Subletting is a very lucrative method of earning a little extra income. However, letting strangers into your home can be quite an anxiety ridden experience. It can also be extremely dangerous.
Loretta Saunders was a bright, bubbly girl from Labrador, Canada. She was one of eight children, and grew up in a close-knit family. She was an Inuit woman, and took great pride in her Indigenous roots.
She was described as a bright student, with a very bright future ahead of her. In order to pursue her goals, she moved from Labrador to Halifax, Nova Scotia in order to attend St. Mary’s University where she studied criminology.
During her second year, she met Yalcin Surkultay and the two hit it off. They began dating, and became quite serious. They began planning a future together, and were working towards that future – which included Loretta focusing on her studies.
At 26 years old in 2014, Loretta was in the process of writing her honours thesis. She was focusing on the impact of missing and murdered Indigenous women, the disproportionate number of Indigenous women who are murdered or go missing, why it was happening at such an alarming rate, and what could be done about it. She was very passionate, and very fierce in her studies.
Earlier in the school year, Loretta discovered that she was pregnant. Yalcin was very happy with the news, and informed her that he planned on being there and supporting her. The couple then made plans to move in together in order to build a home for their baby. But there was a catch.
Loretta had her own apartment on the other side of town, but she was rarely there – she spent most of her time at Yalcin’s apartment. She didn’t want to pay two rents, but didn’t want to take on the cost of breaking her lease until it was up, at which time she simply wouldn’t renew it. Thinking of a win-win situation, Loretta decided to sublet the spare bedroom in her apartment. That way, she could keep the master bedroom to herself as she began to slowly move her belongings over to Yalcin’s apartment. Things were looking up for the young, happy family.
On February 17th, 2014, Miriam Saunders, Loretta’s mother, began to frantically worry. She hadn’t heard from her daughter in a few days. She reached out to Yalcin who stated that he was also worried about Loretta, and he hadn’t heard from her since the 13th.
Miriam wasted no time in calling the police and filing a missing person’s report.
Investigators went to Yalcin’s apartment first. They found it suspicious that he hadn’t contacted police right away. He told them that the last time he’d seen Loretta was on the 13th. She’d told him that she was headed to her apartment across town around 10AM in order to collect the rent from her subletters.
But that didn’t answer one question: Why hadn’t he contacted police for four days? He explained that though he hadn’t seen her, he’d received extremely odd texts from her. The texts had rattled him, and he had wanted time to make sense of them and cool his temper.
He showed the investigators the messages, and expressed confusion. The texts stated that Loretta had wanted to end her relationship with Yalcin and move back to Labrador. This did not mesh with the scene the investigators were seeing. Yalcin’s apartment was half-full of Loretta’s belongings, and they were prepping for the arrival of their child. Loretta suddenly breaking things off and leaving without a word to anyone simply didn’t make sense.
Yalcin expressed that the messages didn’t sound like Loretta, and he found himself frustrated that he didn’t know where she was, who she was with, or where she was going. Investigators were initially skeptical, but took him at his word for the time being.
Yalcin gave investigators a description of the clothes Loretta had been wearing, and of her vehicle, including the noticeable Newfoundland and Labrador license plate. He told them that on the 13th, she’d been headed to her own apartment to confront her subletters. They owed her rent money, and were falling behind on the payments.
Investigators learned that Loretta had sublet her apartment to a young couple, Blake Leggette and Victoria Henneberry. They’d found Loretta’s apartment up for sublet on Kijiji in January of 2014. What they didn’t tell Loretta was that they were dead broke and barely had money to pay the rent, let alone scrape by. Yalcin found a phone number he believed was associated with the pair and gave it to investigators.
Leggette and Henneberry had both lived rather transient lifestyles. Henneberry had wanted to attend school, and they decided they needed a more stable lifestyle. On January 16th, 2014, the pair bought bus tickets and made their way to Halifax from Calgary, Alberta.
Believing the two may have more information on Loretta’s whereabouts, investigators didn’t hesitate to call the number that Yalcin had given them. No one answered the phone call.
The next step was to go Loretta’s apartment. They knocked on the door, but there was no answer. The superintendent agreed to let them in. A cursory glance showed no signs of foul play, though investigators weren’t looking for it at the time. Next, investigators decided to look at the apartment building’s surveillance footage from the entrance and foyer.
