Front Burner - An abused woman, a homicide, and a long prison sentence appealed

Episode Date: June 25, 2021

In 2011, after years of abuse, Helen Naslund shot her husband Miles dead as he slept. Now, she’s appealing the 18-year prison sentence for her crime, her lawyer arguing it’s a “miscarriage of justice.” Edmonton Journal reporter Jonny Wakefield explains the case.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. So before we get started today, just a note to say that we'll be talking about intimate partner violence. 49-year-old Miles Naslund was reported missing by his family in 2011. In 2011, after years of abuse, Helen Naslund killed her husband. She got away with it for a while, but eventually the crime caught up

with her. And in 2020, she was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Experts say this sentence, it's one of the longest ever to be handed down in a manslaughter case involving an abused woman in Canada. And this week, she went before Alberta's top court to ask for that sentence to be reduced. My guest today has been following this story closely. Johnny Wakefield is a justice reporter for the Edmonton Journal and Edmonton Sun. And he's going to take me through the fight over Helen Naslin's sentencing, why it's attracted the attention of domestic violence experts and advocates, and the killing at the center of the case.

and the killing at the center of the case. Hi, Johnny. Thank you so much for making the time today. Thank you, Jamie. So maybe we can start here. Can you tell me about Helen Naslund? Who is she? Helen Naslund is a 57-year-old mother of three who is currently imprisoned at the Edmonton Institution for Women. And she sort of lived on farms her entire life. She was raised on a dairy farm in Alberta. She's the youngest of eight children. And she married her husband, Miles, who she eventually killed at age 19. And they moved to the Holden area, which is about 100 kilometers southeast of Edmonton, where they ran a cattle and grain farm.

And that was sort of what they did for years. They had just kind of lived their lives out of the spotlight for a long time. And how would you describe her almost 30-year marriage to Miles? It sounds like from, I've spoken to one of her sons and followed this court case. It sounds like from the very beginning, this was a very volatile and abusive relationship. She described sort of walking on eggshells constantly with him. There was physical and mental abuse. She described being interrogated constantly when she would go anywhere or do anything. And it sounds like she was working constantly right before the events that we're going to talk about later. She was the manager in an equipment shop, and she was also running, in large part,

the family farm, which was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy on many occasions. It was a financially difficult operation. And all this time, there's a lot of bankruptcy on many occasions. It was a financially difficult operation. And all this time, there's a lot of drinking in the household. There's a lot of gun play. There's talk about Miles just, you know, menacing his family with a handgun, ordering them around, getting very intoxicated and musing about violence and things like that. And so that was sort of the backdrop for what happened. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit about the days that led up to Miles's murder. So this all happened in early September over a long weekend, which was kind of the financial measuring stick for the farm, whether they were going to go further into the red or if they were going to scrape by that particular year. And so over this weekend, Helen is working.

She comes home from her job at the equipment rental shop. And again, she comes into this volatile environment where Miles has been drinking and playing around with guns. And he is menacing her and their youngest son neil uh ordering them around to do chores related to harvesting and things like that at some point a hayliner breaks down this piece of equipment breaks down and he apparently throws wrenches at her he threw wrenches at her yes that's what we heard in court um and so she has to deal with fixing this machine. And at the same time, she's also in charge of family dinner on the Sunday, which apparently she puts on the table and then he throws to the floor. The words that we heard in court were that he said it wasn't fit for a dog. So he's basically on a tear, it sounds like.

And eventually later that evening sort of calms down and eventually passes out. Okay, and this is the evening of September 5th, 2011. And what took place? After he'd gone to sleep, Helen retrieved one of the guns that they had. I believe it was a.22 caliber revolver. And shoots him twice in the back of the head while he's sleeping. And I understand that Helen does not call the police after shooting her husband. Instead, what does she do?

Right, her and her son, Neil, basically decide to conceal what happened. And like I said, they live on a farm and they have the space and equipment to do this. So what they do is they place Miles' body into a pickup truck toolbox, basically. They drill it full of holes, fill it with tractor weights, and then take it out to a pond on the farm where they drill it full of holes fill it with tractor weights and then take it out to a pond on the farm um where they sink it then they dispose of miles's weapon and the weapon that was used to kill him they rent a backhoe from the equipment shop that helen worked at bury miles's car they crush it with the backhoe, I guess,

and conceal it in a hole on the farm. And then they burn evidence that was in the room where the shooting happened. Then they go to police and report Miles missing. They sort of intimate that maybe he had been suicidal, that he went off without taking his wallet and other personal effects, but that he had been suicidal that he went off without taking his wallet and other personal effects but that he had taken his gun and they basically use that as a cover story and also

bring up the possibility that maybe he was in the wrong crowd that he had some run-ins in the past and police began an investigation searching for for miles and basically for six years, this cover story holds and police believe that he has in fact gone off somewhere and that they just can't find him. Helen criticizes the police fairly publicly for not doing enough to locate him. And as I said, that story holds for six years until 2017. Okay. And then so how then does it all fall apart? How did the police finally figure out what really happened to Miles Naslund? So we don't know the exact details, but we know from court that at some point, the middle son told somebody about what happened and

that this somehow got to police. And eventually in August 2017, so almost the six-year anniversary of this happening, he, the middle son, speaks to RCMP, who then arranged to search the Naslin property. Wow, wow. So what happened after that, after police find out the truth? After that, Helen and her youngest son, Neil, surrendered and they were both charged with first-degree murder.

Police say just last week they found the remains of 49-year-old Miles Naslin somewhere here on the property. He had been missing for the past six years. Now his wife and son have been charged with first-degree murder in his death. 52-year-old Helen Naslin and 25-year-old Neil... So Helen and her son, Neil, both ended up pleading guilty. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter. And Neil, the youngest son, pleaded guilty to offering indignity to human remains.

There was a joint submission from the Crown and Defense basically saying, we agree that 18 years in prison is the correct punishment for her and neil got three years and uh it was a very emotional scene in the courtroom um you know mother and son were in the prisoner dog next to each other she's very tiny um her eldest son told me that she weighed about maybe 100 pounds soaking wet and the judge said you, this is a case of we have a lot of cases where people come before the courts. They're not evil people, but they were people who were overwhelmed by their circumstances and made the wrong decision. And that's the case here. And he called what Helen Naslin did callous and cowardly and saying that she took advantage and harmed an intimate partner in his home. And after that, she was led away to begin her sentence. Okay. And what was the reaction to the sentence,

18 years for killing her husband? It's interesting because up until the sentencing, there wasn't a lot out there about this case. People didn't really know the circumstances of what happened. And in court, I mean, we did hear pretty extensive details about the abuse that she suffered. A lot of what I told you was in the court record and before the court when they were considering what the appropriate sentence was for her. But I think there was a pretty immediate outcry. 18 years is an incredibly long sentence in Canada. She did risk life in prison if she'd gone to trial and been convicted on murder. But I think that people really stuck on the 18 years and the amount of abuse that she faced. And I understand there have been petitions organized protesting the sentence, and she's received support from women shelters across the country, as well as organizations as far as

Afghanistan, right? Right. I think the petition had something like 22,000 signatures the last time I looked at it. It became sort of like a rallying cry for women's shelters because the judge had put out the idea there. It's like, oh, you had other options. You could have left. And a lot of people in that world know that it's extremely dangerous for a woman who's suffering abuse to leave an abusive partner. Simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix.

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So let's talk about the appeal for a lighter sentence now. So this week, the Alberta Court of Appeal heard the case of Helen Naslund, and you were covering it. And I know that Naslund joined via video from the Edmonton Institution for Women. And how did how does she seem? Well, again, like I said about her sentencing, I mean, she just seemed very small. She's in her late 50s. She's been in jail for six or seven or eight months now, and she didn't really speak during the hearing she watched, but it is interesting that since she went away to prison, she's become much more of a symbol. She has supporters around the world now.

She's written blog posts sort of addressing them directly, saying, you know, thank you for the support. But, you know, what I'm going through right now is hell, and I feel like there's not a way out and that I don't belong here. So I think she is much more of a symbol now than she was when she was sentenced. And her legal team, what argument are they putting forward here for a reduced sentence? So they're in sort of a tricky position because as I said, she was sentenced as part of a joint submission, which is where the crown and the defense agree on what the penalty should be for a crime. So, in effect, she sort of agreed to the 18 years. But they're arguing that that was sort of a result of how the police and Crown proceeded with this case,

giving her the option, essentially, of going to trial on first-degree murder charges and potentially risking 25 to life in prison. To say nothing of the fact that her son is also charged initially with first-degree murder charges and potentially risking 25 to life in prison, to say nothing of the fact that her son is also charged initially with first-degree murder, or taking manslaughter with a very, very hefty sentence. So they're arguing essentially that the Crown behaved coercively here and failed to take into account the abuse that she suffered and her lawyer mona duckett specifically said that this is a case where the courts continue to see this type of violence through a gendered lens and she said that the court improperly assessed the legal term for it is her moral culpability so how much you know how much blame does she deserve for what she did? And one of the lines that her lawyer used was, this is a case about women who kill to survive.

