A woman who once served as a soldier with the Canadian Armed Forces at CFB Edmonton has been found guilty on three counts of attempted murder in connection with a 2015 fire that broke out at her home while she and her children were inside.
The judge found the accused guilty on Friday, three weeks after the juryless trial began at the Edmonton Law Courts.
The woman who was convicted cannot have her name shared because of a publication ban meant to protect the identity of her children.
The woman was also found guilty of two other crimes: intentionally or recklessly causing damage by fire to a property knowing the property was inhabited and intentionally or recklessly causing damage by fire to a property belonging to the Canadian Armed Forces.
The trial focused on the night in the summer of 2015 that the soldier’s home caught fire with her and her children inside, as well as her actions in the days leading up to the blaze.
Over the course of the trial, the Crown has argued the mother was motivated to kill herself and her three children because she did not want to comply with a court order giving custody of her children to her ex-husband.
As a key piece of evidence for its case, the Crown presented a letter written by the accused to a friend before the fire broke out that says “by the time you’re reading this, I’ll either be in jail or dead.”
The lawyer representing the soldier suggested to the court that if the fire was intentionally set, it was possible someone else had set it. Over the course of the trial, he repeatedly questioned the woman’s then 10- and eight-year-old sons whether they started the fire that night.
The defence suggested the offender’s testimony — that she believed the smoke causing her children to cough on the night of the fire was caused by wildfires that were burning in Western Canada at the time — was credible, and that this belief was partly what led to her delay in reacting to the fire or investigating after one of her children reported seeing the fire in the basement.
“What parent, when confronted by her children about a fire, says: ‘I’ll deal with it later?'” Justice John Little asked on Friday.
“Her explanation sounds entirely contrived.
“Her oral testimony was riddled with illogical statements.”
The defence also argued there were inconsistencies between the recollections of offender’s three children in the house that night and the neighbours that sprang into action to save them.
There were no eyewitnesses to be able to testify how the fire started and the mother and her children at times offered differing versions of how events unfolded that night.
A date for a sentencing hearing has yet to be scheduled. The offender will be placed under house arrest until a sentencing hearing begins.
The offender’s ex-husband, who is also the father of their three children, declined to be interviewed after the verdict was read out but said his family is happy about the ruling and hopes it will provide some closure.
READ MORE: Closing arguments made in Edmonton at trial for mother accused of trying to kill her children
Before announcing his verdict, Little spoke about how he found the offender’s testimony over the course of the trial to be difficult to believe.
“I do accept the evidence of the children that none of them started the fire,” he said, adding that he was “satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that no lapses in physical security led to a stranger entering the house.”
Little also noted evidence presented during the trial showing that there should have been three working smoke detectors in the home — one on each level — and that one the night of the fire, there was not one working smoke detector. Two detectors were later discovered in a garbage bag.
–With files from Sarah Ryan, Global News