AT 10:57AM on February 13th, 2014, Loretta was seen entering the building and heading towards the elevators. But there was no sign of her leaving. Investigators watched the footage day and night in order to find anything that could indicate Loretta’s whereabouts. There was no sign of her ever leaving the building. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t – there were other doors that weren’t covered by surveillance cameras. They did identify Loretta’s subletters leaving the building, though.
While part of the team was poring over video surveillance, lead investigators went down a slightly different route. They decided to check Loretta’s phone records and bank records for any activity on her bank card. They found that her bank card had been used at a local coffee shop six hours after she was seen entering her apartment building.
From there, investigators viewed surveillance footage from the coffee shop. On video, they spotted a male driving Loretta’s car in the drive-through and using her card to make his purchase. They could not see whether there were passengers in the car or not. But they did identify Blake Leggette as the driver of the car.
A while later, investigators got a hit on Loretta’s car in the parking lot of a grocery store. Surveillance footage there showed a woman walking into the store. From store surveillance, investigators discovered that the woman walking into the store was Henneberry, Leggette’s girlfriend. She used Loretta’s card to make her purchase.
When investigators tried contacting the number Yalcin had given them, they found that it had been registered to Blake Leggette. Still, there is no answer to their call. Investigators decided to subpoena the number’s call history, hoping that they’d be able to track the phone down and determine Leggette’s and Henneberry’s whereabouts.
Blake Leggette was born an only child in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His childhood was not sunshine and roses. His mother was a substance abuser, and failed to provide Leggette with safety and stability. As a result, his father took over as his primary caretaker when he was seven years old.
By the time he turned seventeen, Leggette was listless and unmotivated. He dropped out of high school and had difficulties finding and keeping work. He went to Europe to join his father for a while, working on his father’s family farm. After a while, Leggette decided to move back to Canada, where he drifted from place to place. He ended up working construction in Calgary, where he met Victoria Henneberry.
Victoria Henneberry grew up around military bases across Canada, bouncing around from foster home to foster home. She was described as theatrical and cold.
Leggette and Henneberry were quite drawn to each other very, very quickly. Leggette was heard describing the relationship as ‘intense and violent’. Their friends would describe the relationship as dysfunctional.
The couples’ friends described Henneberry as abusive and manipulative, and her addiction to alcohol did not make matters better. They were also always out of money. Between Henneberry’s alcohol dependency, and Leggette’s addiction to cocaine, they could barely keep their head above water.
On January 16th, 2014, they decided to leave Calgary and head for Leggette’s hometown of Halifax. They bought bus tickets that very day, and found Loretta’s apartment on Kijiji. They thought they were set.
Investigators figured that Leggette and Henneberry knew where Loretta was. But they were proving to be very difficult to track down.
By some stroke of luck, investigators get through when Henneberry answered their call to Leggette’s phone. When investigators explained that they’re trying to find Loretta, Henneberry sounded concerned.
She told them that she last saw Loretta on the 13th, and that she paid Loretta $600 in back rent. She then stated that Loretta had taken the pair out to get coffee and groceries, and that that was the last time they’d seen her. She then explained that they were on Prince Edward Island, staying with an uncle.
However, when police traced the call, they find that the couple were actually in the small town in Harrow, which is in southern Ontario. Loretta’s phone also pinged from this small town, and bank records showed her card had been used along the couple’s route to Ontario.
Blake Leggette and Victoria Henneberry were now the prime suspects in the disappearance of Loretta Saunders.
Armed with this theory, investigators went back to the apartment, search warrant in hand, and searched through it thoroughly. There, they found signs of a struggle, including furniture thrown askew and tipped over lamps. They also found small amounts of blood around the apartment.
The team that had been searching through video surveillance of the apartment struck big. After Loretta was seen entering the building, her subletter, Leggette, was seen getting out of the elevator around 2PM on February 13th, 2014, carrying a heavy-looking hockey bag. The bag looked cumbersome and difficult to handle.
With heavy hearts, investigators believed that their missing person’s investigation had turned into a homicide investigation.
The video surveillance further showed Leggette returning to the building, and leaving again with Henneberry in tow. They were carrying luggage out of the building. They were ready to hit the road.
Investigators in Nova Scotia reached out to the OPP – the Ontario Provincial Police – for assistance in getting in touch with Leggette and Henneberry.
OPP officers found them as they were pulling into a driveway in Harrow, Ontario. They immediately pulled the couple out of the car and separated them. Henneberry claimed that the couple had bought the car from Loretta for $600, but that the paperwork for the registration and ownership change over hadn’t been done yet. A slightly different statement than she’d given investigators who called from Nova Scotia.
