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12-year-old Karissa Boudreau vanished on the frigid, wintery night of Sunday, January 27, 2008 in the quiet town of Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, a place where people lived for generations, neighbors knew one another & residents felt safe enough to leave their doors unlocked at night. Karissa’s mother, Penny Boudreau, walked into the Bridgewater Police Department at 8:35 pm that night & tearfully told the officers that her 12-year-old daughter, Karissa Boudreau, was missing. She explained that since a snowstorm was expected to hit, she quickly ran into a Sobeys grocery store to pick up supplies while her daughter waited in the car. When she returned to the parking lot, Penny realized that Karissa was gone.
Karissa Paige Boudreau was born on October 4, 1995 as the only child to parents Penny & Paul Boudreau. The couple met while working together at a Sobeys grocery store & within weeks of their relationship beginning, Penny realized that she was pregnant with Karissa. When she was about four months into her pregnancy, she met Paul’s younger brother, Shane, & the two began dating. Penny & Shane were eventually married when Karissa was about 5-years-old.
The family lived in a nice home in Bridgewater where Karissa was an active member of their church & was thriving with a large group of friends. Sadly, as Karissa was entering her pre-teen years, Shane & Penny divorced, something that shattered the stability & comfort in her life. While her mom moved out & got settled, Karissa lived with her father, Paul, & his wife in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, a little over an hour away from her mom.
When Karissa decided she wanted to return to Bridgewater & live with her mom once again, Penny had begun a new relationship & was sharing an apartment with a man, 33-year-old Vernon Macumber. Based on letters she wrote, it was very clear that Karissa was deeply unhappy with her new living arrangements; she missed Shane & the home they once all shared. With this unhappiness, Penny & Karissa were often clashing & arguing & she indicated that she & Vernon were often walking on eggshells.
Penny told the investigators that she had gotten Karissa lunch from Subway that Sunday afternoon, but otherwise the day was typical & Karissa spent much of it in her room. At about 4 pm, Penny asked her daughter if they could go on a drive together to catch up & maybe get on the same page to move toward repairing their relationship. Karissa agreed & they headed out to a location overlooking the ocean. Sadly, the two continued to argue & eventually drove off, back in the direction of Bridgewater. When Penny stopped into the Sobeys grocery store for their winter-storm essentials, Karissa opted to wait in the car.
When Penny got back to the car & realized that Karissa wasn’t there, she initially thought that she may have gotten out to walk in order to clear her head. Penny said she called Vernon, but he hadn’t answered & she began driving around, looking for her daughter. According to CCTV footage from the grocery store, Penny walked out with her items at 5:40 pm & it wasn’t until 8:30 pm, when there was still no sign of Karissa, that she reported her daughter missing, suspecting that she’d run away.
On top of driving around, looking for Karissa, she told investigators that she’d also contacted her friends as well as Karissa’s teacher to see if anyone had heard from her or knew where she’d gone. However, no one had.
Since it was January, the temperatures in Nova Scotia were frigid with average highs ranging from highs in the 30s to lows in the teens (Fahrenheit/equivalent to /-8 to 0℃). Not to mention, a snow storm was expected to hit the area that evening & since Karissa had left her cell phone behind in the car, she had no way to reach anyone if she needed help.
Penny indicated that Karissa was wearing a t-shirt, jeans, a black hoodie, a black vest & pink Crocs when she last saw her. Since she was clearly not properly dressed for the weather & she didn’t have her cell phone, officers knew that they needed to find her quickly.
When Monday came & went & there was still no sign of Karissa, fear within the community was palpable. A media alert was issued & a full-scale search effort began with all hands on deck. This included volunteers & officers who searched the town & surrounding areas.
On Tuesday, January 29, two days after Karissa went missing, there was still no sign of her & the Bridgewater Police Department held a press conference to appeal to the public for any information. Penny sat before the cameras, her eyes were red & swollen from crying as she pleaded for her daughter’s safe return. She begged anyone who had any information at all to come forward to help bring her little girl home.
That same day, a man was driving down William Hebb Road in Hebbville, about a five minute drive from Bridgewater, when a flash of pink caught his eye within the stark white of the snow. Recalling what he heard from the press conference about Karissa’s disappearance & the fact that she had been last seen wearing pink Crocs, he stopped his car to more closely investigate. He realized that it was indeed a pink Croc, so he turned the shoe over to the police.
Tests proved that the shoe had belonged to Karissa, but there was still no sign of the young girl herself.
On February 1, five days after Karissa went missing, another press conference was held & once again, Penny made an emotional plea for her daughter’s safe return. Sitting beside her in a gesture of support was Karissa’s biological father, Paul Boudreau, & Penny’s boyfriend, Vernon McCumber.
