Teen who helped kill family may receive special sentence

A 14-year-old Medicine Hat girl who was convicted of murdering former Sudbury resident Marc Richardson, along with his wife and and eight-year-old son in April 2006, may qualify for a special sentence called “Intensive Rehabilitation Custody and Supervision.”

The rarely used, intensive therapeutic sentence targets serious young offenders with mental or psychological disorders who have been transferred to the adult correctional system because of the lack of adequate treatment services.

The length of her sentence, which will be no longer than 10 years as a result of her young age, could include time served in a young offender centre, forensic psychiatric hospital, a group home and in the community. The youth’s name cannot be published under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.

This summer the girl, who was 12 at the time of the murders, was found guilty of killing three people, an act that was brought to fruition with the help of her then-boyfriend, 24-year-old Jeremy Allan Steinke, who is also charged with three counts of first-degree murder.

According to reports from the girl’s trial, the youth encouraged and persuaded Steinke to murder the Richardson family.

In the spring of last year, authorities in the Alberta city were summoned to a home after a six-year-old neighbour boy reported seeing a body through the front window. When Medicine Hat Police stepped inside, they found the bodies of Marc Richardson, 42, his wife, Debra, 48, and their eight-year-old son, Jacob. They had been stabbed to death.

In July, a jury handed down a guilty verdict on three counts of first-degree murder to the young girl after three hours of deliberations in the Court of Queen’s Bench in Medicine Hat.

After the guilty verdict was pronounced, both the Crown and defence lawyers agreed that the troubled youth should be considered for the Intensive Rehabilitation Custody and Supervision program, a system aimed at rehabilitating young offenders who are convicted of serious crimes.