HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Feb. 28 (UPI) -- A Canadian couple was charged Thursday with killing Loretta Saunders, the Halifax university student who subletted them an apartment.
Halifax Regional Police said at a news conference that they believe Victoria Henneberry, 28, and Ian Leggette, 25, killed Saunders in the apartment on Feb. 13, the (Halifax) Chronicle-Herald reported. Superintendent Jim Perrin said the couple face first-degree murder charges and gave no information on how Saunders was killed or what the motive might have been.
Leggette and Henneberry were arrested in Ontario last week allegedly driving Saunders car and were charged with car theft. The body was found Wednesday along the Trans-Canada Highway in New Brunswick after the couple had been brought back to Halifax and questioned.
Henneberry made a brief court appearance Thursday on the car theft charge.
Saunders, 26, an Inuit from Labrador, was a student at St. Mary's University in Nova Scotia, where she was working on a thesis on slain and missing indigenous women. Her boyfriend said she had moved in with him and was renting her apartment to Henneberry and Leggette.
Leggette and Henneberry both had outstanding warrants, police said. Henneberry was charged with threatening a woman in Halifax and Leggette with failing to make a court appearance on a vehicle theft charge in Calgary.
A woman who knew Henneberry as a child in Ontario said she was shuffled between foster homes and started drinking heavily at an early age. But the woman, who wanted to remain anonymous, said her friend was also bright and funny.
"She was hilarious. Absolutely hilarious," the woman told the Chronicle. "She would brighten up a fricking room. I don't know what happened to her."
