims were attacked in their homes in the early morning hours and were surprised by the sudden assaults.
Fox said none of them had a chance.
The prosecutor also asked Tilleman to reject Saretzky’s suggestion he was being guided by God, or the devil, when he strangled Hailey with a shoelace, dismembered her body and committed acts of cannibalism before burning her remains.
“This is not some sort of bizarre ritual, this is not being guided by God or the devil,” Fox said.
While jurors were told they could convict Saretzky of first-degree murder based on the kidnapping of Hailey alone, the prosecutor asked Tilleman to rule her killing was planned all along.
Fox noted Saretzky took the toddler to an isolated campground north of Crowsnest Pass, a location he’d been just days before.
“He knew it was an isolated property … he could take his time and he did.”
Tilleman also heard victim impact statements from others, including Hailey’s other grandmother and Carrie Morency, Meketech’s close friend and the executor of her estate.
Addressing Saretzky directly, Morency said the remorseless killer has made his own bed. “Mr. Saretzky you are living in a hell, a hell of fear and anxiety,” she said. “You are living in this hell because you created it.”
Edgerton told Tilleman his client would not address the court, as all offenders are given the option of doing.
Edgerton also said because of some issues raised by Fox he would need time to consider his submissions and do legal research. He will file written arguments on sentencing by July 14, with the Crown replying, if necessary, by July 20.
Tilleman will sentence Saretzky on Aug. 9 or Aug. 10.