Who killed Donald Blizzard? Long legal process ends with no answer — but many questions
Questions remain on sentencing day for the last of 4 men connected to the death
Janet Hazen will stand in court for the fourth time on Monday.
She'll face another judge, another set of lawyers and another man who was arrested and charged following the 2021 homicide of her son, Donald Blizzard.
Once again, Hazen will deliver her victim impact statement, just as she's done on three other occasions when men — all of whom were present when Blizzard died — were sentenced.
No one has been found criminally responsible for his death.
"There was a lot of evidence that shows me that my son was killed," Hazen said. "Who did it — they can't prove."
"No one called 911. No one helped my son."
Blizzard went missing in July 2021. The 43-year-old's remains were discovered less than two months later concealed in a bag in a ditch in Lac Ste. Anne County, west of Edmonton.
A medical examiner ruled that his death was a homicide, but the decomposition made it impossible to determine a cause of death.
In early 2022, charges of second-degree murder and some lesser charges were laid against three men — Justin Michael March, Kevin Turner and Andrew Walker — in connection to Blizzard's death. A fourth man, Mark Elder, was charged with interfering with human remains and attempted obstruction.
In an email, Crown prosecutor Anders Quist said the evidence in the case doesn't provide a reasonable likelihood of conviction for a homicide against any of the accused persons.
As a result, all four pleaded guilty to one count of interference with Blizzard's remains. March was sentenced to 30 months, Turner to two years, and Walker to 17 months.
Elder's sentencing on Monday will mark the end of the legal process.
For Hazen, the experience has been long, difficult and frustrating. She wishes the sentences were longer, that the trials had proceeded, and that the investigation into her son's disappearance had been handled differently.
The day he went missing
Hazen last saw her son on July 22, 2021. Blizzard had been living in Vancouver, working as a server but moved to Edmonton to live with his parents when the pandemic hit and there was no more work.
"He was a very kind, caring and generous person," Hazen said, adding that her son did a lot of volunteering, particularly with the 2SLGBTQ+ community.
She said he was very outgoing and social, but as the pandemic dragged on, he seemed to be having a hard time, Hazen said.
The last time Hazen saw her son, he said he was going to an appointment. Hazen's husband dropped him off at an LRT station.
When he didn't come home later, she was worried. Her son had a history of drug use, but he always let her know he was OK when he didn't come home, she said.
Hazen waited 48 hours to report him missing, believing that police wouldn't accept a report filed before then. By then, it was the weekend and the station was closed to the public.
She tried again on Monday but was told the report needed to be filed by phone and not in person. It was July 27 — five days after she'd last seen him — before police were informed about his disappearance.
However, according to police, the missing persons unit didn't take over the investigation until September, just days before his remains were discovered by a member of the public.
Hazen says she discussed her son's drug history with the call operator and believes that contributed to the delay in the active search beginning.
What the accused men said happened
While Blizzard's whereabouts during the first few days of his disappearance are unclear, an agreed statement of facts entered with the Court of King's Bench when March was sentenced earlier this year reveals that Blizzard joined March in a downtown Edmonton Airbnb suite on July 27, 2021.
March, who was on parole for a drug trafficking conviction, was renting the suite despite a condition to refrain from being in the city.
When Blizzard started getting too noisy, March became concerned that someone might call the police.
Both men were using drugs; at one point, March believed Blizzard was overdosing.
He called Turner, an associate in drug dealing, who came to the suite with Walker. According to the agreed facts, in an effort to try to quiet Blizzard, March hit him in the face, and Walker and Turner tied him up with tape.
Someone — the agreed facts don't specify who — stuffed a sock in Blizzard's mouth. Blizzard struggled, vomited and then fell still. According to the agreed facts, the three accused tried to revive Blizzard with naloxone and CPR to no avail.
He died at some point during the interaction, said the statement.
Elder was called and helped Turner conceal Blizzard's body with sports bags. They loaded the body out of the building, into a vehicle driven by Walker. Later, Walker and March drove the body out to Lac Ste. Anne County, about 80 kilometres northwest of Edmonton, and left it there.
March also paid Elder's spouse to clean the Airbnb suite, said the agreed facts
Blizzard's remains were discovered on Sept. 13, 2021.
Hazen believes that if an investigation had been launched earlier, there would have been more evidence, and it would have been easier to prove what happened to her son.
"Perhaps there would have been critical evidence gained at the crime scene," she said. "Because there was a two months' lapse, everything was gone."
Hoping to help other families whose loved ones go missing, Hazen worked with the Edmonton Police Service on a training video in 2022 that was used to help train call evaluators on missing persons cases.
"The missing persons unit does regular training with our call evaluators with the goal of continuous improvement, and it was felt that a video featuring a family member would be a meaningful addition to this training," EPS spokesperson Cheryl Voordenhout said in an email.
Voordenhout added the unit did "a thorough investigation" into Blizzard's disappearance, which helped uncover key evidence that allowed the initial murder charges to be laid.
For Hazen, Monday's sentencing is the final hurdle to putting the legal process behind her. Although she is glad it is over, her grief over her son is compounded by her questions about how the case unfolded.
"It seems to me there was no justice in my son's homicide and no accountability," she said.
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