Your LOCAL Media since 1918! Volume 105 Issue 18
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Thursday, January 5, 2023 s
Holden woman convicted of manslaughter granted day parole Helen Naslund, initially sentenced to 18 years, now allowed unescorted absences Jana Semeniuk Staff Reporter
A former Holden resident, who was initially given 18 years in prison for killing her abusive husband in 2011, has been allowed unescorted absences from prison and, once she is eligible early this year, day parole. During her trial in 2020, Helen Naslund, now 58, admitted to shooting her husband Miles, then 49, twice in the head as he slept at their farm the morning of Sept. 5, 2011. In an agreed statement of facts, Miles spent the day before the killing intoxicated, ordering Naslund around with a gun and throwing wrenches at her before destroying a table set for Sunday dinner saying the meal was “not fit for a dog.” Naslund suffered for nearly 30 years at the hands of her abusive husband. After the killing, Naslund and her son Neil, who was 19 at the time, stuffed Miles’ body in a truck bed toolbox which was drilled with holes and then welded shut. They sunk the toolbox in a dugout on the family farm and then, using an excavator rented from the equipment shop where Helen worked, crushed and buried Miles’ car while burning evidence from the home and tossing Mile’s guns in other bodies of water. They kept the family secret for nearly six years. Miles was first reported missing on Sept. 6, 2011, by Naslund who suggested he may have killed himself after disappearing in his Chevy
Cavalier with a .357 Magnum handgun. Meanwhile, Naslund was critical of the police investigation after they failed to turn up any leads. In Aug. 2017 RCMP were tipped off upon learning that Darrell Naslund, Neil’s brother, had told people what really happened to his father. After an RCMP search recovered Miles’s remains six years after he was reported missing, Naslund and Neil turned themselves into police and were both released on bail for three years. Although the pair were originally charged with first degree murder by Tofield RCMP, Neil was sentenced in 2020 to three years for offering an indignity to a human body by helping his mother, and Naslund plea bargained receiving an 18-year sentence for manslaughter which caused a public outcry. It was among the longest sentences in Canadian history for an abused woman who killed her husband. Neil was paroled in 2021. In an agreed statement of facts, filed with Naslund’s guilty plea, the crime came after nearly 30 years of continual abuse which led Naslund to attempt suicide on multiple occasions. Wesley Naslund, the eldest of the three sons, spoke to newspapers about growing up under his father’s obsessive controlling behaviour and feelings of never-ending dread. He said his mother tried leaving multiple times and his fa-
ther always said he would track her down. Last year, Naslund appealed her sentence resulting in the Appeal Court reduction from 18 to nine years, minus time already served after considering Naslund to have symptoms of “battered woman syndrome”, which causes psychological damage from being continually abused by an intimate partner.
File photo of Helen Naslund competing in a barrel racing competition in the years prior to her setencing.
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