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Nyibol Chuol, 27, was stabbed to death. Her body was found September 16th, 2006.

Chuol was Edmonton's twenty-fourth homicide victim of the year.

John Dum Both, 41, was charged with second-degree murder and offering an indignity to a body. He had already been charged with aggravated assault in a related matter.

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The case of Nyibol Chuol started with a missing person report.

The 27-year-old woman, a three-month pregnant mother of two sons, aged nine and ten, was last seen September 6th, 2006.

Homicide detectives were alerted to the woman’s disappearance on September 11th when members of Edmonton’s Sudanese community reported her missing.

The next day police found the family vehicle, a 1998 Ford Taurus, at 106th Street and 106th Avenue – two blocks away from the Sudanese-Canadian Dinka Cultural Society.

The car was impounded and examined by the police forensic identification unit.

Acting on information from someone only described by police as "a source," a 5 square-kilometre area on the north side of Yellowhead Trail between Range Road 222 and 223 east of Edmonton was searched.

The Search and Rescue Dog Association of Alberta was brought in to work alongside homicide detectives.

After an initial search failed to find anything of interest, the "source" called police back with more detailed information.

On September 16th, within 30 minutes of the resumed search starting, Chuol was found lying in plain view in a roadside ditch.

An autopsy carried out three days later revealed she died of stab wounds to the upper body.

Police said Chuol's body had begun to decompose from the chest up. Fingerprints from Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and the woman's clothing, helped to confirm her identity.

Police also said they were certain how long she had been at the site but did not release the information. Little effort had been made to hide the body.

Court documents later showed police believed Chuol was killed around September 6th and her body was dumped shortly afterward.

John Both, 41, the woman’s husband, was already in the Edmonton Remand Centre facing aggravated assault charges.

Nihal Deng Awer, Choul's cousin who lives near Nyibol's two-storey duplex at 12819 72 Street, told CTV Edmonton that Both stabbed him in the arm when he came to check on her welfare.

"I went to John's house and I said 'John, where is your wife?'" said Deng Awer. "He said Nyibol was out with friends. I was going to call police when he stabbed me in the hand. I just ran away."

John Both had been seen by neighbours running down a street with a knife in his hand, and a bloodstained cab remained parked in the area for two weeks after the stabbing.

Both was arrested September 7th, the day after Choul was last seen, and was placed in the Remand Centre.

His troubles got worse when police laid a charge of second-degree murder and offering an indignity to a body against him on September 16th.

Both appeared in provincial court on September 22nd, 2006 with defence lawyer Peter Royal at his side and was formally charged with Edmonton's 24th homicide of the year.

Judge Shelagh Creagh adjourned the case until October 13th, 2006 so the court could find an interpreter who can speaks Neur, Both's native language in Sudan. He was remanded in custody.

Media scoured the neighbourhood where Both and Chuol lived. One resident recalled a bloody fight at about the time Chuol disappeared.

The neighbour, who didn't want to be identified, said her children ran home screaming.

"They said he had a knife," she recalled. "Everyone was crying. I heard there was a knife and blood I thought he was killing the children."

"I feel so bad because I wouldn't see her again," Deng Awer said after the hearing. "I'm not feeling good because I miss her."

He had yet to inform family in Sudan of the loss of his only blood relative in Canada.

"From back home people call us," said Peter Jany Khaway, head of the Edmonton Sudanese-Canadian Community Association.

"Here we are building our future. They don't expect something to happen like this."

The Sudanese in Edmonton had never experienced a tragedy like this since leaving Sudan, community member Abiel Kon said.

"It's a shock. We do not expect this to happen. We came here from a wartorn country. We thought this was a peaceful country. We's asking what's going on. We're trying to understand it."

"Back home if there is a domestic problem, it is the close family that acts to solve it. Not the government right away," said Kueth Peter Yoh, chairman of the Sudanese Neur Association.

"We have little responsibility here."

On September 27th, 2006 it was reported Edmonton's Sudanese community was scrambling to raise funds for Chuol's burial.

"We can't estimate how much it will be, but it's a lot of money. We are still preparing for the funeral, which will take place as soon as we get the funds," said Kueth Yoh, president of the Sudanese Nuer Community Association.

