Mother's Day wish: Her ashes returned

[Amy]

DALE ANNE FREED
STAFF REPORTER Toronto Star

thestar.com

Mother's Day wish: Her ashes returned

The sons of a murdered woman want to rescue their mother's ashes.

But where they were stashed is a secret Barbara Lanthier's killer has locked away with him in the maximum-security Millhaven penitentiary near Kingston, where he's serving a life sentence for murder.

Garry Samuels isn't talking.

"We just want closure on this. Knowing what he's done with my mother's ashes, where they are, would bring some relief to my brother Shawn and me," said Kevin Lanthier, 38, an operations manager for a Toronto condo. "Mother's Day is difficult. Her birthday is difficult. And November is a disaster."

Mother's Day is tomorrow. Barbara's birthday was July 25. November was the month she was murdered.

It's been more than 10 years since Barbara Lanthier died. On Nov. 10, 1994, her badly bruised body was pulled from Samuels' Ford truck, found upside-down in waist-deep water in the Mississippi River at Carleton Place, Ont. At first, it was labelled an accidental drowning.

No one in the sleepy town, about 50 kilometres east of Ottawa, dreamed that the vivacious 46-year-old hairdresser, owner of the Clip Joint Salon, had been killed by her common-law husband of nine years.

The evidence would suggest otherwise. Samuels pleaded innocent, but after a 28-day Superior Court trial in Perth, a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder in staging the accident. Samuels had been behind the wheel when the truck swerved over an embankment and flipped into the shallow water; he got out but claimed he couldn't save Barbara. The court was told that would-be rescuers freed her body within seconds.

On May 29, 2001, he was sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole for 25 years.

For all those years, Kevin, whose father died a year before Barbara's death, and brother Shawn, a 35-year-old computer consultant, have agonized over their mother's missing remains.

Barbara had named Samuels executor of her will, which also made him guardian of her ashes.

"There was a memorial two days after she died. Garry wanted to get her cremated almost instantaneously," Kevin said. Later, Shawn retrieved the ashes from the funeral home.

"We were to go to Carleton Place to disperse her ashes with my grandmother and Samuels," Kevin said. "But Samuels phoned and ordered that the ashes be delivered back to the funeral home."

The brothers handed over a brown paper package containing their mother's ashes. They never saw it again.

Samuels also ignored a request in Barbara's will to donate her organs under the Human Tissue Gift Act, the trial was told.

Samuels, a onetime life insurance salesman now 57 years old, had taken out close to $2 million worth of insurance on his wife. One accidental-death policy was taken out Nov. 10, the day she was killed, Crown Attorney Doug Brown said at the trial.

Her sons were suspicious from the beginning. "Something's not sitting right," Shawn recalls thinking at the time. His older brother agreed.

Kevin was about to return to Toronto a week after his mother's death when he found the first piece of damning evidence. On her closet's top shelf was a brown leather briefcase.

"I brought it down. I opened it. There were all these life insurance policies in my mother's name," he said. "I wrote down every policy number and went to the police with it immediately. It still took police 19 months to charge him."

At Samuels' sentencing, Justice Albert Roy called his plan to collect the money "an elaborate and even at times Machiavellian scheme of purchasing insurance on Barbara Lanthier's life."

After Samuels was convicted, Kevin Lanthier got a court order removing him as executor. Appointed trustee of her estate in 2002, Kevin now has control of his mother's ashes — "if he can find them," says the brothers' lawyer, George Argiris.

Samuels never received a cent on the policies, and never gave a hint on the subject of Barbara's ashes.

"It's shocking that after the man has been convicted we're still no further ahead than we were on the conviction date," Kevin said. "Right from the get-go the system has been flawed, from the police work through the courts. There's no guidance on where to go for help."

The bizarre aspects of this case leave criminal lawyers baffled.

"There's no reason for (Samuels) to keep the secret of where he put the ashes, because the ashes have no forensic value and can't affect his conviction or appeal," said criminal lawyer Christopher Hicks. "It's an issue of common humanity, really."

Even a court order can't force him to say where the ashes are, Hicks said, but "as humane and generous as she was being about her organs (being) donated, the least he could do would be to reflect those values and tell her sons where her ashes are."

"It's morbidly ironic," said York University law professor Alan Young, that the law has mechanisms to return a stolen TV to a crime victim, "but this just doesn't fit into that category of stolen contraband."

The law is often "awkward" in odd situations, he said. "There's no doubt that their claims are compelling and I would hope a court would accommodate it."

As to Samuels' refusal, he said, "there's no profit in maintaining ashes. It's really just an insult, a sign of disrespect."

The Lanthier brothers have asked for help from the Crown's office, with no success. CAVEAT, a victims' rights group, wrote to the attorney general's office on their behalf. "But nothing of substance was ever said. We got nowhere," Kevin said.

The attorney general's ministry declined to comment while a decision on Samuels' appeal is before the court, said spokesperson Brendan Crawley.

Argiris has twice tried to appeal to Samuels through letters to James Lockyer, the lawyer representing him at his appeal. Lockyer's reply to a March 28 letter said the Lanthiers shouldn't expect a response until a decision is made on Samuels' appeal, which was heard last December. He also declined to talk to the Star before then.

Barbara's sons believe her remains won't be at rest until she gets a proper burial. "She has no resting place. We have no place to visit her," Kevin said.

Fights over ashes are rare, said Linda Silver Dranoff, a family lawyer and author of Every Canadian's Guide to the Law. "It's complicated because of the length of time that passed between her death and the conviction and it's complicated by how much of her estate may or may not be remaining for her kids. And it's complicated by the fact that (Samuels) is not talking."

Barbara's estate is in legal limbo, too. The brothers pay half the cost of upkeep on the house that belonged to their mother and Samuels, which they can't sell or rent because he's listed as tenant in common.

"If the appeal goes through and another case is ordered, Samuels could walk right out of prison and into the front door of that house," Kevin said. Argiris told the Star said he'll consider applying for partition and sale after the decision comes down.

As for the brothers, who feel twice victimized, "We're frustrated, exhausted by it all," Kevin said.

[Kitty]

 

"Amy" <amythy...@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:117s2gm...@corp.supernews.com...

what a mess and travesty of justice---GLAD I'm not in Canada!

 

Kitty

[MaryL]

 

"Kitty" <cowg...@comcast.net> wrote in message news:w--dnQr_2pl...@comcast.com...

 

Yes, it's "a mess and a travesty of justice" -- but it has nothing to do with Canada.  This reaction is unfair in the same way that some other readers have tarred all people in the U.S. with the same brush.

 

MaryL

[ronniecat]

On Sun, 8 May 2005 08:25:18 -0500, "MaryL"
<carst...@yahoo.comTAKE-OUT-THE-LITTER> promised to tell the truth,

the whole truth and nothing but the truth but instead wrote:

> "Kitty" <cowg...@comcast.net> wrote in message news:w--dnQr_2pl...@comcast.com...

> what a mess and travesty of justice---GLAD I'm not in Canada!

>
> Kitty
>
> Yes, it's "a mess and a travesty of justice" -- but it has nothing to do with Canada. This reaction is unfair in the same way that some other readers have tarred all people in the U.S. with the same brush.
>
> MaryL

Thank you, Mary. I was trying to figure out what was so uniquely
Canadian about this case that it couldn't be duplicated in many US
states, for example.

ronnie
--
address altered to foil spambots - remove mycollar to reply
"Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in."
Anthem - Leonard Cohen
http://www.hearingloss.blogspot.com - a weblog about deafness

[sdlan...@rogers.com]

I just googled myself and saw this group post on FB today. It is comforting to know that others were able to read our story around the world.

Here is an update from me, Barbara's youngest son Shawn. I'm 46 now, it has been 21 years since we lost our mother. Her killer was sent to life in prison after 2 trials and 13 years of hell dealing with it all.

At the end of the last trial as he was being taken out of the court room, I yelled at him to tell us where mom's (cremated) remins were; no answer.

A few days later, I get a phone call from what was once mom's best friend telling me she had hel on to them for 13 years just in case her killer was not guilty (she believed he was innocent).

Anyway, we have mom now, safe and sound in her old house.

We are still fighting to get possession of the house. Legal Aid has Liens on it for Lawyer fees to defend her killer so we still can't sell it.

There is good news to end with, her killer died in prison a few years ago.

Shawn Lanthier