Days turned into weeks & there was still no sign of Karissa. Since the Sobeys grocery store where Penny indicated Karissa vanished from didn’t have a surveillance camera of the parking lot, there was no indication as to how Karissa left the car. Had she walked off on her own volition, had she gotten into someone’s car or had she been taken against her will?
Because children of Karissa’s age are not normally gone for so long without contacting anyone, it was very unlikely that she’d left on her own accord & more likely that something terrible had happened to her. The odds of her returning home soon were dwindling.
On February 6, ten days after Karissa vanished, search efforts expanded to the LaHave River where divers braved the icy waters while air & ground teams continued to comb as much area as possible. As with all the previous searches, there was still no sign of Karissa. Her case had gained tremendous media attention & the community was dedicated to raising awareness about Karissa’s disappearance.
It wasn’t until three days later, nearly two weeks after Karissa was last seen, when the truth finally came to light on February 9. At about 11:35 am, a woman called 911 & indicated that she was traveling along rural Highway 331 with her 9-year-old son. Since he had to relieve himself, she pulled over to the side at a turnaround & he walked to the edge of an embankment for privacy that overlooked the LaHave River. As the young boy stood at this location, he noticed something that looked small & pale sticking out of the snow.
When the boy called out to his mom, she rushed over & was horrified to see bare human toes emerging from the snowbank. Realizing that they were looking at a human body, she immediately flagged down a passing car & the driver confirmed what they had seen & they then called 911.
Officers from the Bridgewater PD quickly arrived & secured the scene before the RCMP Major Crimes Unit arrived as well. They were able to determine that the body was that of a young white female who fit the description of Karissa Boudreau. The community’s worst fears had become reality; Karissa hadn’t run away, something terrible had happened to her.
When Karissa’s remains were recovered, authorities noted that her jeans were pulled down & only attached to her right lower leg while her white Winnie the Pooh underwear had been pulled down to her knees. She was otherwise wearing a pink t-shirt, a gray bra, a brown sock with colorful horizontal stripes with the other matching sock found inside her jeans. Some of the items of clothing that Penny reported her daughter to be wearing when she vanished, including a single Croc, a hoodie & vest, were missing.
Chief forensic pathologist within Nova Scotia, Dr. Matt Bowes, arrived on scene & determined that Karissa’s body had been placed at the scene prior to the onset of rigor mortis. She was positioned in a splayed-out manner & had likely been placed at this location shortly after death. Because she had been found with her pants & underwear pulled down & her shirt up, this suggested that a sexual assault had taken place. However, no DNA evidence was found to suggest this was the case.
Since the temperatures were so frigid & Karissa’s body was found in a snowbank, her body was frozen solid, delaying the completion of the autopsy until four days later on February 13 in order to allow the body to thaw. With the input of a dental surgeon as well as Karissa’s dental records & casts of her upper & lower teeth, Dr. Bowes was able to positively identify the victim as Karissa. Her cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation via strangulation. Other than the ligature marks to her neck, there were no other injuries to Karissa’s body. Because this was an active investigation, this information was not released to the public.
When word of Karissa’s body being found hit the media, community members within Bridgewater were terrified that a murderer was on the loose. This was a quiet community where violent crimes were not the norm.
In the days that followed, investigators assured the public that they did not believe that this was a random murder.
Bridgewater Chief of Police, Brent Crowhurst, encouraged the residents of the town not to panic as he assured them that Karissa’s murder was an isolated incident & there was no threat to the public. He also reinforced the fact that more than twenty investigators from both the local force as well as the RCMP were working around-the-clock to bring the person responsible to justice. He also indicated that two residents of Bridgewater were brought in for questioning & held for 24 hours before they were released. Their identities were not revealed to the public though they were confident that Karissa had known her killer.
What the public hadn’t known at the time was that the two unnamed residents who had been brought in & held for 24 hours had been Karissa’s mom, Penny Boudreau & her boyfriend, Vernon McCumber. Despite the fact that they had been released, investigators felt confident that they were responsible for Karissa’s murder.
On February 11, authorities spoke with neighbors who lived in the apartment beneath the unit where Penny & Vernon lived. Apparently the walls & insulation are lacking & they reported hearing a loud, angry argument between Penny & Vernon after Karissa had gone missing. Not only could they hear him throwing things around the apartment, but they could hear Vernon saying over & over, Penn, how could you do this? He told her that he was disgusted with her, that she had gotten him involved & that he wasn’t going to help her.
Before learning this information, police had already been looking at Penny as a potential suspect, this had only solidified their beliefs.
On February 14, when Penny & Vernon were brought back to the Bridgewater Police Station, they were informed that the remains that had been found days earlier had been positively identified as Karissa. Penny showed little emotion to no emotion about the news & didn’t ask how her daughter died. They were then arrested for Karissa’s murder & interviewed although Penny declined to provide a statement.
While Penny & Vernon remained in custody on February 14, the police planted an undercover officer to share the cell with Vernon. This undercover officer claimed to be a member of a crime organization based out of Montreal & mentioned that he might have some job opportunities for him. Since investigators didn’t have enough evidence against them at the time, both Vernon & Penny were released within 24 hours.
The undercover officer met with Vernon several times over the next several weeks & rather than pushing him for information, he gradually formed a bond with Vernon in order to build trust.
Moving forward to February 28, a member of the public was out near a playground when he approached a trash bin & checked it for recyclables. When he looked inside, he noticed what he believed was a pink sandal inside. He thought little of it, but when he mentioned it to his fiance, they went back & confirmed that it was a pink Croc so they contacted the Bridgewater police. According to the man, he had checked this same garbage can one month earlier & the shoe hadn’t been there. In addition to the Croc, the responding officer also found a black hoodie & a black vest inside. The Croc was a size 8 & matched the other shoe that had been found one month earlier on William Hebb Road.
Police were fully aware that although they had a lot of circumstantial evidence that indicated Penny was her daughter’s killer, they didn’t have any physical evidence to guarantee a conviction. They needed more information so they came up with a plan.
After Penny & Vernon were released from jail, they relocated from their Bridgewater apartment to an apartment in Halifax. On April 16, Vernon had a meeting with the man he didn’t realize was an undercover officer & during this time, Vernon made comments indicating he had nothing to do with Karissa’s murder, mentioning he had been asleep at the time. He told the man that he believed that Penny murdered her daughter & he was only staying close with her & continuing to live with her so she wouldn’t implicate him.
On May 3, the undercover officer convinced Vernon that their services required the help of a female & he was asked to enlist Penny’s assistance. During his meeting with Penny on May 14, she voiced her frustrations that media reports had named her place of employment as well as the potential value of DNA evidence & said that she wished the police exhibit vault would burn down or blow up.
On June 11, Penny met with another undercover officer who led her to believe that because he was the head of a crime syndicate, he could potentially make her problems go away. In order for him to help her, she would have to tell him everything about what happened with her daughter so he fully understood her situation.
Penny went on to tell the man that she & Vernon had been having issues in their relationship because of tensions regarding the cramped living arrangements once Karissa moved into their apartment. Vernon was so fed up that he had given her an ultimatum to either choose her daughter or him. Penny then told the undercover officer that she strangled her daughter to death on Sunday, January 27. She elaborated that Vernon had nothing to do with it.
According to Penny, she & Karissa had gone on a drive that Sunday sometime around 3 or 4 pm. They talked as they drove for a couple of hours, over to Lunenburg & back, until they both got angry. Penny said that things got a little out of hand & she did what she had to do.
She said she drove to the Sobeys at about 5:30 pm & went inside to get some juice & bacon, but Karissa waited in the car & she was still alive. She called Vernon & left him a message on his phone, saying that when she came out of the store, Karissa was no longer in the car.
When she got back to the car, she put the groceries in the trunk, grabbed a piece of beige twine & put it in her pocket since she knew she had to do away with her. Karissa wanted to get out of the car so Penny waited until it got dark before she drove to William Hebb Road. This is the location where Karissa’s single Croc was found on January 29. She stopped the car & told Karissa that if she wanted to get out, she could get out there. She said she couldn’t let her go back & tell people what a horrible mom she was.
They both got out of the car into the dark, snowy night & when Penny went to grab her daughter, it was slippery so she said she pushed/tackled her which caused Karissa to fall to her back. Penny said that Karissa was scared & she used her knee on her chest to hold her down & since Karissa’s hands were under her, she couldn’t fight back. At this point, they were face-to-face. All her daughter said to her at that moment was, mommy, don’t.
Penny placed the twine around her daughter’s neck & pulled it in a criss-cross motion with all of her strength until she could no longer feel her breathing. As she was strangling her, Penny could feel her daughter trying to free her hands that were digging into the ground. She said Karissa’s eyes were bulging & her tongue was between her teeth while foam was coming for her mouth. She could hear her daughter struggling for air, but she held the rope tightly.
When Karissa was no longer breathing, Penny dragged her body to the passenger side of the car & put her body in a heap on the floor. She drove to Bridgewater, trying to figure out her next move. She placed the twine in an empty Tim Horton’s cup which she then threw into a trash can at Tim Horton’s on High Street.
She then drove to the turnaround spot where Karissa’s body was ultimately found, parked her car & turned the lights off. She dragged her daughter’s body from the car using her jeans as leverage & in the process, her jeans, underwear & striped sock came off as she dragged her to the embankment. She figured this could work in her advantage, making people believe that Karissa had been sexually assaulted. Her vest & hoodie came off & by this time, her jeans were only attached to one leg. She rolled her body over the edge of the bank knowing that snow was in the forecast & her daughter’s body would likely not be found for some time. As she pushed Karissa’s body over the edge, it landed among the trees & didn’t reach the river.
