‘Her blood is on your hands’: slaying victim’s family turns rage on woman who hid body in her kitchen

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This article was published 09/05/2025 (218 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A woman who allowed the remains of Ashley Murdock to be hidden in her apartment for over a week “is just as guilty” as the killers who took her life, grieving family members told a court Thursday.

Summer Patchinose, 31, pleaded guilty to one count of interfering with human remains.

“The second she was brought to your home you had a choice, and you didn’t take it,” Murdock’s aunt and two cousins wrote in a victim impact statement read out in court. “How could you do that to another human being? You are just as guilty as those who did this to her and her blood is on your hands.”

Patchinose, who is already serving a 13-month sentence for robbery, was sentenced to an additional two years in prison.

Murdock, a 27-year-old mother of three, was killed June 24, allegedly inside an Edmonton Street apartment block. Dregus Daniel Young, 24, and Kenneth Walter Young, 28, have been charged with first-degree murder and remain before the court.

An autopsy confirmed Murdock died as the result of blunt force and sharp force injuries. Court was provided no details about what motivated the killing.

Two days after she was killed, Murdock’s body was stuffed inside a hockey bag, loaded onto a wagon and taken by three male co-accused’s to Patchinose’s Edmonton Street suite one block away. There, the men stashed the hockey bag and wagon inside Patchinose’s kitchen pantry, before sealing the pantry door with tape and towels.

“After the body began to decompose in the following days, Ms. Patchinose would clean the suite with floor cleaner on several occasions in an attempt to mask the smell while she remained living in the suite,” Crown attorney Joel Refvik told court, adding Patchinose came and went from the suite in the days that followed and never contacted police.

On July 5, Winnipeg police received an anonymous tip there was a dead body inside Patchinose’s suite. Officers arrived to find Patchinose sleeping in a bedroom and arrested her on an outstanding warrant, before discovering Murdock’s remains in the sealed pantry.

In a police interview, Patchinose claimed Kenneth Young forced her to hide Murdock’s remains in her suite and threatened to kill her if she didn’t comply.

“She agrees this was a truly heinous thing she did…. Every day that Ms. Murdock’s body was at her apartment was based on her fear of Mr. Young making good on his threat,” said defence lawyer Stefania Whidden. “At no point was she involved in the homicide. Her actions were all after the fact.”

Patchinose’s arrest was inevitable, said King’s Bench Justice Chris Martin.

“I have no idea what the expectation would have been as the days went on in the circumstances,” Martin said. “There is no indication that there was some plan to retrieve the body and then do something with it…. Clearly, she stayed in circumstances where she was going to get caught.”

Patchinose spent her childhood in foster care and has a background marked by violence, addictions and sexual abuse, Whidden said.

“She has been victimized her entire life,” the lawyer said.

Murdock, too, struggled with addictions, but always strove for a better life for herself and her children, court was told. Family members described her as joyful, positive and loving. Family members spent days looking for her after she disappeared.

“You knew where Ashley was… and you stayed silent though it all,” sister Trinity Murdock told Patchinose. “I hope you never know a moment of peace… I have no sympathy for you.”

Last month, co-accused Charles Harold Wood, one of the men who moved Murdock’s body to Patchinose’s suite, pleaded guilty to performing an indignity to human remains and was sentenced to two years custody.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca