Man sentenced to 15 years for killing elderly couple

A man who admitted to stabbing an elderly couple to death was sentenced to 15 years Thursday in what the judge described as a “terrifying” case.

Edward Kyle Roberts, 33, admitted to two counts of manslaughter for stabbing Joao and Maria Nascimento to death after breaking into their home on Sept. 2, 2016.

Joao was 93, Maria 81. The couple had been married for 40 years. Joao left the priesthood so he could marry, and together the couple operated Lisbon Groceries, a Portuguese grocery in Edmonton’s Norwood neighbourhood. They did not have children.

Court heard Roberts was in the thrall of a drug-induced psychosis the day of the killings. He claimed he was hearing voices and believed he was the king of England. The voices told him to go into the home and kill the occupants.

The attacker and victims were completely unknown to one another.

“In many ways this is a terrifying story: an elderly couple killed in their own home by an unknown intruder,” Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Robert Graesser said in giving his decision.

Construction workers spotted Roberts wandering near the Nascimento’s Queen Mary Park home on Sept. 2, 2016 — dishevelled and dressed inappropriately for the weather.

Court heard he broke into another home and stole a knife before breaking into the Nascimento’s home and stabbing them to death.

Graesser said Roberts had consumed unknown amounts of alcohol and marijuana and possibly meth. He said there was no evidence of how or why Roberts travelled to the neighbourhood from his father’s home in Fort Saskatchewan.

Roberts was initially charged with two counts of first-degree murder, but Graesser said guilty pleas to manslaughter were accepted when the Crown acknowledged it couldn’t prove Roberts planned or intended to kill the Nascimentos.

If Roberts had a plan, “it was not long in the making, and it was very simple,” Graesser said: find a weapon, break into a house and kill the resident.

The Crown argued for a sentence of 20 years, saying the crime was on the “near murder” side of the manslaughter spectrum.

Prosecutor Anders Quist said Roberts’ lengthy criminal record, which includes several assaults, was an aggravating factor, along with the vulnerability of the victims and Roberts’ risk of reoffending.

He said his guilty plea was mitigating, but that it came late in the game and in the face of strong evidence.

“He was caught in the residence of the Nascimentos with their blood on him,” he said outside court. “It was very clear he was the one who had killed them.”

After his arrest, Roberts underwent an assessment for a not-criminally-responsible designation but was unsuccessful.

Court heard Roberts had a long history of substance abuse, beginning at age 12 when he began smoking marijuana. Graesser said that at best, he completed Grade 9, rarely held down a job, and mostly lived off his father.

His sister noted a change in him when he began hanging out with a “meth crowd.” He wouldn’t eat for fear of being poisoned, talked to himself, and attacked both her and his father, which led to assault charges and stints in remand.

Roberts’ family repeatedly sought to get him into mental-health treatment, with his father saying he worried he would kill someone.

Graesser said that police and mental-health systems are not at fault for what happened, noting there is a very high bar to commit someone suffering from mental-health issues against their will.

He gave Roberts 15 years for each killing, to be served concurrently, as well as 10 years concurrent for the break-and-enter charge. Roberts has accrued just over four years’ credit in pretrial custody.

During Roberts’ sentencing hearing, Tony Abrantes, the Nascimentos’ grandson, said he struggles to untangle his memories of his grandparents from the way they died.

After their deaths, friends and family members remembered Maria’s role in founding Edmonton’s first Portuguese school, Joao’s hand-bound books and theological discussions, and their love of gardening.

“John and Marie etched themselves in my heart forever, and I will try to forget that day in September, not because I want to forgive and forget, but because they deserve better,” Abrantes told court.