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<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="font-family: 'Arial Black'"><span style="font-size: 14pt">Girl cried 'Mommy, don't' before being strangled</span></span></span>
January 30, 2009
Melanie Patten
THE CANADIAN PRESS
BRIDGEWATER, N.S.–<span style="font-weight: bold">In her final moments, Karissa Boudreau dug her small hands into the frozen ground and struggled as her mother tightened the twine wrapped around her neck.
"Mommy, don't," were the last words Karissa said to her mother.</span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">The 12-year-old girl was staring into the face of her mother and struggling to free herself as Penny Boudreau pinned her only child down with her knees and pulled harder on the rough rope.
Moments later, when the little girl's heaving gasps stopped, Penny Boudreau loaded her lifeless body onto the floor of her car, discarded the twine in an empty coffee cup, and drove to the icy banks of the LaHave River to dump Karissa's remains.</span>
The chilling details were read out in court in Bridgewater, N.S., on Friday as Boudreau admitted to killing her daughter Jan. 27, 2008.
Wearing a black T-shirt and jeans and weeping throughout the hearing, Boudreau, 34, was sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 20 years. She can apply for parole after 15 years under the so-called faint-hope clause.
<span style="font-weight: bold">"You can never call yourself mother," said Justice Margaret Stewart, glancing up at Boudreau. "The words, `Mommy, don't.' ... are there to haunt you for the rest of your life."</span>
Boudreau was originally charged last June with first-degree murder in the killing of her daughter, who she reported missing the night of her death as a snowstorm swept into the region.
On Friday, Boudreau pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree murder under a plea bargain.
After sentencing, Boudreau stood up briefly to address the court.
"I'm sorry," she said in a meek whisper.
<span style="font-weight: bold">An agreed statement of facts, read into the court record, confirmed that Boudreau's boyfriend, Vernon Macumber, had told Boudreau that it was either him or her daughter if their relationship was to survive.</span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">"Our understanding was that he indicated to her, 'We have to do something within our family, you have to either choose her or me,' " Crown attorney Paul Scovil said outside court.</span>
"We were satisfied he did not mean ... that she was to kill Karissa."
In a victim impact statement, the girl's biological father, Paul Boudreau, wrote: "The centre of my happiness is shattered and hopes and dreams wiped away in one selfish act."
Scovil told the court that on the night Karissa was murdered, she and her mother drove to a local grocery store.
While Karissa waited unharmed in the car, her mother placed a call to her Macumber, telling him the girl had gone missing.
Court heard that Boudreau then drove with her daughter to a nearby road, where the girl was told to get out and the struggle ensued.
When she pulled the girl from the car to dump the body, her jeans partially came off. Boudreau thought that might suggest her daughter had been sexually assaulted, so she left them that way even though there was no such assault, details that elicited sobs and gasps from the public gallery.
Boudreau later discarded some articles of clothing and a sandal belonging to Karissa in a garbage can at a local swimming pool, which were discovered days later.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Two days after Karissa's reported disappearance, the tearful mother appeared before TV cameras, begging Karissa to come home. At the time, she said had left the girl in her car after they had argued in the parking lot of the grocery store. When she returned, the girl was gone, she said.</span>
On two separate occasions, Boudreau appealed to the public for help in finding the girl as search crews scoured the nearby river and wooded areas.
The 12-year-old's frozen remains were found on the riverbank by a passerby on Feb. 9.
Court was told Friday that undercover agents posing as a members of a crime syndicate befriended Macumber and eventually convinced Boudreau they "could possibly make her `problem' go away."
<span style="font-weight: bold">Boudreau admitted to the crime, going so far as to re-enact the action on one of the undercover agents and taking them to the scene of the murder. She also wrote a detailed account of what happened the night Karissa died.</span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">Crown attorney Denise Smith said Boudreau's actions "defy any meaning we hold dear of what it means to be a mother."
Outside the courthouse, Paul Boudreau said Penny Boudreau had shed "crocodile tears" over the death of her daughter.
"That's all it's ever been," he said. "That's all it ever will be."</span>
At the time her body was found, RCMP said investigators believed Karissa knew her killer.
Karissa, a Grade 6 student at Bridgewater Elementary School, was described as a typical kid, who loved singing along to Hilary Duff and the Spice Girls CDs while dancing in her room.
Her disappearance shook the town of Bridgewater, a town of 8,000 near Nova Scotia's South Shore, which held a memorial service for Karissa on the anniversary of her disappearance this week.
Though she was born in Ontario, Penny Boudreau did most of her growing up in Clark's Harbour, the largest community on Cape Sable Island – a spit of land at the edge of Nova Scotia's southwestern tip.
