Parole board grants more temporary absences to mother who participated in five-year-old Phoenix Sinclair’s murder

Phoenix Sinclair’s mother — who participated in the abuse, torture and murder of the helpless little girl — has been granted more temporary releases from prison by the Parole Board of Canada.

Samantha Dawn Kematch and her former boyfriend, Karl Wesley McKay, were each handed life sentences with no parole eligibility for 25 years in 2008 for the first-degree murder of five-year-old Phoenix, who they killed in 2005 after extensive abuse and neglect.

Parole officials first granted Kematch, who’s now in her mid-40s, four escorted temporary absences in 2022, to visit the family of her wife and a step-daughter and an Indigenous elder.

Those trips were successful, parole officials said in a written decision issued last month.

Parole officials could not “ignore the severity of your crime on a child that expected you to protect her” when considering Kematch’s request for further absences, the decision said.

“People who cared for her continue to live with the implications of your brutal crime,” parole officials said.

Parole officials approved Kematch for 11 more escorted absences for family contact and for 11 “personal development” escorted absences in last month’s decision.

Eight of those personal development trips are to visit an Indigenous elder’s home for a few hours each time. The other three are brief trips to a community near the prison where she’s incarcerated to expose her to the world outside prison walls.

“The local destinations may include the mall, bank, (or animal shelter) to allow you exposure to a variety of different environments to assist in mastering your skill development,” the decision last month said.

Parole officials found there are sufficiently structured plans for the absences that would offer monitoring and supervision of Kematch. The new absences will be similarly structured to the earlier absences she was granted, officials said.

“There is no reason to believe that the proposed plan would not be sufficient to manage your behaviour,” said the decision, which noted local police and the warden of the prison she’s in did not oppose the absences.

Officials have said Kematch has completed several rehabilitative programs and worked with the elder for several years on many cultural activities. She has not consumed drugs or alcohol for many years, officials said.

Kematch and McKay repeatedly beat, terrorized, tortured and neglected Phoenix inside a Fisher River Cree Nation home, roughly 200 kilometres north of Winnipeg, until she died after a final brutal beating in 2005.

Kematch and McKay wrapped the body in plastic and buried her. They continued to collect welfare payments with Phoenix listed as a dependent. The scam was discovered nine months later.

The girl’s death sparked a massive $14-million provincial inquiry into the child-welfare system.

The inquiry found social workers failed to keep tabs on Phoenix’s well-being and whereabouts, and repeatedly closed her files without seeing her.

An unnamed family member submitted a victim statement prior to Kematch’s first application for temporary absences, saying she and her family oppose any form of release.

She will be eligible to apply for day parole in March 2028 and full parole in March 2031.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca