SENTENCING STATEMENTS

Ms Leveque had only recently turned 24.  She had travelled thousands of miles from her home in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to live with you and your mother at Sandness, a village lying some 30 miles from Lerwick at the end of a single track road.  Ms Leveque had no UK passport and no permission to work.  She had no driving licence.  You were aged 39, some 15 years her senior.  Ms Leveque was your girlfriend but also your guest in Sandness.  She was vulnerable and isolated. In the words of your late mother, uttered in the course of a 999 call made by her at about 4.55pm on 11 February 2024 following your murder of Ms Leveque, she was “just a lovely young girl”.  In a statement taken on 13 February 2024 your mother advised the noting police officer that Ms Leveque was 24 and that she was kind and thoughtful.

You yourself joined that 999 call on 11 February 2024, stating to the operator “I’ve just killed my girlfriend in the hot tub in the garage at Ringville.  I stabbed her about 40 times, in the heart, chest, face, neck and back…..I just killed my stupid c**t of a girlfriend.  I definitely killed her.  To make sure I drowned her after I stabbed her…and beat her the f**k up.”

The forensic pathologist who gave evidence identified 55 distinct injuries on post‑mortem examination of Ms Leveque.  He described this as a minimum number because some of the injuries were grouped.  Some 36 injuries or injury clusters were noted to your victim’s head and neck, at least 19 of these being stab wounds.  In addition there was a stab wound to the lower back, as well as four other stab wounds to the trunk.  Injuries were located on Ms Leveque’s arms, including a stab wound on the right arm and a through and through stab wound on the left index finger.  In total there were at least 26 defined stab wounds.  The tip of the knife used by you in your murderous attack upon her was recovered from its position embedded in the midline frontal bone of Ms Leveque’s skull, just above the frontal sinus.

The cause of death was recorded as stab wounds to the chest and neck.  Two wounds had damaged the large veins on both sides of Ms Leveque’s neck, and two chest wounds to the right side of the chest had penetrated her right lung.  The mechanism of death involved these four wounds occasioning significant blood loss, with death almost certainly the result of associated shock once the volume of blood became critical.  The deepest injuries inflicted were the two chest wounds I have mentioned, both penetrating the right lung to a depth of 7cm.  The force required to inflict these various injuries was assessed by the Crown pathologist as being up to and including significant or severe force, such force levels relating to the skull embedding injury and other stab wound injuries which involved the face, ribs and pelvis.  In addition, ovoid bruising on the right side of the neck and other findings raised the possibility of manual strangulation of Ms Leveque during this attack by way of compression of the neck.

We know that Ms Leveque would have been capable of some movement after sustaining the fatal injuries, up until she was overcome by blood loss.  Indeed, at some point between 4.46pm and 4.55pm Mrs Pearson entered the garage to find Ms Leveque dying in the hot tub there.  Mrs Pearson was very clear that Ms Leveque was then alive.  She described Ms Leveque’s face as all smashed up, her right cheek looking like it was ripped.  She was groaning and moaning in the tub.  Mrs Pearson tried to lift her out but could not.  She returned to the main house, leaving Ms Leveque in the garage alive and you there, in possession of a knife.  Ms Leveque was in due course pronounced deceased by first responders at 6.17pm.

When police arrived some time after 5.30pm they found you in the bloody water of the tub with Ms Leveque, who by then had in all likelihood succumbed to the appalling injuries inflicted upon her by you.  You took a video of her lifeless body in the tub, a video that you denied taking but which required, due to that denial, to be played in open court during your own evidence.  In the video you can be heard abusing the attending police officers, shouting “F**k you, you f***ing pig.”  By that stage you had compressed Ms Leveque’s neck and submerged her head and body in the blood-filled waters of the hot tub, in your own words from the 999 call, drowning her to make sure you that you had killed her.

Your defence to the charge of murder, one of self‑infliction of injuries by your victim, was regarded by Dr Ainsworth as entirely unrealistic.  That is plainly the view adopted by the jury who heard the whole evidence led during this trial.  Your own evidence was in my considered view an exercise, from start to finish, in victim blaming, as you sought to denigrate, quite disgracefully, the character of Ms Leveque.  To take but one example, despite the post‑mortem toxicology results indicating only a moderate level of alcohol in Ms Leveque’s blood and urine, you described her as “guzzling” alcohol and subsequently urinating in a bucket such was her level of intoxication, on your account.  You described her then drinking brake fluid and rolling around in her own urine.  Such abusive and derogatory remarks about your victim continued throughout your evidence. I will not dignify these by repetition. This malicious, vindictive and wholly fabricated account suggests, certainly to me, that you have sought to continue to humiliate your victim, after her death, even in this courtroom in the presence of her grieving family.  

