Crime - Bathtub Girls Case Study

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Infamous bathtub girls were sisters who killed their mother in their own home. The crime took place on January 23, 2003 in Mississauga, Ontario. The identities of the murderers cannot be named, as they are protected under provisions of the Young Offenders Act that preclude the public naming of young offenders unless allowed by the judge. In this crime, the sisters fed their mother a mixture of alcohol and codeine, and then helped her into the bathtub. They held their mother's head under water until she drowned. There is strong evidence of premeditation. The sisters had researched online for ways to kill their mother, and planned details of how they would live after their mother's death. They made a specific decision not only to kill their mother but with respect to the method of killing.

The offenders did not have a criminal history at the time of the crime. There was no direct precipitating event. The sisters were apparently dissatisfied with their mother's behaviour, which included heavy drinking, and frequent consorting with abusive men. In general, however, the sisters were not subject to abuse themselves, but rather felt that they would receive insurance money and live a life of luxury if their mother was dead.

3. The victim's lifestyle was a contributing factor to the murder. The victim had a destructive lifestyle, was apparently a heavy drinker and consorted with abusive men. The victim was the killers' mother, and lived in the same house. The victim was killed in her home. Her daughters had fed her both liquor and codeine in order to inebriate her sufficiently that she would not fight back. The death was ruled accidental, initially, and it was not until a year had gone by that the crime was uncovered. The victim was powerless to escape the incident, with the large number of depressives in her system. With the murder, nothing has been done in the name of the victim. The victim's name has never even been released, because the daughters' identities are protected by the Young Offenders Act. Thus, the victim died nameless and by court order, forgotten.

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4. The outcome of the case has three parts. Initially the death was ruled accidental. The daughters continued with relatively normal lives. There was no suspicion on the part of the police that a murder had taken place. After a year, rumours began to circulate that the girls had killed their mother. At that point, an anonymous tip was placed to the police. At the time of the murder, there were some friends of the girls who knew that they were planning to kill their mother, and it appears that the anonymous tipster was one of these, and was able to relate critical details of the crime to the police. The sisters were arrested.

By the time the case reached trial, the sisters were legally adults, but despite this and the calculated nature of the crime, they were tried as minors. The maximum sentence for a young offender for murder is 10 years, and the sisters both received this sentence. However, in Canada sentences in theoretical only. The reality is almost nobody serves their entire sentence. One sister was released to a halfway house having served three years, and the following year the other sister was released outright (Godfrey, 2009). They had both spent the trial period under house arrest as well, so served very little prison time.

While their identities are protected, they were released back into the community and apparently have reintegrated (Gillis, 2014).

5. I would have done several things, as judge and jury. First, I would have tried the sisters as adults. They were old teenagers at the time of the killing, adults at the time of the trial, and the crime was calculated. They had lived for a year without any apparent remorse for the crime. Judges have the capacity to raise young offenders to adult court for serious crimes, and first degree murder is most certainly one of those crimes. Trying someone as a youth is for youthful indiscretion -- minor drug or theft offenses, not for first degree murder.

The second thing would have been to apply a maximum sentence. Given.....

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