ATHABASCA — Imagine sitting feet away from someone accused of horrifically killing your daughter then having to go home and raise her children and try to shelter them from the news and the storm inside you.
It was April 2019 when Nature Duperron's savagely beaten body was found in a forested area near Hinton and a few months later four people were arrested for their roles in her death. Two of the four defendants pleaded guilty and two chose to go to trial.
“It's frustrating because they're trying to plea for their own lives, they want their lives to be valued,” said Cheryl Duperron, Nature’s mother, in a Dec. 1 interview. “I have a really hard time valuing their lives when they don’t want to admit what they have done.”
On Sept. 12, Justice John Little accepted a plea agreement with defendants Grayson Eashappie and Kala Bajusz, who pleaded guilty to second degree murder, reduced from first degree murder, and the charges of kidnapping and theft were withdrawn. The agreed statement of facts was accepted and the two will be sentenced in the new year.
“On Feb. 14, I go to the one for Kayla Bajusz,” said Duperron. “We will find out when she’s eligible for parole because she’s already charged with second degree murder with life. They just don’t know what her parole time will be.”
Eashappie, Bajusz, Buddy Underwood, and Tyra Muskego were all charged with the kidnapping and murder of Nature. It was Underwood and Muskego who chose to go to trial.
In his judgment in Court of King’s Bench in Edmonton Oct. 21, Justice Robert Graesser delivered his decision in a 70-page document.
Justice Graesser found Underwood guilty of robbery and forcible confinement and second-degree murder and Muskego guilty of robbery, forcible confinement and manslaughter. The Crown is appealing those convictions feeling Eashappie, who, by all accounts, directed the others in everything which culminated in Nature’s death and Muskego with more than manslaughter. Muskego is out of jail until her sentencing in the new year.
“She’s at home on her cushy ass,” said Duperron. “Which is so strange to me. If you’re charged with something normally, you’d get picked up and go to jail. She got to go home from the courthouse, and I had to watch because she sat right beside us.”
The Crown is seeking a conviction of first-degree murder for Eashappie, and wants to see Muskego serve more than two years for manslaughter or a higher charge.
“With (Muskego) the Crown said, ‘I’m just going to wait and see what her manslaughter charges are going to be because it could be anywhere from zero to 25 years,’” Duperron said. “But if she gets only two years for manslaughter, she's going to appeal it.”
So, that’s where life is right now for Duperron, waiting to see if there will any form of justice for her first-born child, and trying to raise her grandchildren and protect them from learning about the horrific way she died.
“I am trying to just keep pressing forward and so, I think, it's not as bad at the moment,” she said. “We're trying to just maintain our health because I know I lost 15 pounds from being at court.”
Duperron thanked the investigators who worked so hard to track down the killers and were in the courtroom every day offering strength and the Crown prosecutors who presented the facts, but she doesn’t feel justice will truly be done.
“It's not my decision, either. That was the choice of the Crown,” she said. “But I'm not satisfied, not with what I had to hear, what they did to Nature.”
A gift from a longtime family friend though has helped heal some of the wounds.
“It was Wayne Stengrim’s idea. He approached me and said he wanted to make a bench in honour of Nature,” said Duperron. “It was something that personally affected him and it’s a way to honour her.”
That bench, with a plaque honouring Nature, now sits outside the Athabasca Native Friendship Centre.
“I thought it was just beautiful and it’s beautifully done. It’s so perfect,” she said. “I love seeing it there. I’ve had family stop there taking pictures and sent me the pictures of them sitting there.”
The whole family is thankful for Stengrim and his wife Shawna’s donation.
“Thank you from all of our family for the tribute in making this bench for our daughter, sister, granddaughter, great granddaughter, friend to many, and mommy,” said Duperron. “The bench brings much recognition, resilience, and reconciliation for justice for Nature and to the many that have been taken a place of peace.”
Which is why Duperron wants the bench to honour every missing and murdered Indigenous person from the area.
“I also know that there's other families out there that have lost loved ones that way. We have made it open so that if they want to do an engraving with the name of their loved one, we can get it done and we can put it on,” she said.
Duperron misses her daughter and waking her up with a coffee every morning so they could talk before the rest of the household got up.
“She was just waiting for that moment to have her time to visit, because you are both busy in your day and you don't have much time to collaborate everything because you have all these little people to take care of in a household,” Duperron said.
She finds herself looking at buildings and recalling things, visiting Nature in that house, going shopping in that store, eating at that restaurant. Memories she holds dearly as she tries to make new ones with her three grandchildren.
“I remember and it puts a smile on my face and helps me keep pressing forward,” she said. “I’m glad I was blessed to be her mother, that in itself was an honour because she was my first born.”
