Killer will have to wait 15 years to apply for release

Convicted killer Christina Asp will have to spend at least 15 years behind bars before she is eligible to apply for parole, a Yukon Supreme Court Justice has ruled.

Convicted killer Christina Asp will have to spend at least 15 years behind bars before she is eligible to apply for parole, a Yukon Supreme Court Justice has ruled.

Asp stood quietly as Justice Leigh Gower made his decision last Friday afternoon.

Last June, a jury convicted the 34-year-old Whitehorse woman of second-degree murder for the 2008 death of Gordon Seybold.

Her conviction carries an automatic life sentence. The only question left for the judge was to decide how long she must serve before she can apply for parole.

For second-degree murder, a judge can order that a person wait between 10 and 25 years before applying for parole. An earlier story in the Star mistakenly stated a life sentence meant a sentence of 25 years.

Crown prosecutors had asked for between 16 and 18 years before parole eligability, while her defence recommended 12 years.

Back in June, after delivering their verdict, the jurors were given the option to make recommendations as to how long Asp should remain in prison before becoming eligible for parole.

Six of the 12 jurors recommended 16 years.

After she is released, Asp will remain under the supervision of parole officers for the rest of her life.

In his ruling, Gower said Seybold’s death showed “an egregious level of violence,” and that Asp was callous and failed to demonstrate remorse.

However, he also pointed out that she is relatively young and has had successfully completed treatment and programming while in custody in the past.

“I am unable to conclude that she is a lost cause,” Gower said.

Seybold’s body was found in the charred remains of his Ibex Valley home in March 2008.

Asp’s arrest for murder came after a lengthy undercover operation where RCMP officers convinced her she had been welcomed into a powerful criminal organization.

In secretly-recorded conversations played for the jury, Asp tells the undercover officers that she and her boyfriend, Norman Larue, went to Seybold’s property, where the two men got into a fight.

When Seybold appeared to be getting the upper-hand on her boyfriend, Asp tells the officers, she took a bat and struck him three times in the head.

On the stand during the trial, Asp claimed she exaggerated her role in Seybold’s death to impress her new friends. She swore she only watched while her boyfriend killed the 63-year-old.

She was arrested in August 2009 and charged with first-degree murder.

She has been in custody ever since.

In his ruling last Friday, Gower said that he believed beyond a reasonable doubt that Asp did, in fact, swing the bat.

He also said that she put a “significant effort” into hiding what had happened.

At the time of Seybold’s death, Asp was on the run from a halfway house where she was serving parole after having been convicted of manslaughter.

In 2004, Asp stabbed her common-law partner, Keith Blanchard, after a domestic dispute.

Along with the 15 years before she can apply for parole, Asp is also banned for life from owning a firearm and must provide a DNA sample.

Larue is also facing a murder charge in the case. He is scheduled to go to trial next year.