Daughter charged with elderly mother’s murder
Just a couple of weeks after a daughter stood in front of media to make a public plea for information about her mother’s killer, she’s been arrested and charged with the murder herself.
Lethbridge police have charged 51-year-old Calgarian Lisa Freihaut with the second-degree murder of Irene Carter.
Two weeks ago at Calgary police headquarters, Freihaut fought through sobs and stared teary-eyed into camera lenses and said she needed to see the case closed so she and her family could start to heal.
“No family deserves to have to go through this,” she said, while her husband Dean held her close.
“My mom loved her family and friends, especially her grandchildren — they were her pride and joy.
“This is the first time I don’t get to send my mom flowers or give her a card on Mother’s Day, see her beautiful garden and be with her for family gatherings. Mom, we love you and we miss you — we think of you every day.”
Carter, 78, was found dead in her Lethbridge home Jan. 17, becoming the city’s first homicide of 2016.
She’s believed to have been killed several days prior to that. She was found by Dean — Freihaut there with him.
Police believe Freihaut, 51, was involved in a dispute with her mother over finances and a physical altercation ensued.
And police have believed that for a while — Staff Sgt. Scott Woods said Freihaut was a suspect long before she made that public plea.
“You don’t know until you know,” Woods told Postmedia.
“She became a person of interest and then she ultimately stepped into the category of being a suspect ( but) at that point in time we were still looking for some additional information or evidence,” he said at a conference, earlier on Friday.
So police arranged for her to make the public plea, saying then they weren’t ruling anything out.
Woods said Freihaut’s husband isn’t a suspect at this point in the investigation. “We have no evidence or any information that would lead us to believe he was involved in the murder at all,” Wood said.
Freihaut was charged on Friday, upon her arrival to the Calgary Police Service in connection to another, unrelated investigation.
She remains in police custody in Calgary, and will appear in court in Lethbridge Monday.