Convicted murderer Marissa Shephard was sentenced Friday to life in prison without possibility of parole for 25 years for the killing of Moncton teenager Baylee Wylie.
"Mr. Baylee Wylie was quite simply tortured to death," Justice Zoël Dionne said as he delivered his sentence in Moncton Court of Queen's Bench.
Shephard, 22, of Moncton, was found guilty last month of first-degree murder and arson with disregard for human life in the 2015 slaying of the 18-year-old Wylie.
She got three years for the arson, minus time served, to be served concurrently with the first-degree murder sentence.
'People's opinions were everywhere'
Court heard an emotional victim impact statement from Baylee's aunt, Angela Wylie.
"Telling my sister that her baby was gone, that moment is something that I can never erase from my memory," Wylie said to the court.
Wylie said her life since Baylee's death has been "pure anguish."
"No matter how much I tried to avoid it, people's opinions were everywhere," she said.
Shephard had no visible reaction, looking straight at the judge as Angela Wylie read her statement.
'Four kids, four lives ruined'
Shephard's defence lawyer, Gilles Lemieux, spoke next.
"Four kids, four lives ruined," he said.
"And the elephant in the room — drugs, alcohol and prostitution. It has caused immeasurable losses."
Lemieux went on to say that in Shephard's case, the loss was that of the chance to grow into adulthood and be a mother to her son.
Moments after he spoke those words, Baylee's mother, Amanda, stood up and ran out of the court room.
She was heard sobbing loudly outside the room. Two people ran after her to console her.
Brutal murder
Firefighters discovered Wylie's battered and burned body beneath a mattress in Shephard's smouldering New Brunswick Housing townhouse on Sumac Street during the early morning hours of Dec. 17, 2015.
He had suffered more than 140 "sharp-force injuries" — most of them while he was still alive, the jury heard during the two month-long trial.
During a drug-fuelled night of partying, Wylie had been bound to a chair, his face covered in plastic wrap, and had been beaten and stabbed with multiple objects, including a broken mirror, a box cutter, a curtain rod, screwdrivers and a dagger.
The jury delivered its unanimous guilty verdict on May 8 after only about four hours of deliberations.
Shephard is the last of three people accused of killing Wylie to be convicted.
Devin Morningstar, 20, is serving a life-sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years after being found guilty of first-degree murder and arson with disregard for human life. He appealed his conviction last summer but lost.
Tyler Noel, 20, is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 16 years after pleading guilty to the lesser charge of second-degree murder and arson with disregard for human life.