How is the Crown responding to this? What's their argument against a reduced sentence? The Crown is basically saying, look, this was a very serious crime. The cover-up of it was very serious. The line that the Crown used was, this is as close to murder as you can get and still have a manslaughter conviction. They're saying that there was nothing wrong done on the part of the trial crown here, that he didn't behave coercively or anything like that, and that

what he was doing was totally within his rights. And he also raised the concern that if this joint submission is overturned, that's going to create problems down the road for other joint submissions, which you really need for the justice system to work properly. So that's sort of the Crown position on all of this. The agreement between all parties and the sentence that was accepted by the justice, from the Crown's perspective, battered woman syndrome, as it's locally known as, requires some very specific prerequisites to be made out. It's a subset of self-defense, frankly. And in this case, from the Crown's perspective, it wasn't made out such that Ms. Noslin wasn't culpable for what she did.

You mentioned before that you spoke with Helen's eldest son, Wesley, and I can't imagine the sort of position this case puts him in. And so how does he feel about his mother and brother and what they did to his father? I think he thinks that what was done obviously wasn't right. He's not trying to excuse it. It's sort of a case where he's trying to help people understand what it was like growing up in that household and sort of what had become of his mother he said that essentially he doesn't think she's really been free to live her life since the day that she was married and he talked about sort of towards the end of all this like he would look at his mom and she just wasn't really there it didn't seem like it was her behind her eyes that she was sort of hollowed out and broken, and that she tried to leave, that she tried to exercise other options.

She even tried to take her own life on at least one occasion. And so I think that's what he wants people to understand, that this wasn't something that was done lightly. lightly. So what happens now? You know, the Court of Appeal heard this on Tuesday. And so, you know, was there any indication how the appeal judges were leaning? And do we have a sense of when there might be an answer, a verdict here? We don't know when there's going to be a verdict in the Court of Appeal here. They just sort of go off and deliberate. And then at some point, a decision in writing will come out. And it's hard to say which way the justices were leaning. It is interesting when she was being sentenced, the Crown, the defense lawyer, and the judge were all male. And in this case, it wasn't an all-male

court of appeal panel. There was one female justice on it, but I don't know if we can take anything from that. But I think I can say that both the Crown and defense got a lot of questions from the justices. They were clearly very engaged, and I think it's going to be a very clearly very engaged. And I think it's going to be a very tough decision for them. Tony, I wonder from everyone you've spoken to, is there a sense that Helen Naslund's sentence says anything substantial about how the justice system here in this country treats women who kill their abusers? Or are the circumstances of this particular case too unique to say? Well, I think the reason we're talking about it is because it's unique. That 18-year number just really attracted attention to this case in a way that doesn't happen with others.

The next nearest sentence for a case similar to this issue of battered women and spouse abuse and violence in the home and sort of the difficulties that women face. It's got people talking about this issue again. All right, Johnny, thank you so much for this. Thank you. Before we go today, on Wednesday night, Cowess' First Nation warned that disturbing news would be coming from their search of the site of the former Maryville Indian Residential School. On Thursday, that disturbing news came

in a virtual press conference with Cowess' chief Cadmus DeLorme. We started our radar penetrating research on June the 2nd of 2021. As of yesterday, we have hit 751 unmarked graves. This is not a mass grave site. These are unmarked graves. Over the past years, the oral stories of our elders, of our survivors, and friends of our survivors have told the stories that knew these burials were here. In 1960, there may have been marks on these graves. The Catholic Church representatives removed these headstones. And today they are unmarked graves.

All we ask of all of you listening is that you stand by us down our ignorance and accidental racism of not addressing the truth that this country has with Indigenous people. We are not asking for pity, but we are asking for understanding. We need time to heal, and this country must stand by us. We will be following the story. The National Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support to former residential school students and others affected. You can call them 24 hours a day at 1-866-925-4415.

All right, that is all for this week. FrontBurner is brought to you by CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show is produced this week by Elaine Chao, Imogen Burchard, Shannon Higgins, Ali Janes, Bryce Hoyce, and Sundas Noor. Our sound design was by Derek Vanderwyk and Mackenzie Cameron. Our music is by Joseph Chavison of Boombox Sound. The executive producer of FrontBurner is Nick McCabe-Locos. I'm Jamie Poisson.

Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner, and we'll talk to you next week. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.