Life in prison for Gough
Jeremy Gough has been sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years in the slaying of his estranged girlfriend Jessica Scanlon.
“Jessica was my best friend, my baby sister and the love of my life,” Melanie Scanlon said Thursday at Gough’s sentencing hearing in an Ontario Court of Justice in St. Catharines. “She was so good for my soul.” After eight hours of deliberation Wednesday, the six-man, six-woman jury returned with a verdict of guilty to first-degree murder.
Gough, 41, had pleaded guilty to manslaughter but the Crown refused to accept his plea to the lesser offence and a three-week trial began in April.
Scanlon, a 29-year-old mother of two, was found dead in the basement of her Chetwood Street home in St. Catharines on Feb. 23, 2015. She had been bludgeoned and stabbed 24 times.
“I would have protected her from anything,” her sister said in court. “I didn’t realize I’d have to protect her from you, Jeremy.”
Scanlon’s father Peter described his daughter as a bright, caring young woman and a loving mother.
“We are now a broken family. We will never see Jessica again but you will wake up every morning.”
When asked by Judge Joseph Henderson if he would like to say anything, Gough replied “I would not.”
Gough testified he “snapped” and struck Scanlon in the head with a small bat called a fish bonker after she told him she had started a new relationship and she and their children may leave Niagara.
He said he “blacked out” at some point and does not remember stabbing her.
The Crown maintained Gough snuck into the home and lay in wait for Scanlon to return home after taking their children to school.
Court was told the majority of the knife wounds — which sliced her aorta and severed several ribs — were likely inflicted after Jessica had already died from the other injuries.
Defence lawyer Bobbie Walker had told the jury her client did cause the death of his former girlfriend but that he did not intend to kill the mother of his children. She described the killing as a crime of passion, and not an execution.