January 30, 2009
Melanie Patten
THE CANADIAN PRESS
BRIDGEWATER, N.S.–<span style="font-weight: bold">In her final moments, Karissa Boudreau dug her small hands into the frozen ground and struggled as her mother tightened the twine wrapped around her neck.
"Mommy, don't," were the last words Karissa said to her mother.</span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">The 12-year-old girl was staring into the face of her mother and struggling to free herself as Penny Boudreau pinned her only child down with her knees and pulled harder on the rough rope.
Moments later, when the little girl's heaving gasps stopped, Penny Boudreau loaded her lifeless body onto the floor of her car, discarded the twine in an empty coffee cup, and drove to the icy banks of the LaHave River to dump Karissa's remains.</span>
The chilling details were read out in court in Bridgewater, N.S., on Friday as Boudreau admitted to killing her daughter Jan. 27, 2008.
Wearing a black T-shirt and jeans and weeping throughout the hearing, Boudreau, 34, was sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 20 years. She can apply for parole after 15 years under the so-called faint-hope clause.
<span style="font-weight: bold">"You can never call yourself mother," said Justice Margaret Stewart, glancing up at Boudreau. "The words, `Mommy, don't.' ... are there to haunt you for the rest of your life."</span>
Boudreau was originally charged last June with first-degree murder in the killing of her daughter, who she reported missing the night of her death as a snowstorm swept into the region.
On Friday, Boudreau pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree murder under a plea bargain.
After sentencing, Boudreau stood up briefly to address the court.
"I'm sorry," she said in a meek whisper.
<span style="font-weight: bold">An agreed statement of facts, read into the court record, confirmed that Boudreau's boyfriend, Vernon Macumber, had told Boudreau that it was either him or her daughter if their relationship was to survive.</span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">"Our understanding was that he indicated to her, 'We have to do something within our family, you have to either choose her or me,' " Crown attorney Paul Scovil said outside court.</span>
"We were satisfied he did not mean ... that she was to kill Karissa."
In a victim impact statement, the girl's biological father, Paul Boudreau, wrote: "The centre of my happiness is shattered and hopes and dreams wiped away in one selfish act."
Scovil told the court that on the night Karissa was murdered, she and her mother drove to a local grocery store.
While Karissa waited unharmed in the car, her mother placed a call to her Macumber, telling him the girl had gone missing.
Court heard that Boudreau then drove with her daughter to a nearby road, where the girl was told to get out and the struggle ensued.
When she pulled the girl from the car to dump the body, her jeans partially came off. Boudreau thought that might suggest her daughter had been sexually assaulted, so she left them that way even though there was no such assault, details that elicited sobs and gasps from the public gallery.
Boudreau later discarded some articles of clothing and a sandal belonging to Karissa in a garbage can at a local swimming pool, which were discovered days later.
<span style="font-weight: bold">Two days after Karissa's reported disappearance, the tearful mother appeared before TV cameras, begging Karissa to come home. At the time, she said had left the girl in her car after they had argued in the parking lot of the grocery store. When she returned, the girl was gone, she said.</span>
On two separate occasions, Boudreau appealed to the public for help in finding the girl as search crews scoured the nearby river and wooded areas.
The 12-year-old's frozen remains were found on the riverbank by a passerby on Feb. 9.
Court was told Friday that undercover agents posing as a members of a crime syndicate befriended Macumber and eventually convinced Boudreau they "could possibly make her `problem' go away."
<span style="font-weight: bold">Boudreau admitted to the crime, going so far as to re-enact the action on one of the undercover agents and taking them to the scene of the murder. She also wrote a detailed account of what happened the night Karissa died.</span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">Crown attorney Denise Smith said Boudreau's actions "defy any meaning we hold dear of what it means to be a mother."
Outside the courthouse, Paul Boudreau said Penny Boudreau had shed "crocodile tears" over the death of her daughter.
"That's all it's ever been," he said. "That's all it ever will be."</span>
At the time her body was found, RCMP said investigators believed Karissa knew her killer.
Karissa, a Grade 6 student at Bridgewater Elementary School, was described as a typical kid, who loved singing along to Hilary Duff and the Spice Girls CDs while dancing in her room.
Her disappearance shook the town of Bridgewater, a town of 8,000 near Nova Scotia's South Shore, which held a memorial service for Karissa on the anniversary of her disappearance this week.
Though she was born in Ontario, Penny Boudreau did most of her growing up in Clark's Harbour, the largest community on Cape Sable Island – a spit of land at the edge of Nova Scotia's southwestern tip.
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