Man convicted of killing his wife receives additional time on gun charges

The Saskatoon man convicted of killing Dorothy Ann Woods has been sentenced on outstanding firearms and breach charges stemming from the investigation into his wife’s disappearance six years ago.

David Neil Woods, 55, will serve his 30-day sentence concurrently to the life sentence he is serving for the first-degree murder of his wife.

Woods appeared Thursday in Saskatoon Court of Queen’s Bench to plead guilty to improperly storing five different firearms, possessing an unlicensed shotgun and breaching a recognizance.

The guns were found during a police search at Woods’s Nutana Park neighbourhood home on Nov. 18, 2011, just days after his wife went missing. Police were investigating Woods as a person of interest at the time.

He was eventually charged with first-degree murder after police placed a GPS device on his truck and tracked it to a culvert south of Saskatoon near Blackstrap Lake, where Dorothy’s body was subsequently found on Jan. 4, 2012.

A jury found Woods strangled his wife, and convicted him of firstdegree murder following a trial in 2014. He received an automatic life sentence with no parole eligibility for 25 years. Woods has appealed his conviction.

Defence lawyer Chris Lavier said Thursday’s sentencing was about “tying up loose ends” so that Woods can focus on his appeal.

Woods had a locked cabinet full of firearms that were stored properly, but five rifles and shotguns were outside of the cabinet because they couldn’t fit, Lavier said.

Crown prosecutor Robin Ritter said Woods breached his release conditions (on the firearms charges) by purchasing alcohol from various off-sales in December 2011. He was under surveillance at the time.

The Crown and defence jointly proposed the 30-day sentence, which Justice Mona Dovell accepted. She also imposed a victim fine surcharge of $600.