NEWS FILE PHOTO
A member of the Medicine Hat Police Service's Forensic Unit investigates the death of John Holmes on June 18, 2016. Barbara Holmes, the victim's wife, was was sentenced to five years on Aug. 13, 2018.
A Medicine Hat woman who stabbed her husband to death has been sentenced to five years.
With time served factored in, Barbara Holmes will complete her sentence in under two years. Crown prosecutors asked for a sentence of seven to eight years. The judge cited Holmes’ aboriginal heritage and need for consideration as mitigating factor in agreeing to defence sentencing recommendation.
In April Holmes pled guilty to manslaughter on what was to be the first day of her second-degree murder trial in the death of her husband John. At that time an agreed statement of facts surrounding John Holmes’ June 18, 2016 death was entered into evidence.
This included an ongoing dispute between the couple, stemming from a “one-time sexual liaison” that John had with a friend of Barbara’s in Nov. 2015. John told Barbara about the affair in December, and it caused a “serious strain” on their relationship. John apologized for the affair on many occasions. Barbara also expressed concerns about John’s level of drinking on many occasions.
On the evening of June 18, Holmes’ daughter was visiting her parents who were both drinking. She did not notice any animosity between the two and the mood was good. While the affair did come up, the daughter told them to stop and talk about other topics which they did. Around midnight, the daughter returned to her residence next door.
The couple began to argue and this argument escalated. Barbara grabbed a large kitchen knife with a blade measuring 20 centimetres long and 4.5 cm at the base. She stabbed John repeatedly in the back, and once he fell to the ground, she stabbed him in the right arm and leg a number of times.
In total, John was stabbed 17 times. The wounds ranged from being just under a centimetre up to 40 cm in depth, with the knife hitting his lungs, diaphragm, kidney, iliac artery, bladder, and fracturing ribs. The coroner’s report stated he died from blood loss due to the stab wounds, while a toxicology report found he was extremely intoxicated.
The court heard how the daughter received a message from her mother right after the stabbing, saying she had just killed John. The daughter went next door and found her father lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor.
Barbara told her daughter she had killed John, and then asked her to help hide the body. Instead, the daughter called 911.
