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Warning: this story contains disturbing details.
Crown lawyers have launched an appeal after an Alberta judge sentenced a retired butcher who dismembered a Beaumont woman’s body to house arrest.
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The Alberta Crown Prosecution Service filed an appeal late last month of Joseph Donald Skelly’s sentence for committing an indignity to Treasa Lynn Oberly’s body, calling the punishment “demonstrably unfit.”
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Skelly, 69, walked out of court March 7 after Court of King’s Bench Justice John Little handed him a two-year conditional sentence, including 12 months of house arrest and a curfew, followed by probation.
As the hearing concluded, Little admonished him: “Mr. Skelly, you behave yourself.”
Oberly’s loved ones say they are stunned Skelly was not given any jail time. Zina Hinkley, a friend of the slain mother of one, welcomed news of the Crown’s appeal.
“I am very happy to hear that Joseph Skelly’s sentencing is being appealed,” she said in a text message, thanking the “large number of people who displayed their outrage.”
Skelly, who worked in grocery store meat departments around Edmonton, lives in the suburb of Beaumont. His son, Kenneth Skelly, was Oberly’s common-law partner and is charged with second-degree murder in her death.
According to an agreed statement of facts, the day after Oberly was reported missing in July 2023, her body was dropped in Skelly’s garage, where he cut it into pieces over the course of a night. He took steps to destroy identifying makings, including burning some of the remains in a barrel in his backyard. Skelly admitted he was drinking heavily and decided to postpone his plan to bury the. body outside town because he was too drunk to drive.
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Police eventually came to suspect Skelly and his son in Oberly’s disappearance. In his initial discussions with police, Joseph Skelly disparaged her, telling them she was a “nasty person” who had likely returned to her native United States.
Skelly confessed after investigators seized his cellphone, however, and led them to the shallow grave outside Whitecourt where he buried the body.
Skelly’s decision to reveal the body’s location, as well as his subsequent expressions of remorse, factored in Little’s decision to spare him jail time.
The Crown — which had argued for three-and-a-half years in prison — says Little overvalued those factors and reached the wrong decision.
Its March 27 filing gives six grounds for appeal. In addition to the sentence being disproportionate to the seriousness of the crime, it is also out of sync with Skelly’s “moral blameworthiness,” the appeal claims.
Little also failed to properly consider aggravating factors that merited a harsher sentence, and overemphasized mitigating factors including Skelly’s standing in the community, his prior good character and his efforts at personal improvement since his arrest, the Crown claims.
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