Three plead guilty in 2020 torture, murder
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/03/2022 (1027 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
A man whose charred remains were discovered in Portage la Prairie was tortured and held captive for days after he was accused of sexually assaulting the girlfriend of one of his killers, a court has heard.
Gerhard Reimer-Wiebe, 27, was killed in a Winnipeg home in June 2020, before his body was burned and partially buried on the edge of a field.
On Friday, 31-year-old Kyle Evan Sinkovits and 27-year-old Jonathan Narvey pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, while co-accused Bobbi-Lynn Hall, 28, pleaded guilty to accessory to murder after the fact. They will be sentenced at a later date.
A fourth accused, 26-year-old Chelsea O’Hanley is set to stand trial in May on charges of first-degree murder, indignity to human remains, and accessory to murder after the fact.
Sinkovits, Narvey and Hall were all originally charged with first-degree murder, but entered guilty pleas to the lesser offences after court was provided with a grim accounting of Reimer-Wiebe’s final days.
All four accused were living or staying at an Alfred Avenue home in mid-June 2020, when Hall told Sinkovits (her boyfriend) and Narvey (a close friend) she had awakened in bed with Reimer-Wiebe and believed he had sexually assaulted her, Crown attorney Melissa Hazelton told court, reading from a lengthy agreed statement of facts.
Sinkovits and Narvey held Reimer-Wiebe captive for at least three days, placing a dog collar and leash around his neck and tying him to a chair in the basement. The pair brought Reimer-Wiebe upstairs for food and water and returned him to the basement, where they repeatedly assaulted him before ultimately killing him.
An autopsy showed Reimer-Wiebe suffered an array of violent injuries, including a fractured tibia, lacerations to his back, a broken hand, and major skull trauma. Three of his fingers had been cut off.
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“The fingers that were removed were cut in several different places, indicating they were removed in pieces and cut off at each knuckle,” Hazelton said.
Photos later found on a cellphone shared by Narvey and O’Hanley (Narvey’s girlfriend) showed Narvey standing on Reimer-Wiebe’s body as it lay over tarps in the kitchen.
Sometime on June 19 or June 20, Reimer-Wiebe’s body was wrapped in a tarp and placed in the trunk of O’Hanley’s Chevrolet Equinox. With O’Hanley behind the wheel, the four accused drove 70 kilometres west to Portage la Prairie to dispose of Reimer-Wiebe’s body.
The group stopped at a gas bar, where they stocked up on snacks and filled a jerry can with gas, before heading to the home of one of Hall’s ex-boyfriends.
Once there, they drove onto an adjacent field, unloaded Reimer-Wiebe’s body and used the gas to set it on fire. After some time, the group moved the body to a treed area on the edge of the field and covered it with dirt from a nearby garden.
The group returned to Winnipeg where, according to the agreed statement of facts, they found the Alfred Avenue residence engulfed in flames.
Later that day, Narvey sent Hall’s ex-boyfriend a message over Facebook saying: “Yo did you get told about the bbq chicken at your place in the back… Is it being dealt with or do I need to come and finish the job?”
Four days later, Hall’s ex-boyfriend’s father called RCMP to report he had found human remains on his property.
“It took a couple of weeks for (police) to identify Reimer-Wiebe as the victim, due to the state of decomposition and destruction of his remains,” Hazelton said, reading from the agreed statement of facts.
In July 2020, Narvey and Sinkovits were each arrested for an unrelated break and enter.
While in custody, Sinkovits, in telephone calls to his mother and grandmother, confessed he had killed Reimer-Wiebe because he was an alleged sex assailant. Sinkovits provided a similar confession to a corrections officer at Milner Ridge Correctional Centre.
Dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter
Someone once said a journalist is just a reporter in a good suit. Dean Pritchard doesn’t own a good suit. But he knows a good lawsuit.
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History
Updated on Saturday, March 5, 2022 11:07 AM CST: Changes to "assailant" from "offender"
