The tiny body of Loretta Saunders, wrapped in a hockey bag and dumped on a desolate highway shoulder, became the cruel monument to a life snuffed out for less than the cost of a month’s rent. The 26-year-old Inuit criminology student, pregnant and just two months from graduating from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, was strangled and suffocated by her own tenants in a brutal and calculated act that a judge would later condemn as “despicable, horrifying and cowardly.” Her dream of giving a voice to missing and murdered Indigenous women ended when she became one of them.
Saunders had clawed her way back from a devastating addiction that once left her homeless on the streets of Montreal. Her mother, Miriam, described a daughter who was simply not going to be beaten by her demons. She got clean through a methadone program, rebuilt her life, and was accepted into the criminology program at Saint Mary’s University.
She was in a loving relationship with her partner, Yelcin, and had just discovered she was three months pregnant. Her thesis was deeply personal, focusing on the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada. She was a survivor, a scholar, and a mother-to-be with everything to live for.
On February 13, 2014, Saunders went to her rented apartment at 41 Cowie Hill Drive to collect overdue rent from her tenants, Blake Leggett and Victoria Hennebury. The pair owed her approximately six hundred dollars and had been consistently late or non-paying. Saunders had reached her limit and intended to ask them to leave.
It was a routine landlord visit that would cost her everything. She walked into that apartment at 11 a. m.
and was never seen alive again.
Leggett and Hennebury had been planning something darker. Two days before the murder, a drunken argument between the couple was captured on video. “Are you hungry?
You can’t even say that you really want to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 Loretta,” Leggett taunted Hennebury. She responded, “You said that you want to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 her earlier. Don’t lie about who I want to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁.”
The chilling exchange, later recovered from Leggett’s phone, became a confession of intent. They had discussed killing a pregnant woman to avoid paying a few hundred dollars.
When Saunders arrived, Leggett came up behind her as she sat on a chair and began choking her. She fought back with terrifying ferocity, a woman fighting for herself and her unborn child. The struggle sent both of them to the floor.
Leggett then attempted to suffocate her with four plastic bags, but Saunders tore through every single one. In a final, savage act, he banged her head off the floor twice until she stopped moving. He then wrapped her head in plastic wrap, stuffed her body into his hockey bag, and dragged it down the stairs to her own car.
The pair then went on a grotesque road trip, using Saunders’ bank cards to buy food at a gas station and a Tim Hortons. They used her phone to send a bizarre text message to her boyfriend, Yelcin, pretending to be her. “I’m so stressed that I can’t even remember my own mother’s maiden name,” the message read, a clumsy attempt to explain a locked bank account.
They drove her car more than 1,200 kilometers to Harrow, Ontario, where they parked it outside a house, believing they had gotten away with murder.
For eight agonizing days, Saunders’ family held out hope. Her sibling, DM, coordinated a massive search effort. Posters were plastered across Halifax.
An online fundraiser brought the family from Newfoundland and Labrador to Nova Scotia. The university community rallied. But the investigation quickly zeroed in on the tenants.
Surveillance footage from the apartment building showed Leggett carrying a hockey bag that appeared disturbingly heavy. He made three trips, hauling bags outside. Saunders’ car was found in Ontario, and Leggett and Hennebury were arrested for possessing a stolen vehicle.
When confronted with the video evidence, Hennebury broke. “He did it,” she said. “He killed her.
He smothered her with a bag.” She claimed the motive was avoiding paying the six hundred dollars in rent. Police begged her to lead them to the body.
Two weeks after the disappearance, she directed them to a desolate stretch of highway near the New Brunswick border. Saunders’ body was found, still inside the hockey bag, wrapped in a blanket. An autopsy confirmed she had been strangled.
In court, the agreed statement of facts painted a horrifying picture of the final moments. Saunders fought for her life with everything she had, tearing through bags, banging her head, screaming. Leggett pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and received an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.
Hennebury pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life with a chance of parole after just ten years. The disparity in sentencing ignited fury.
Miriam Saunders stood outside the courthouse, her voice cracking with rage and grief. “Blood on her hands from my daughter and she got 10 years,” she screamed. “What kind of justice is that?
A pregnant woman, a small little pregnant woman, two big monsters. They murdered her without mercy and I think we should have no mercy on them.” The family had prayed for a guilty plea to avoid a trial, and when it came, they saw it as an answer, but the sentence felt like a betrayal.
The judge called the crime “despicable, horrifying and cowardly.” Inside the courtroom, DM lunged at the defendants, screaming. As the family left, someone shouted to Leggett that they would be waiting for him when he gets out.
The pain was raw and unending. One life was gone, and another family was shattered. The ripple effects of that single act of violence would claim more victims.
In 2017, Hennebury tried to withdraw her guilty plea, claiming she was not in her right mind. The court denied the request. Then came a new insult: Hennebury began claiming Indigenous ancestry, seeking access to Indigenous support services and ceremonies.
The parole board noted no history of such heritage. The community and the Saunders family called it a “gimmick” and a “game.” She was later granted a pass to attend an Indigenous drumming circle, but it was swiftly revoked after public outcry.
She is now prohibited from accessing any Indigenous services.
The murders of Saunders and others, including 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, fueled a national movement. The hashtag #AmINext went 𝓿𝒾𝓇𝒶𝓁. Advocacy groups demanded a national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
The inquiry was officially launched in 2017 and concluded in 2019. Miriam Saunders testified, finding the courage to speak after years of silence. She said her daughter’s death had given her a voice she never had.
DM turned her grief into activism. She founded a blog called “A Homicide Survivor’s Journey Through Grief” and worked with documentary filmmaker Matthew Smiley on “Highway of Tears,” a film about the murdered and missing women along British Columbia’s Highway 16. Two Halifax theaters screened the documentary to raise money for the Loretta Saunders scholarship fund, which helps Indigenous women pursue post-secondary education.
DM said it was exactly what her sister wanted to do.
Amnesty International awarded DM the Ambassador of Conscience award. “I learned so much from my sister’s short time on Earth,” DM said. “She taught me many lessons and continues to guide and inspire me.
I hope in sharing her experiences and my own, I’m able to do the same for someone else.” It was a powerful legacy, but the trauma was too deep. In September 2021, Miriam Saunders announced that DM had died.
After losing Loretta, DM’s addiction had spiraled, leading to liver failure. In a desperate attempt to get clean, they stopped taking medication and began drinking to curb withdrawal pain. The cause of death was accidental suffocation linked to complications from addiction.
Dozens of people gathered in Halifax’s parade square to remember a young woman whose story touched the nation. “There was so much devastation caused to so many lives because of what happened on February the 13th,” one speaker said. “The aftermath is still widely felt.”
Loretta Saunders was in an amazing and exciting place in her life, with everything at her fingertips and a new baby on the way. Her biggest passion was raising awareness, helping to educate people, and hoping for change.
It seems only right to end with an extract from Loretta’s thesis, a thesis she was so proud of and excited to one day share. Her words are a chilling echo from the grave, a testament to a life cut short. “My story isn’t unique,” she wrote.
“Thousands of girls are 𝓮𝔁𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭 to the exact same experiences that I couldn’t even fathom wishing upon another human being. It is through this project that I aspire to educate and enlighten others, as well as provide hope and inspiration that change is possible.”
Loretta Saunders wanted to be a voice for the voiceless. In death, she became one of the statistics she sought to understand. Her killers are behind bars, but the legacy of their despicable act continues to ripple through a family, a community, and a nation still wrestling with a crisis of violence against Indigenous women.
Her fight for her life, her fight for her baby, and her fight for justice remain unanswered, a haunting reminder of how fragile hope can be.
