By Martha Wickett
Contributor
The sentencing of Derek Lee Mathew Favell, 39, who pleaded guilty in October 2023 to the 2016 killing of Ashley Simpson, has been delayed for four months.
Simpson, 32 when she was killed, went missing from the Yankee Flats area near Salmon Arm in April of that year.
On Oct. 30, 2023, the day Derek Favell’s trial for second-degree murder was scheduled to begin in BC Supreme Court in Salmon Arm, he pleaded guilty. Sentencing was then set for Feb. 13, 2024.
However, on Feb. 2, the date was pushed back four months to June 12, 2024.
Court records show sentencing was delayed because the Gladue report, a pre-sentence report that can be prepared for First Nations defendants, was not complete. The report provides background information and recommendations.
Then the challenge was to find a new date when the judge, Crown counsel and defence lawyers were not already booked.
The day of the guilty plea, with Ashley’s family from Ontario in attendance, her father John said the plea brought them the justice they were seeking and the sentencing would bring them closure. The Simpsons had been planning and fundraising for the February trip to Salmon Arm, but closure will have to wait.
The mandatory sentence for second-degree murder is life imprisonment. The variable is the period of time before a person is eligible to apply for parole – which can be between 10 and 25 years.
Ashley’s remains were found by police on Nov. 16, 2021 down an embankment between Salmon Arm and Sicamous, more than five years after she went missing.
Ashley was one of five women who disappeared in the Okanagan-Shuswap about seven years ago. 2023 also brought the seven-year anniversary of the disappearance of Caitlin Potts and Deanna Wertz, and six years for Nicole Bell.
Vernon’s Traci Genereaux, 18, was also missing, but her remains were found in October 2017 on a farm in Silver Creek. No charges have been laid in connection with her death.
Read more: Favell pleads guilty in murder of Salmon Arm’s Ashley Simpson
Read more: Family of murdered Shuswap woman finds closure, relief in guilty plea