After a day of getting high on methamphetamine, Genevieve Reed wanted the house to herself.
Her mother, Karen, refused to leave their Country Lane townhouse in London on April 20, 2010, a decision for which she would pay with her life.
Her daughter was enraged and out of control. She grabbed an urn that held her sister’s ashes, forcing her mother to her feet in the living room to retrieve them.
Reed grabbed her mother in a choke hold and threw her to the floor. Her mother tried to get away, but couldn’t.
The TV fell over with a crash. Reed hit her mother with a candle holder and a ceramic knick-knack.
When her mother was unconscious, Reed grabbed three steak knives from the kitchen and stabbed her 20 times.
Reed, 33, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the death of her 53-year-old mother two weeks after she was so distraught in the Superior Court of Justice courtroom she could not go forward with her case.
Her plea was to a lesser offence than the second-degree murder charge she originally faced.
While she was not suffering from a major mental illness at the time of the homicide, a psychiatrist’s assessment was that Reed was so high on drugs she couldn’t form the intent to kill.
The facts of the case presented to Justice Andrew Goodman by assistant Crown attorney Laurie Tuttle laid out Reed’s addiction and existence.
Reed’s mother was a nurse who had tried repeatedly to support her daughter and encourage to quit her drug habit. But on the day she would kill her mother, Reed was hanging out with her 65-year old bipolar boyfriend Brian Edwards. While their relationship was intimate, Reed also used Edwards for money to buy drugs.
Reed bought and injected methamphetamine that afternoon. London police had contact with the couple and Reed was described as “jonesing” for drugs.
At 9:30 p.m., Reed was on the second floor of the townhouse, while Edwards and Reed’s mother watched TV on the main floor. Reed went downstairs after taking a phone call and began her demands for her mother to leave the house.
Edwards witnessed the confrontation and thought it would eventually “wear itself out.”
But it didn’t. The autopsy showed that of Karen Reed’s 20 stab wounds, seven were to the head and neck. One wound under her eye still had the tip of a knife in it.
One of the stab wounds went through her upper lip and into the base of the skull and brain, killing her.
There were other defensive stab wounds on her hands. She also suffered 18 blunt force injuries to her head and neck and nine to her torso, hands and arms. Two of her ribs were broken.
Two of the three knives were broken and bent during the attack.
Police went to the address to investigate a noise complaint, but instead found Reed outside the townhouse with Edwards and covered in blood. Reed told police it was her blood, then said “Mom” had cut herself but she was fine.
Reed tried to block officers from going into the house and described her as in “an almost catatonic state” and “incoherent.” They found Reed’s mother dead on the floor.
Edwards was also charged with second-degree murder but pleaded guilty in June 2011 to obstruction of justice and was sentenced to probation