8-year sentence for woman who joined in torture killing of former friend

Meghan Grant · CBC News

· Posted: May 09, 2025 7:56 PM EDT | Last Updated: 2 hours ago

WARNING: The details successful this nonfiction are graphic and violent.

One of those progressive successful the torture decease of a pistillate who hung from a store rafter for 12 hours was handed an eight-year condemnation Friday successful Calgary. 

Natalie Vinje was primitively charged with first-degree execution but pleaded blameworthy to manslaughter past June. 

With recognition for the clip already served, Vinje has conscionable nether 4 years near connected her sentence, noted Court of King's Bench Justice Jim Eamon.

Prosecutors Donna Spaner and Melissa Bond sought a 14-year situation sentence. Defence lawyer Andrea Urquhart asked the justice to see a time-served condemnation of 4 years and 2 months, positive a play of probation. 

'Someone she called a friend'

For 12 hours, Tammie Howard, known arsenic "Irish," was hung from the rafters of a store successful southeast Calgary. The killers bushed Howard and changeable her with a nail gun. 

A unfortunate interaction connection was written by Vinje's 3 children, detailing their feelings of heartbreak and betrayal. 

"To cognize that idiosyncratic she called a person and met her kids could instrumentality her beingness successful the mode that it was is 1 of the astir horrendous things to ever hear," they wrote. 

"We commune that our ma is yet astatine bid and escaped of immoderate suffering."

• Woman's 12-hour torture sidesplitting took spot Christmas Day, justice hears successful manslaughter plea

During the plea, tribunal heard that Vinje was aggravated with Howard for stranding her successful Drumheller, Alta., astir 100 kilometres northeast of Calgary. 

Details of the transgression travel from an agreed connection of facts presented during Vinje's plea. 

On Christmas Day 2016, Vinje's fellow Thomas Evans brought the unfortunate to his store and instructed friends to necktie her up and duct portion her mouth. 

Howard was past hung from a hook successful the rafters.

Beaten 'to a pulp'

Vinje confessed to undercover officers that she and others attacked Howard, throwing punches, beating her "to a pulp."

Two men fired nails into her assemblage from a nail gun. 

Twelve hours aft the onslaught began, the killers pulled Howard down and she succumbed to her injuries connected the store floor. 

The radical dumped Howard's assemblage adjacent Gleichen, astir 60 kilometres eastbound of the city.

In 2021, astir 5 years aft the vicious killing, a fisherman discovered Howard's skull connected Siksika Nation lands and called RCMP. 

One of the attackers has since died of an overdose. Evans was ne'er charged. 

On Friday, Vinje told Howard's household she was sorry. 

"I conscionable privation I wouldn't person been specified a coward," said Vinje. "I privation I would person done thing to halt it.

"I'm truly atrocious for taking her from you, cipher deserves to spell done what she went through."