Supreme Court upholds woman's 1st-degree murder conviction in Tiki Laverdiere death
CBC
The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the first-degree murder conviction of the gang leader at the centre of the murder of Tiki Laverdiere.
That means Soaring Eagle Whitstone will continue serving her life sentence, with no chance of parole for 25 years, for the 2019 murder in North Battleford.
She was one of 10 people accused in the brutal killing, and one of two convicted of first-degree murder.
Whitstone appealed first to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, arguing there were errors in the assessment of a witness's credibility and in findings about her intention to commit murder, but the provincial appeal court upheld the guilty verdicts.
Whitstone took her case to the country's highest court, which also dismissed the appeal in a decision released Thursday.
As described in the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal ruling, Whitstone was the "queen" of a gang called the Westside Outlawz, and a relative of Tristen Cook-Buckle, who was murdered in Alberta. Laverdiere was in an Edmonton gang with Cook-Buckle, and she had travelled to North Battleford in the spring of 2019 for Cook-Buckle's funeral.
Somehow, people came to believe that Laverdiere had something to do with Cook-Buckle's death. A collection of family, friends and local gang members then held Laverdiere hostage and tortured her for information, before killing her.
Whitstone exercised a "level of control" over the scene, the provincial appeal ruling said.
The others involved included Nikita Cook (found guilty of first-degree murder), Jesse Sangster (pleaded guilty to second-degree murder), Nicole Cook (pleaded guilty to manslaughter), Danita Thomas (found guilty of manslaughter), Shayla Orthner (pleaded guilty to manslaughter). Three others were convicted of being an accessory after the fact to murder and one was convicted of kidnapping.
WARNING: This story details allegations of child abuse.
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