Senior found not criminally responsible for fatal stabbing

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This article was published 31/10/2023 (1006 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Five years after she was arrested, a Winnipeg woman has been found not criminally responsible in the slaying of her 85-year-old husband.

Anne-Dore Maria Scheppner, now 79, was charged with second-degree murder after Hans George Scheppner was found stabbed to death July 21, 2018, inside their Henderson Highway apartment.

Scheppner has been held at the Selkirk Mental Health Centre since July 2019, and was only found fit to stand trial in May, at which time the court agreed to a defence request for a psychiatric assessment to determine whether she should be found not criminally responsible for the killing.

On Oct. 16, King’s Bench Justice Brenda Keyser, following a joint recommendation by the Crown and defence and supporting testimony from a psychiatrist, found Scheppner not criminally responsible for repeatedly stabbing her husband of 53 years.

Such a finding requires an accused, suffering from a mental disorder, did not know what they were doing was wrong and did not appreciate the nature and quality of their actions.

Scheppner lived with schizophrenia and suffered delusions of “mistreatment and persecution at the hands of Hans,” psychiatrist Dr. Eric Johnson told court.

“She got to a point where she thought the only way to change her scenario was if Hans was not around anymore and she was free of him.”

Hans Scheppner had already been dead for six days when police, responding to a well-being check request from his son, found him dead in the couple’s bedroom, his body covered with an orange garbage bag. An autopsy found he had been stabbed 30 times, the cause of death was a stab wound to the neck.

According to an agreed statement of facts provided to court, Scheppner and Hans had been arguing when Hans denied her entry to their bedroom and Scheppner retrieved a knife from the kitchen.

Scheppner pushed the door open and following a brief struggle, Hans fell to the floor.

“That’s when I got him,” Scheppner later told police.

Scheppner disposed of the knife and her husband’s clothing “and went about her daily business” until her son called six days later from out of province to wish his father a happy birthday.

“I sent him to hell,” she told her son.

Scheppner’s disclosure to her son “was not because she believed she had done something wrong, but a belief he would have wanted the information,” Crown attorney Vic Bellay told Keyser.

Johnson said he ruled out any “non-psychotic motives” for the killing and found Scheppner suffered from “persecutory belief systems, with respect to her husband.”

Scheppner believed she was receiving messages from the radio and certain songs and she was going to move to British Columbia and marry another man, Johnson said.

With the not criminally responsible finding, Scheppner’s case now becomes the responsibility of the Criminal Code Review Board, which will decide if she should remain in a secure psychiatric facility.

Scheppner is one of two people found by a Manitoba court in recent weeks to be found not criminally responsible for murder.

Just one day after the Scheppner decision, a judge found 39-year-old nurse Trevor Farley not criminally responsible in the Oct. 27, 2021, murders of his parents (Stuart Farley and Judy Swain) and a knife attack that same day on a former work supervisor.

In what is a first for Manitoba, King’s Bench Justice Ken Champagne ordered Farley be designated a high-risk accused.

As a high-risk accused, Farley must be held in a secure hospital setting. Only a superior court judge can revoke the designation and approve his release from hospital.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca