Thelma Krull’s husband applies to have her legally declared dead

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This article was published 04/08/2017 (2998 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two years after a 57-year-old grandmother went missing, and after police announced they believe she was a victim of foul play, her husband is asking the courts to legally declare her dead.

Thelma Krull’s husband, Robert Krull, filed an application this week under the Presumption of Death Act to have Thelma declared dead so he can carry out her will and settle her estate.

“I have no reason to believe that Thelma is living,” Krull stated in an affidavit filed in the Court of Queen’s Bench Aug. 3, citing previous public comments made by the Winnipeg Police Service’s homicide unit suggesting investigators don’t believe she is alive.

His affidavit notes Thelma hasn’t accessed her Facebook or email accounts, her credit cards, or her bank accounts — both a joint account she shared with her husband as well as another she maintained on her own— since she disappeared on July 11, 2015.

“Due to the investigation and comments from police homicide unit, the fact that no one has heard from Thelma since before July 11, 2015, Thelma’s lack of online and banking activity, the failed attempts of members of the community to find Thelma, and the amount of media coverage regarding Thelma’s disappearance without anyone having reported seeing her, I have no reason to believe that Thelma is living,” Robert Krull’s affidavit says.

It says she was in good health when she went missing and had no history of mental-health problems.

“Prior to July 11, 2015, Thelma did not have any serious financial, employment or other legal problems and her disappearance was completely out of character for her,” according to the affidavit.

Thelma’s will names her husband as the executor of her estate and directs that it should go to him after any debts and expenses are paid.

Thelma disappeared that morning after she went out for a walk in the Civic Park area of Valley Gardens neighbourhood. Her glasses and cell phone were later found in the area, but she hasn’t been seen since. On the two-year anniversary of her disappearance, the Winnipeg Police Service officially announced investigators believed her to be a victim of foul play. On July 27, police released a sketch of a potential suspect — described as a 270-pound, 5-foot-8 tall Indigenous man in his 40s with a bowl haircut — who may have been staying in the Valley Gardens area at the time of Krull’s disappearance. No arrests have been announced in the case.

The high-profile case prompted hundreds of Winnipeg residents to take part in volunteer searches in the days, weeks and months after the former administrative support worker went missing on the day of her grandson’s birthday party. She regularly went out for walks that summer as she trained for a planned hike of the West Coast Trail in B.C. with her older brother.

 

 

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay