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By Chris Brown

Life sentence for Medicine Hat woman in 2021 murder

Jan 31, 2023 | 5:17 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – A judge in Lethbridge today delivered his sentence in a second-degree murder case involving a Medicine Hat woman.

Melissa Martens-Lagasse of Medicine Hat has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 14 years.

Martens-Lagasse pleaded guilty in September 2022 to strangling another woman to death while on a road trip from B.C. to Alberta in November 2021. She was originally charged with first-degree murder in the death of Megan Eekma.

In an agreed statement of facts, Martens-Lagasse said she put a rope around the neck of her friend as she was sleeping in the back seat of a car at a gas station in Fort Macleod.

She then drove to an area 27 kilometres southeast of Pincher Creek where she dumped Eekma’s body and the rope used to strangle her friend. Martens-Lagasse then drove to Medicine Hat.

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Eekma’s body was found by travellers on Nov. 19, 2021.

— with files from Brian Konrad