Separately, the couple told the OPP officers that they’d left Halifax due to lack of employment prospects. They said they were staying with a friend in Harrow while they looked for work in Ontario.
A cursory search of Loretta’s vehicle resulted in finding Loretta’s phone, bank card, and driver’s license in the car. OPP officers immediately began looking for the hockey bag, having gotten the tip from investigators in Nova Scotia. The bag wasn’t found in the car, or with the rest of Leggette’s and Henneberry’s belongings.
At that time, there wasn’t enough to hold them for murder, so the OPP decided to to charge the couple with possession of stolen property and fraudulently using Loretta’s bank card.
Leggette remained silent as he was held in the custody of the OPP. Henneberry, however, had no such qualms. She decided to talk.
She appeared to be more emotional and looked defeated, according to officers. She decided to begin with February 13th, the last time anyone had seen Loretta.
She said that herself and Leggette were afraid that Loretta would kick them out of the apartment because they didn’t have the money for rent. So when she came around asking for the $430 they owed her, Henneberry made it look like she was going to get it as she was trying to think of excuses. Then it all kicked off.
Leggette, who’d been seated on the couch, leapt forward and attacked Loretta. He wrestled her to the floor and began choking her. When she struggled, he slammed her head on the floor.
Henneberry said she’d been terrified – she didn’t know how to stop Leggette when he was so enraged. She told officers that she’d had no idea that anything like that would happen. She blamed Leggette for the entirety of the murder, claiming she’d been terrified of him afterward.
She was also terrified that he’d go to jail and leave her alone, so she helped him cover up the murder. She admitted to sending Yalcin the confusing texts about breaking up, as well as to sending texts to Loretta’s mother and sister, pretending to be her. Henneberry was trying to buy herself and her boyfriend some time before anyone became too suspicious about Loretta’s disappearance. After that, they lied their way out of town and made their escape.
Henneberry admitted to placing Loretta in the hockey bag. She said that they dumped her along the Trans-Canada Highway, near Salisbury, New Brunswick. She told investigators that she remembered seeing a guardrail and an overpass near where they dumped the hockey bag.
Using phone records, investigators managed to narrow down the area where the hockey bag could possibly be. They found the bag in a forested area, near a guardrail, just over an overpass, just as Henneberry had said.
Upon investigating the bag, they found Loretta’s body. Her head had been wrapped in eleven layers of saran wrap. In her hair, they found pieces of ornamental twig that matched a turned over vase of ornamental twigs found in Loretta’s apartment. The bag even included the luggage tag from the January bus trip to the east coast. The cause of death was found to be asphyxia by suffocation, and/or manual strangulation.
Blake Leggette and Victoria Henneberry were formally charged with the murder of Loretta Saunders. At the time, they both pleaded not guilty.
Prior to trial, investigators discovered that the story Henneberry had told them wasn’t quite truthful. Leggette had been writing in a journal. In one of the entries, he described what happened the day the couple murdered Loretta.
Leggette described attacking Loretta, as Henneberry had described, but he claimed that she helped him. She handed him plastic bags when he asked for them to place over Loretta’s head. Loretta struggled, ripping the bags. That’s when Leggette slammed her head into the floor. Henneberry then handed him the saran wrap, which he used to wrap around Loretta’s head.
Investigators also found video of the couple discussing the murder, mere days before Loretta was killed. In the video, they were seen debating whether or not they should kill Loretta to get out of paying the rent, and who should be the one to do it. Henneberry tells Leggette he said he’d do it.
The video clearly showed that both of them were heavily fixated on killing someone – anyone. Their financial strife just seemed to make Loretta an easy target for them to attack.
Through a plea deal, both Leggette and Henneberry changed their pleas to guilty, avoiding a traumatic and lengthy trial.
Blake Leggette pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 25 years. He will be eligible in 2039.
Victoria Henneberry pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. She was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 10 years. Her appeal was denied. She will be eligible for parole in 2024.
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Sources:
Killer Couples: Blake Leggette & Victoria Henneberry – Oxygen Network
Loretta Saunders murder was ‘despicable, horrifying and cowardly’ – Blair Rhodes – CBC News
Loretta Saunders Case: Blake Leggette and Victoria Henneberry Plead Guilty of Murder – Michael MacDonald – Huffington Post