Fourth person charged in Edmonton man's death awaits sentencing for helping hide body
Mark Elder pleaded guilty to interfering with Donald Blizzard's remains
The fourth and final person charged in connection to Donald Blizzard's death apologized Monday for helping conceal the Edmonton man's body in 2021.
Blizzard's friends and family spent nearly two months searching for him.
By the time his remains were finally found in a ditch in a rural area west of Edmonton, the state of his body's decomposition made it impossible to determine how he died.
Mark Elder, like his three co-accused Justin Michael March, Kevin Turner and Andrew Walker, pleaded guilty to interference with Blizzard's remains after the 43-year-old's death, which was ruled a homicide.
Elder is the only one of the four who wasn't present when Blizzard died.
The other men were all initially charged with second-degree murder in 2022, but each pleaded guilty to the lesser interference charge. March was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, Turner received two years and Walker got 17 months.
According to one prosecutor on the case, the evidence didn't provide a reasonable likelihood of a homicide conviction against any of the accused persons.
Elder admitted to the court that he came to a downtown Edmonton condo building on the morning of July 30, 2021, aware there was a body there. By then, Blizzard had already been dead for two days.
According to the agreed statement of facts, Elder arrived at the building with Turner, both wearing gloves, face masks and baseball caps with hoods pulled up over them.
Once they got in the unit, Elder "made deliberate attempts not to see anything," but knew what Turner was doing as he struggled to get Blizzard's body into a rolling sports bag.
The pair were recorded leaving the building, with Turner pulling the bag and Elder carrying a large box or a safe. Elder also hauled the bag at one point, and the two men loaded Blizzard's body into a car and drove away.
Elder was tearful as he stood to address the court at his sentencing hearing Monday.
"I would like to, with a sincere heavy heart, apologize to the family of Mr. Blizzard and to his honour and his memory. He and they deserved better," he said.
"I don't take it lightly, the choices I've made. I can never give back what was taken from the family."
The court heard that it's unknown who took the final step of dumping Blizzard's body.
His mother Janet Hazen, reading a victim impact statement for the fourth time in court on Monday, said if any of the men involved had called 911 to try to get her son help, or reported his location, it would have spared her family weeks of suffering.
"There were days that I could not function or stop crying, praying that my son would be found alive," she said.
"He had been disposed of in a ditch like a piece of garbage."
Sentence expected in November
Blizzard died inside an Airbnb suite that March had rented even though he was on parole, with a condition to refrain from being in Edmonton.
March said he and Blizzard were using drugs in the suite, and at one point, he believed Blizzard was overdosing. When Blizzard began acting erratic and noisy, March was afraid someone in the building would call police, and along with Turner and Walker, the men tried to quiet Blizzard.
They eventually tied him up and someone stuffed a sock in his mouth, and he died at some point during the interaction. The men said they tried to revive him with naloxone and CPR, but it didn't work. None of them called for medical help.
Crown prosecutor Fabian Rogozinski argued that even though Elder wasn't there in the lead-up to Blizzard's death, his actions afterward contributed to the ultimate outcome of the case.
"With Mr. Elder's assistance, the three other co-accused were ultimately successful," Rogozinski said.
"Because Mr. Blizzard's cause of death could not be identified … criminal liability could not be attributed to the people who were there at the time of his death. Mr. Elder assisted in that."
The Crown is asking for a three-year prison sentence, while defence lawyer Barbara Dowker said Elder should serve 18 months of house arrest, followed by two years of probation.
"Mr. Elder is a man who made significant changes in his life before sentencing. He stated to me he saw himself in that situation and did not like what he saw," she said.
Dowker said Elder hasn't breached his bail conditions since his release in 2022, and has been making strides toward change, including completing an addictions treatment program.
Court of King's Bench Justice Lynn Michele Angotti reserved her decision to Nov. 6.
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