Latimer visits ailing mom in Saskatchewan

Robert Latimer, who has spent seven years in prison for killing his severely disabled daughter, visited his ailing mother at a health centre in Wilkie, Sask., on Saturday after being granted a four-day unescorted leave.

The National Parole Board granted the former Saskatchewan farmer the temporary leave from the William Head Institution near Victoria to spend time with family before his day parole begins at a halfway house in Ottawa on Monday.

He quietly boarded a plane and left B.C. on Thursday night. The board did not release news of his release until the following day.

Latimer said little to reporters as they approached him and his wife Laura in the parking lot of the Wilkie and District Health Centre.

He said he would be spending the day with his mother, but declined to give details about her health.

"I guess it's just old age," he said.

On Friday, the parole board said Latimer had been released to visit a sick friend or relative whose condition had worsened.

At his parole appeal hearing in December, Latimer said his mother was ill, but his application for day parole was denied. The board concluded that he had not adequately expressed remorse for killing his 12-year-old daughter Tracy.

The National Parole Board Appeal Division reversed that decision in late February, saying the circumstances of Latimer's offence were unique and it was unlikely he would find himself in a similar high-risk situation.

Latimer, 54, was convicted of second-degree murder after admitting that he killed Tracy in 1993 by placing her in his truck and piping exhaust fumes into it on the family's farm near Wilkie.

He contended it was an act of mercy because Tracy suffered from cerebral palsy and suffered pain from a twisted spine and several surgeries.

The case ignited a continuing national debate on mercy killing.

He began his life sentence without parole for 10 years in January 2001 and spent time in institutions in Alberta and British Columbia. He will not be eligible for full parole for three years.

There are reports that Latimer chose Ottawa to do his day parole because he wants to spare his family in Wilkie further media attention. Still, he has a sister who lives in the Ottawa suburb of Nepean.