The first degree murder conviction of Terry Tremble, a Hanover-area farmer found guilty of bludgeoning his wife to death in her Arthur home in 2010, has been upheld by the Ontario Court of Appeal.
The court dismissed Tremble’s appeal in a written decision delivered by Justice Karen Weiler on Monday.
Tremble killed his wife Adrienne Roberts, 33, a Guelph-Wellington paramedic, in the basement of her Arthur home on Oct. 6, 2010. The first degree murder conviction and sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years was delivered in a Guelph court in 2013.
Tremble appealed the conviction on the grounds that the trial judge erred in not allowing the defence to raise the possibility that an unknown third-party committed the murder.
Defence felt the murder was “strikingly similar” to two other unsolved murders that happened within 30 minutes drive of Arthur within two months of the murder of Roberts.
The appeal also argued that first degree murder was “unreasonable” and that second degree murder was the more appropriate verdict.
The Court of Appeal ruled that there was “no air of reality to the appellant’s alternate suspect defence” and that the crown attorney reasonably proved that the murder was planned and deliberate, justifying the first degree conviction.
The couple, who were 17 years apart in age, were in the process of getting a divorce at the time and Tremble had just been charged with assaulting their young son, who was then eight months old.
They had been married for a little over a year.
A jury took seven hours following a four-week trial to arrive at the verdict.
Tremble did not testify at the trial and the defence called no witnesses, something that the Court of Appeal also pointed out.
The murder weapon was never found.
