SOLVEDListenCalgary, Alberta, Canada · 2010s
Murders of Jasmine Lovett and Aliyah Sanderson
Jasmine Lovett and her 22-month-old daughter Aliyah Sanderson were killed in Calgary in 2019, and Robert Leeming was convicted of both murders.
What happened
In the early hours of December 15, 2011, a murder–suicide occurred on Alberta Highway 2 just north of Claresholm, Alberta. Derek Jensen, 21, killed three people — his ex-girlfriend Tabitha Stepple, 21, and two men, Mitch Maclean, 20, and Tanner Craswell, 22 — before turning a handgun on himself. Maclean and Craswell were baseball players for the Lethbridge Bulls who had relocated to Alberta from Prince Edward Island.
Jensen had met Stepple at a Lethbridge nightclub, and the couple had lived together before splitting around Halloween 2011, though they continued to share a residence. Neither had any history known to police, and there had been no reported domestic violence between them.
On the night of December 14, 2011, Jensen encountered Stepple at a Lethbridge pub, where she was with Craswell, Maclean, and Shayna Conway, who was Craswell's girlfriend and a coworker of Stepple's. The group was celebrating Craswell's 22nd birthday. Jensen confronted Stepple, pushing her out of a chair, before leaving with friends. Maclean and Craswell had a 5 a.m. flight out of Calgary to return home to Prince Edward Island for Christmas, and Stepple and Conway agreed to drive them to the airport in Stepple's Ford Escape, departing Lethbridge around midnight along Highway 2.
Jensen independently drove north on Highway 2 searching for Stepple, having reportedly called her and said, "This night's not going to end well for you, I hope you know that." He located the group at a 7-Eleven in Claresholm around 3 a.m.; surveillance footage showed no confrontation there. Shortly after the group left the store, around 3:30 a.m., Jensen rammed their SUV with his car north of Claresholm. When Conway got out to confront the driver, Jensen shot her three times, then fired into the SUV, killing Stepple and Craswell. Maclean was shot but escaped the vehicle before he was found in a roadside ditch.
Maclean died en route to Foothills Medical Centre in Calgary after being airlifted from Claresholm. Conway survived after crawling to a phone to call 911, underwent surgery, and made a full recovery. Officers recovered two additional firearms — a Winchester rifle and a loaded 12-gauge shotgun — from Jensen's vehicle, all legally registered, along with another firearm and ammunition from his Lethbridge home.
In 2013, CTV broadcast a documentary about the case titled Road to Murder, produced and directed by Larry Day and hosted by Lloyd Robertson.