Those wishing to contribute funds were asked to contact the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, Yoh said.

On October 8th, 2006 Nyibol Chuol was finally laid to rest.

Her funeral was delayed by three weeks due to the police investigation and because the woman had no immediate family members in Canada. It was only after family was contacted in Africa that Chuol's body could be released for burial.

“That's been a real stress,” Jim Gurnett, executive director of the Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, said of the Sudanese community.

“They haven't been able to think of getting on with life until the funeral is out of the way.

“There is a great deal of upset and turbulence in the community. An action like this is virtually incomprehensible and creates all kinds of bewilderment.”

Gurnett said Edmonton's Sudanese were still struggling to come to terms with Chuol's death.

"This is very upsetting for a lot of people," he said.

"This is a community that comes from three decades of violence and instability before they came to Canada. They were starting to develop a sense of stability here in Edmonton and an event like this, for many people, reopens old worries of death and trauma."

The service took place at the Beverly Alliance Church at 12235 50 Street. About 100 mourners attended, some travelling from Calgary and Brooks to hear tributes in English and Nuer, a Sudanese dialect.

Christian hymns were sung to the rhythm of a single drum and the cries of young babies cradled by their mothers.

At the casket holding bouqets were Chuol's nephews, standing alongside Nihal Deng Awer, the woman's cousin.

"We all feel very sad, indeed," said John Chuol Guak as he led the eulogy. Guak came from the same family clan as Chuol.

"It is a very terrible crime, killing someone. It doesn't make sense.

"We all know the problems that caused Nyibol to be murdered," he said without elaboration.

“I'm very glad we all share this sadness.”

Guak told those gathered that Chuol's older brother in Australia wanted them all to point their middle fingers up to the sky, guiding Chuol's spirit to heaven while her body was lowered into the ground.

"Put your middle finger up when you put her in the tomb," Guak said.

He described Chuol as devoted to her family and church, a youth leader and caregiver who left Sudan for Serbia where she met her husband before they moved to Canada.

Covering the cost of the funeral were donations from the Sudanese community and other immigrant groups. The funeral home also donated a large part of their work.

Chuol and Both had come to Canada in 2003 after spending three years in a Kenyan refugee camp escaping a civil war in southern Sudan. They had been married for nine years.

Chuol was raising her brother's two sons. The boys, one in Grade 4 and one in Grade 6, were placed in protective care by Alberta Children's Services.

Information about the case was not made public by police until after charges were laid out of concern doing so would have jeopardised their efforts to gather evidence.

Chuol's body was found in the same general area where the bodies of murdered prostitutes have been dumped over the last two decades.

Police dismissed the proximity as mere coincidence and Project KARE, the multi-force team tasked that investigation, was not notified.

The murder of Nyibol Chuol was likely to again raise the issue of an unborn child's rights.

Two recent Edmonton murder victims, Liana White (left) and Olivia Marie Talbot, were both pregnant at the time of their deaths.

This caused family and friends of both women to call on the Canadian federal government to allow police to lay additional murder charges for killing a fetus.

White was four months pregnant when she was murdered July 7th, 2005. Like Chuol, her body was found in a ditch and her husband was charged with her death.

Talbot was murdered November 23rd, 2005 and was six months pregnant. A childhood friend was charged with her death.

While Canadian law does not recognise the rights of the unborn, certain American jurisdictions consider a pregnant woman and her unborn child as separate entities.

In the case of Laci Peterson, eight months pregnant, the State of California charged her husband Scott with first- and second-degree murder. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection in March, 2005.

On September 22nd, 2006 the Edmonton Sun posed an online poll.

815 people voted on the one-day voluntary poll which allowed only one response per computer.

On September 2nd, 2008 the second-degree murder and aggravated assault trial of John Dum Both was expected to begin before Court of Queen's Bench Justice Adam Germain.

However, the judge-alone hearing was put over until September 8th when opening arguments were expected to be heard.

Provision was made for the entire trial to be conducted with the aid of a translator, who would explain the legal process to Both in his native Nuer dialect of Sudanese.

When the trial resumed on September 8th, John Both, now 43, entered a surprise guilty plea to the charges of second-degree murder and interfering with his wife's body, and an aggravated assault charge involving Nihal Deng Awer, his wife's cousin.

