‘Hard to swallow’: woman shocked after niece charged in daughter’s slaying By: Chris Kitching Posted: 5:13 PM CDT Monday, Mar. 10, 2025

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This article was published 10/03/2025 (193 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The family of a 44-year-old Winnipeg woman who was slain in 2021 is reeling after police charged one of her cousins with second-degree murder last week.

Faye Sanderson and her accused killer, Kendra Leanne Sinclair, 35, had such a close bond when they were children that they were more like sisters, Sanderson’s mother told the Free Press.

“How a person could do this, it’s so evil. My daughter didn’t deserve to die like that,” Sky Sanderson, 72, said in a phone interview from Saskatoon. “All I want to know is why? Why was my daughter’s life taken away?”

She said Sinclair visited her in the days after the homicide.

The grandmother was shocked when a detective from the Winnipeg Police Service’s homicide unit phoned to tell her that her niece, who is also her goddaughter, was charged in the slaying.

“It’s hard to swallow that. It’s hurting me so bad,” she said. “I screamed and I cried (when police called). I didn’t know what to say. My daughter was everything to me.”

Sanderson was found dead after firefighters were called to a blaze in a bungalow at 510 Young St., between Ellice and Sargent avenues in Winnipeg’s Spence neighbourhood, on Sept. 21, 2021.

At the time, the WPS said investigators believed the victim was killed before the house was set on fire.

A suspect was identified following “extensive” efforts by the homicide unit over the last three-plus years, police said in a news release Monday.

Detectives arrested Sinclair at the Edmonton Institution for Women, a federal correctional centre in Alberta’s capital, on March 4, the WPS said. She remains in custody.

“How a person could do this, it’s so evil. My daughter didn’t deserve to die like that.”–Sky Sanderson

Sinclair received a sentence of more than 30 months in January 2023, after she was convicted of multiple offences, including possession of a prohibited firearm with ammunition, while she was banned from possessing weapons, court records showed.

One of five earlier robbery convictions led to a lifetime weapons ban in 2010.

Sanderson, who had eight children, was a member of Mosakahiken Cree Nation in northern Manitoba. She lived in Winnipeg’s West Broadway neighbourhood, about a kilometre from where her body was found.

Family members said she had a cognitive condition that made her vulnerable, and some people took advantage of her kindness and trust.

“She only wanted to be loved. She just had this beautiful spirit,” said cousin Ernestine Campbell McIntyre. “She was so innocent, so pure and so giving.”

Sanderson helped people in need of food, shelter and other essentials, whether she knew them or not, Campbell McIntyre said.

“She would feed people. If you were cold, she would open her door,” she said.

“She was so kind and loving to everybody around her,” Sanderson’s mother said.

Campbell McIntyre said she, Sanderson and Sinclair, all first cousins, shared a sister-like bond since childhood.

“It’s a real shock at the moment,” she said of Sinclair’s arrest. “We’re supposed to take care of each other and love each other.”

Campbell McIntyre wants to know why her cousin was killed. She and Sanderson’s mother said Faye was found in a “trap house,” or drug house, but she did not use drugs.

The bungalow was known in the neighbourhood for the “transient nature” of some people who stayed at the house, police said at the time.

Sanderson went missing just over a week before she was found by firefighters, said her mother, who lived in Winnipeg at the time of the homicide.

Detectives visited Sky Sanderson’s home to inform her of her daughter’s death. When she opened her door, she hoped the officers were there to tell her that her daughter was found alive.

As days turned into weeks and then years, Sky Sanderson continued to pray for an arrest. She said information provided to her family about a possible suspect was forwarded to investigators.

“God answered my prayer,” she said.

Police acknowledged that community members came forward with information that was “invaluable” in the investigation.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca