Young female killers

Canada’s youngest multiple killer is now taking "baby steps" toward freedom after a judge on Monday changed her sentence from closed to open custody, allowing for escorted trips into the community.

Global News takes a look at this case, and others involving girls who kill.

J.R.

The quiet community of Medicine Hat, Alberta was shaken in April 2006 when a 48-year-old mother, 42-year-old father and 8-year-old brother were found stabbed to death in their family home.

The last member of the family, a 12-year-old girl, was arrested in Leader, Sask. with her 23-year-old boyfriend Jeremy Steinke.

Her trial began in June, where the young girl testified that her boyfriend broke into the family’s home and murdered her mother and father. She said her boyfriend directed her to stab her brother, and after she stabbed the boy once, the man slit his throat.

She said that at the time, she was in a “zombie” state and couldn’t stop her boyfriend or get help. She dismissed prior discussions she had with Steinke of murdering her family as a joke.

The crown argued that the girl helped plan the murder of her parents because they disapproved of her relationship with Steinke.

The girl was found guilty and is believed to be the youngest person in Canada to be convicted of multiple counts of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to four years in custody and four-and-a-half years of supervision.

Jeremy Steinke was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 25 years.

Kelly Ellard

When 14-year-old Reena Virk was invited to go to a local a waterfront park in Saanich B.C. with a couple of acquaintances on the night of November 14, 1997, she accepted despite having earlier been in a fight with some of their friends.

Once they got to the park, Virk was swarmed and beaten by a group of teens, including 15-year old Kelly Ellard, and drowned under a bridge.

But it would be another 12 years before the saga involving the conviction of Ellard would finally come to an end. The girl had her first trial in 2000, being tried as an adult. In less than a month, Ellard was convicted of second-degree murder.

The B.C. court of appeal ordered a new trial in 2003, when she was 21. The court ruled that the Crown asking her 18 times during her testimony why witnesses would give false testimony against her resulted in an unfair trial.

But the second trial again resulted in a mistrial when jurors were deadlocked, and she went to trial a third time in 2004, found guilty, and handed a life sentence.

Her conviction was overturned in 2008, and a new trial was ordered on the grounds that the judge in her third trial judge gave erroneous instructions to the jury over testimony.

In June 2009, her conviction and life sentence were reinstated. The 8-1 decision dismissed the possibility of a fourth trial.

Bathtub Girls

Two girls aged 15 and 16 became the first sisters to ever murder their mother in Canada in 2003. The girls drowned their alcoholic mother in the bathtub of their Mississauga, Ont. home after feeding her booze and Tylenol-3 pills.

The girls then made a frantic 911 call to authorities, who believed their story for more than a year – the death was an alcoholic accident.

But a friend of the girls later went to police with information that they had planned the murder.

The 16 year-old was the driving force behind the crime, holding her mother’s head under water for four minutes. She and her sister were dubbed the “˜Bathtub Girls’ while on trial in Brampton, Ont. in 2005.

Both girls were found guilty of first-degree murder and sent to Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ont. But the older sister was released after serving only three years of her 10-year sentence.

According to judge Bruce Duncan, the “gifted and intelligent woman with superior intelligence” should be allowed to accept a scholarship to the University of Waterloo science and engineering program and serve the remainder of her sentence in a Barrie halfway house.

With files from Canwest News Service