A second-degree murder carries with it an automatic penalty of life in prison with no chance of parole for 10 to 25 years. In a joint submission to the court, both the Crown and defence agreed to the sentence and suggested a 10-year parole eligibilty period which Court of Queen's Bench Justice Adam Germain accepted.

“The courts have attempted to send a signal to the public that while all killing is to be denounced, the killing of a spouse, particularly one that is pregnant, is particularly onerous,” Justice Germaine said.

Both was also sentenced to a concurrent two-year jail term for the attack on Awer, was handed a lifetime weapons ban and was told to submit a DNA sample.

"This was the killing of a spouse, a breach of trust," Crown prosecutor Lawrence Van Dyke said. "Literally the ultimate act of spousal violence."

If Both serves 10 years and is granted full parole, his status allows Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board to detain him and take steps to have him deported.

Chuol's lawyer, Charles Davison, told the court his client accepted all responsibility for his wife's murder and "had no right" to do what he did.

“It has been, and will continue to be a very lonely time for Mr. Both,” Davison said.

Both didn't need his Sudanese interpreter as he quietly told the judge in English he was guilty of the crime.

According to an agreed statement of facts entered into the record, Both had stabbed Chuol at least five times in the chest and abdomen after he learned that she was pregnant with another man's child, identified in court as James Ding Dak.

Court heard the couple's relationship was troubled, with Chuol not coming home some nights.

Both had become aware that Chuol was pregnant by about July 21st, 2006 when the couple went to see a doctor. Both knew he was not the father by August 18th and Chuol refused to tell him who the real father was.

Both concealed Chuo's body by covering it with grass and leaves in a ditch on the north side of Highway 16 between Range Road 222 and 223, east of Edmonton.

According to detectives, Chuol's body was decomposing from the chest up and portions of her skull and bones were visible.

Both sat motionless as the details of her death were read out by an interpreter.

Chuol had been reported missing by friends on September 11th, 2006. She was last seen taking English as a second language lessons at Sacred Heart school on September 6th when Both and a friend picked her up. The couple dropped off the friend at home and appeared to be arguing during the drive.

Both admitted to stabbing Awer the next day because he was planning to call police after asking about Chuol's whereabouts. Awer had gone to Both's home at 12819 72 Street to borrow a vacuum cleaner. When Awer suggested calling police, Both followed him to his car and attacked him with a large kitchen knife.

The cut to Awer's arm was 10 to 12 centimeters in length and went as deep as the bone in some places.

Both had been in custody since September 7th after being charged with aggravated assault in connection with the attack on Awer.

Homicide detectives zeroed in on Both after he confessed to killing his wife to others in the Nuer community.

Victim impact statements where heard from two boys, both nephews of Chuol, who were living with the couple at the time of her disappearance. They had since moved to Australia after it was discovered some of their family survived the conflicts in Africa.

"I am frightened of my uncle John now that I know he killed my auntie. I feel scared that he will come and kill me," David Gatlat wrote. "I miss her and feel very frightened that he will come and get me."

The other boy also expressed his concern.

"I don't want him to come to Australia because he would kill me like he killed my auntie," he said.

Chuol's cousin, Nihal Deng Awer, who Both attacked with a knife, spoke of the man in his statement.

"I always have bad dreams and dream about my cousin," Awer said. "I miss my cousin a lot."

Awer, now 21, said his injury forced him to drop out of school, stop working and quit his soccer team. He told the court he is struggling financially while he attends school in Edmonton.

The somewhat chilling nature of Sudanese values became apparent when Peter Pal Kong, Chuol's brother, read his statement.

"In our culture, if a member of the family is murdered there is an expectation to kill the murderer. My surviving family in Africa would expect this of me if John came to Australia," Kong said.

Chuol's friends described her as a social member of the local Sudanese community.

"She has been a very active lady in the community, very quiet, innocent," said Kuedh Yoh, president of the Sudanese Nuer Community Association.

Sudanese community leader Joseph Luri was interviewed by CBC Edmonton after the hearing. He reflected on how such a matter would have been traditionally treated.

"The elders would have taken control of that and traditional ways of addressing that would have been applied and this would not have happened with such a consequence," Luri said.

deadmonton 2006 - nyibol chuol