Medicine Hat-native Chase Hehr and his partner June Rose in undated photos posted on Facebook.--PHOTO COURTESY FACEBOOK
amccuaig@medicinehatnews.com
From the few bits of information the News has been able to ascertain, June Rose’s life appeared to be a tough one.
From what has been gleaned from court records, her death was even tougher.
An RCMP investigation and proceedings in Medicine Hat Provincial and Queen’s Bench courts, as well as the Alberta Court of Appeal, has done little to conclude who caused the 24-year-old woman’s death.
What can be discerned is Rose died of stab wounds in the bathroom of a Bassano mobile home sometime in January 2019, an RCMP investigation led to the arrest of her live-in partner on charges of second-degree murder and the courts have rejected attempts to prosecute him.
The latter issue stems from a ruling that so little evidence against the partner was presented at a 2020 preliminary hearing against him, the matter could not proceed further.
The details of Rose’s death presented at court haven’t been reported on due to an emergency publication ban issued after the initial one was statutorily lifted after charges were dismissed following the preliminary inquiry.
A number of appeals of that decision saw the case reach the Alberta Court of Appeal earlier this year.
What is known is primarily gleaned from that Alberta high court’s written decision.
Medicine Hat-native Chase Leland Hehr, 38, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder Jan. 25, 2019 – three days after June Rose’s body was found.
Hehr and Rose were in a romantic relationship that started sometime in the spring of 2017, were engaged by June and married later the same year, according to social media posts.
Sometime in late 2018 or 2019, the couple moved to Bassano and rented a mobile home in that town.
According to initial police statements by Hehr, the man claimed he and Rose were kept captive by gunpoint for several days by two individuals starting on Jan. 18 or 20, 2019.
The motive of the two individuals was that Hehr owed them money.
Hehr claimed he and Rose were kept in the bathroom for several days, injected drugs and had a knife for protection.
He told police the couple were held at gunpoint through a hole in the bathroom wall, shots were fired and his cat was tortured.
According to Hehr’s statement to police, the individuals passed drugs through the hole to Rose who subsequently took them with the effect of changing her demeanour.
After taking the drugs, she first attacked Hehr with the knife before stabbing herself, according to the man’s police statement.
But the evidence gathered contradicted the account.
The men Hehr identified were not in the area at the time, the cat was found alive and well, there were no signs of forced entry into the residence and the bathroom had no hole matching the description given.
Neighbours testified to hearing no disturbance.
But at the time of the preliminary hearing, none of the forensic evidence that was gathered had been processed and there was no evidence of which knife inflicted the fatal wound except from Hehr’s identification of the weapon.
The medical examiner testified Rose could have been dead for several days prior to Hehr alerting a neighbour of the death on Jan. 22 but couldn’t say if the fatal wound was self-inflicted or not.
But he did give evidence that death would not have been instantaneous.
At the time of her death, Rose had high levels of both fentanyl and methamphetamine in her system.
The preliminary inquiry judge during the hearing held at Medicine Hat Provincial Court a year after Rose’s death ruled there was insufficient evidence making out the allegation of second-degree murder.
Hehr was discharged and freed from custody at that point – but the matter was far from over.
Nor was Hehr’s time in custody for the offence.
Central to the case and subsequent appeals has been whether the evidentiary bar was met that requires a scintilla of evidence being presented at a preliminary hearing to be able to commit a matter to trial. In Hehr’s preliminary hearing, the evidence was circumstantial and primarily focused on the fact only two people were in the residence at the time, and one died of stab wounds.
While the provincial court judge found that fact – along with other circumstantial evidence – was not enough to put Hehr on trial on homicide allegations, the Crown was successful in an appeal to the Medicine Hat Court of Queen’s bench.
Following that appeal which overturned the lower court decision, Hehr was re-arrested in October 2020 and ordered to stand trial on murder allegations.
Another appeal followed, this time by Hehr to the Alberta Court of Appeal, which in a split ruling substantiated the provincial court’s ruling.
Hehr was discharged again on May 19, 2021 and released on these charges.
This wasn’t the first time Hehr was involved in a suspicious death investigation.
The man pleaded guilty to manslaughter for a 2006 Calgary homicide in which he was sentenced to multiple years in federal prison.
Attempts to contact family members of Rose by the News were unsuccessful.
