Alberta mother sentenced for drugging, killing girl
CALGARY — The father of a nineyear-old girl drugged and killed by her mother says no prison sentence will do his daughter justice.
“I will never get to watch my daughter grow up, but I know she would have done great in life,” Duane Lucius said Friday as he clutched a photo of his daughter, Amber.
“I have had to bury my child and nothing will bring her back. I can only hope that other children are not being used as bargaining chips in a divorce or used to hurt the other parent.”
His former wife, Laura Coward, was sentenced Friday to life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years after pleading guilty in a Calgary courtroom last month to second-degree murder.
The life sentence was automatic, but it was up to Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Scott Brooker to decide how long Coward will have to wait before being able to seek parole.
The judge said it was “the ultimate betrayal for Miss Coward to kill her own daughter.”
“In murdering your own daughter, you have committed a vile and evil crime,” he said. “This court must express society’s disgust and outrage to denounce your evil act.”
Brooker said Coward deserved credit for pleading guilty and for showing remorse, but he noted she never explained why she killed Amber.
“The only logical inference to draw from the facts is Miss Coward murdered her daughter as a means of getting back at, and punishing, Amber’s father.”
Court documents described a bitter divorce between Coward and Lucius. A custody tug-of-war ensued.
Prosecutor Mac Vomberg called the case disturbing.
“In the more than 30 years I’ve been involved in criminal justice, this has been one of the most disturbing cases I’ve ever had to deal with,” Vomberg said outside the courtroom.
Amber was reported missing in August 2014. Her mother was arrested two days later near Sundre, in west-central Alberta. She was standing outside a burned truck in which her daughter’s body was discovered.
The court heard that Coward had had Amber for the weekend and, on a trip to a remote area, gave her a toxic but non-lethal dose of a prescription sleeping medication. She mistakenly thought Amber was dead and filled the truck — while Amber was unconscious inside — with paper and plastic totes before setting it on fire with a propane torch and closing the door.
An autopsy suggested the girl died of a combination of hypothermia, smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide toxicity.