Man convicted of killing Indigenous woman in northern Alberta gets prison release
Nicole Gladue-Weesemat wailed after learning the man who stabbed her mother in northern Alberta a decade ago, then moved her dead body to Manitoba, is out of prison.
She says she has been overwhelmed with emotions since Corrections officials told her that 74-year-old Grant Sneesby was freed earlier this month after being granted statutory release.
"I haven't cried like this since [police] told us they found her," she said Friday from her home in Edson, Alta., west of Edmonton.
She said she misses her mother, Gloria Gladue, and has a hard time forgetting Sneesby's trial.
"I'm shaking because it's never easy talking about."
Gladue, a member of Bigstone Cree Nation, was last seen in Wabasca, Alta., in October 2015. The remains of the 44-year-old were found in rural Manitoba almost three years later.
Sneesby was sentenced in 2022 to 11 years after being convicted of manslaughter and causing indignity to a body. He was credited seven years for time in pretrial custody.
A December decision from the Parole Board of Canada says Sneesby's statutory release date was pending and that he was planning to live in a seniors home after his release. A spokesperson said it couldn't confirm the release due to privacy.
The law requires federal offenders who have served two-thirds of their sentence to be freed under statutory release.
The parole document says Sneesby told his trial he was drinking with Gladue when they got into an argument and he stabbed her in the chest three times with her knife.
Sneesby's lawyers argued Gladue was the initial aggressor.
The trial heard Sneesby wrapped Gladue's body in plastic, taped both ends and placed her in his trailer. He also destroyed her cellphone, burned her clothing and disposed of the knife.
He moved the trailer twice over the next two years before taking her body to a wooded area in Manitoba.
He told investigators that he last saw Gladue when she left his home to go to a wedding. Officers learned that no one saw her at the event.
In 2018, Sneesby admitted to undercover police officers that he killed Gladue and took them to the place he had left her body.
Nicole Gladue-Weesemat said it was difficult to sit through Sneesby's trial and now, with his release, she's worried again.
But she said it's important to talk about what happened to heal and remember her mother and other missing and murdered Indigenous women.
"We're trying our best to cope and honour her at the same time," she said.
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'My role is to make sure that our members and our principals are equipped with not only the physical tools to stop that, but also the mental acuity to be able to say something is not right,' Paradis said, adding that Mounties were quick to bring down someone who got too close to Trudeau at a parade in Montreal in 2019. Paradis said the threat landscape has calmed down somewhat since the recent change of government. If an official is threatened online, she said, Mounties will pay the person levying the threat a visit to determine whether they have the capacity to act on it, or if there is a mental health issue at play. Paradis said the RCMP works with government officials, the House of Commons, constituency offices and security officers for various ministers to complete risk assessments. 'I think we've got a better sense of the picture of what's going on,' Paradis said. There have been several recent efforts to boost security measures for elected officials. In 2024, RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme asked the government to consider drafting a new law that would make it easier for police to pursue charges against people who threaten elected officials. Around the same time, former public safety minister Marco Mendicino called for the creation of 'protective zones' around political constituency offices to shield members of Parliament and their staff. McKenna said she'd like to see an independent protective service created specifically to protect the prime minister and other federal officials. She said she'd like to see the government pass online harms legislation and hold social media companies accountable for the threats posted on their platforms. McKenna said politicians also need to stop launching personal attacks on each other in order to generate social media clips. 'The problem is when they get personal, then it's easy for people to basically dehumanize people,' she said. 'It means that it's OK to say terrible things about people and … it's OK to go up to them and shout at them in the street and threaten them.' When asked if more security measures are needed, Paradis said she and most police officers 'work within what we have now' and adapt when things change. Rob Huebert, a professor in the department of political science at the University of Calgary and director of the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies, said the 'near assassination' of U.S. President Donald Trump last year demonstrates that, even today, a determined assassin can still get close to a politician. 'On so many of these events, you can try to have metal detectors, you can try to have pre-screening, but it's impossible to ever try to achieve 100 per cent security … the threat of an assault on a political leader is one of those constants,' he said. 'The threat is always there.' Huebert cited the example of the so-called 'Toronto 18' terrorism plot, exposed in 2006, which was to involve a series of public attacks to convince the federal government to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. He said the fact that there have been no successful attacks on Canadian government officials could be the result of improved security — or it could be because no one else has tried. Chris Mathers, a retired RCMP officer and president of a consulting and investigative firm, said the 2000 pie incident shows how Chrétien 'didn't stay in the box' — meaning he often strayed from the protective perimeter provided by his security detail. Trudeau, he said, 'always stayed in the box,' perhaps because, as the son of a prime minister, he grew up aware of threats against politicians. 'If you stay in the box, there's a lot less chance that you're going to be confronted by somebody with a pie or a knife or a gun or a bomb,' Mathers said. Mathers said 'the world is changing' and that people are now 'a lot more aggressive and will do and say things that they wouldn't in the past.' 'The problem is that we've started to degrade into a very permissive society and inappropriate behaviours are almost considered to be courageous in some areas,' he said. 'So yes, security around public figures has increased, just as a result of the changing social environment.' — With files from Jim Bronskill This report by The Canadian Press was first published Aug. 15, 2025.