This was of course not the first time that you had attacked Ms Leveque to her injury.  You had done so on multiple occasions during her short stay with you in Sandness, Ms Leveque having only arrived there with you in October 2023.  She confided in a neighbour in Shetland and a cousin back in Canada in respect of your physical attacks upon her.  One of these assaults occurred on her 24^th birthday.  This was part of a sinister pattern of domestic abuse by you of Ms Leveque, which encompassed physical violence and coercive control of her.  During one argument, a recording of which the jury heard, Ms Leveque, on 12 December 2023, warned you, prophetically as matters turned out, that “You’re going to kill me”.  In that argument you told her in your own words that you had assaulted her because she needed it, deserved every last bit of it and more, and that she had it coming.  That was the dismal background to the murder that you would, only some two months later, go on to commit.  In one comment during that argument you said to Ms Leveque that she was lucky “that I don’t gash your head in”.

You are now aged 41.  You have no schedule of previous convictions.  Very little mitigation has been offered on your behalf today by your senior counsel, albeit he advised that you have told him that not a day goes by when you do not think about the events of 11 February 2024 without sadness.  Perhaps there are just no words to mitigate a crime of such gravity.

The sentence for the crime of murder is fixed by law.  It is one of imprisonment for life.  A key part of the sentencing exercise in such cases is the selection of a period known as the punishment part of the life sentence.  That period is the number of years which must be served before any consideration can be given to release on life licence.  To be clear, when the court sets this tariff figure it is in no sense appointing the time when you will be released.  Instead, the court is fixing the number of years which must be served by you before you can actually make any application for release.  The punishment part does not take into account the need for public protection.  That important matter is taken into account by the Parole Board for Scotland if and when any application is made by you in due course for your release.  The punishment part does, however, take into account the sentencing requirements of retribution and deterrence.

In selecting an appropriate punishment part in this case, I take into account primarily the sheer gravity of the crime of murder of which you now stand convicted.  Your much younger girlfriend, your victim in this case, was isolated and vulnerable in Sandness.  You had from almost the outset of her arrival there subjected her to a cruel campaign of violence and coercive control.  On the afternoon of 11 February 2024, in the garage, you inflicted some 36 injuries or injury clusters to her head and neck.  You inflicted at least 26 defined stab wounds.  You embedded a knife within your victim’s skull.  You inflicted injuries in the area of her eyes, nose and ear.  You sliced her right nostril.  You repeatedly inflicted blunt force trauma to her head, neck and body.  She sustained significant defensive injuries. You compressed her neck and submerged her head and body in water in a final attempt to finish her off by drowning her.  You took a video of her lifeless body in the hot tub.  You offered her no assistance.  Instead, in an exercise of bizarre self-pity, you had, prior to returning to the scene of your crime, left Ms Leveque in order to drive your Porsche into the sea. You at no stage yourself sought help for her, even as she lay dying from her wounds.

Ms Leveque died a squalid death of quite unimaginable multi‑faceted violence, including in particular severe and frenzied instrumental violence, all at your hands.  This was a sustained episode of feral butchery. You have sought to blame Ms Leveque for your own assaults against her, and you have, in a grave insult to her memory and to her bereaved family, put forward a defence that Ms Leveque inflicted these catastrophic injuries upon herself, a defence that the jury have unanimously rejected.

At this point I wish to acknowledge the dignity and restraint of your victim’s family, who have sat quietly throughout these proceedings and conducted themselves impeccably at all times, all I should say in the face of what they have had to hear about your disgraceful crimes against their loved one.  One cannot imagine how her father has found the courage to do so, each day reliving the trauma of his daughter’s violent death so vividly in this courtroom. For my part I have now had the opportunity of reading impact statements prepared by family members. These are eloquent and powerful. It cannot be doubted that the family of your victim will forever live in the shadow of her absence.

I turn finally to disposal.  On charge two you will serve a sentence of imprisonment of 2 years. This will be backdated to the date of your initial remand into custody in these proceedings, namely to 15 February 2024.  On charge four I now pass upon you, on a concurrent basis, a sentence of imprisonment for life.  I fix the punishment part of this disposal at a period of 25 years.  This sentence will be similarly backdated to 15 February 2024.  The court is required to take account in this sentencing exercise, by virtue of your conviction under the domestic abuse aggravator set out in section 1 of the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016, that the crime of murder was committed by you against your partner, and I now confirm that 2 years of the punishment part imposed today is apportioned in terms of that significant aggravator.

 15 October 2025