After she left, she took Karissa’s hoodie & vest & threw it into the garbage can where it was later recovered & realized at this point that she had only one Croc. After she got home sometime between 7-7:30 pm, she told Vernon that Karissa was missing. She called the police at about 8 pm & contacted family, friends & her daughter’s teachers to ask them if they’d seen or heard from her.
Penny told the undercover officer that she would do anything for Vernon & the thought of losing him was harder than the thought of losing her own daughter.
Not only did she verbally tell the undercover officer how she murdered her daughter, but she also proved a physical re-enactment on him & also used a pen & paper to write a detailed version of events. She also agreed to drive back to the areas in Bridgewater where she murdered Karissa & dumped her body. While they were at these locations, she again recounted how the murder happened. She went on to tell him that she’d been considering the murder over the course of several days before she actually went through with it. When they got back to Halifax, Penny gave him the article of clothing she mentioned that she was wearing at the time of the murder.
On the morning of June 14, 2008 Penny Boudreau was arrested & interviewed by the Truth Verification Section of the RCMP. During this time, she made no admissions of guilt. When she was shown a clip of the video/audio from her meeting/confession with the undercover officer on June 11, she became visibly shaken. Because she knew there was no way out of it, she soon provided an account of what led to her daughter’s death on January 27, 2008. She fully confessed, just as she had with the undercover officer.
In January 2009, one year after Karissa’s murder, Penny pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. She was originally charged with first-degree murder but agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree murder. During her sentencing, Judge Stewart told her, You can never call yourself ‘mother’ in conjunction with Karissa’s name again & the words ‘Mommy don’t’ from a trusting & loving Karissa are there to haunt you the rest of your natural life.
She was sentenced to 20 years in prison which would mean a release date of June 13, 2028. However, under the Corrections & Conditional Release Act, she is now eligible to apply for unescorted passes, including day parole.
In June 2025 Penny applied for unescorted time away from jail which automatically prompts a review by way of a hearing. Under the Act, she’s eligible for day parole for rehabilitative purposes that allow her to participate in community based activities that will prepare her for her release. She will be required to return to a halfway house each night unless otherwise authorized by the parole board.
During the hearing, Karissa’s father, Paul Boudreau, read from a statement indicating that his daughter’s death left him with a huge void in his life. He went on to say, Am I a failure as a father? Should I have seen this coming? This turmoil has lowered my self-worth to a very low point.. Life will never be the same for many of us.
The two-member panel from the parole board led the hearing & heard that Penny has completed correctional programs & also received treatment from a mental health team while she worked as an assistant to the chaplain at the Nova Institution for Women in Truro. A panel member felt that she had made good use of her time & had been productive in prison. According to psychological risk assessments, it has been determined that she is at low risk to reoffend.
The panel did hear that Penny is at high-risk for entering into unhealthy, intimate relationships. When she spoke during the hearing, her voice was barely higher than a whisper & at times she struggled to answer questions as to how she would cope in various situations. Several times she lost her composure & wiped tears from her eyes as she sobbed.
Many people are outraged by her request for what has been viewed as an early release as people remember her tearful pleas to the public for her daughter’s safe return as she concocted the story to make everyone believe that her daughter had been abducted from the grocery store parking lot.
After Karissa left her father’s house to live in the small apartment with her mom & Vernon, tensions were high & the tight quarters caused friction for all of them. Karissa’s diary indicated that she resented living with the boyfriend. The 12-year-old sixth grader was missing for thirteen days until her frozen body was found. In between those days, there were frantic searches involving helicopters, police dogs, divers & worried residents across southern Nova Scotia. The community of Bridgewater came together to raise money to help her family as they watched the young, desperate mother plead for her daughter’s safe return.
Because of her model behavior in prison over the past seven years, Penny has been regularly granted escorted temporary outings to attend church services, Bible study meetings & to visit a friend she met in the congregation.
The board has received many victim impact statements & a slew of letters that oppose any type of release. Ultimately, the board members made the decision to review Penny’s case in six months. They urged her to continue to focus on her mental health treatments while reporting any new relationships with men & confirming if they have parental responsibilities for anyone under age 16.
Although her request for day-parole was denied, she has been granted unescorted day passes from prison for sixty days where she’ll be required to return to a supervised setting at night.
Meanwhile, a memorial remains at the bank of the LaHave River where Karissa’s body was found
The details of Karissa’s murder during Penny’s own confession have haunted many people – how she dug her hands into the frozen ground, trying desperately to protect herself from the very person who was meant to protect her. As her mother tightened the twine around her neck & she struggled to breath, she spoke the words, Mommy, don’t. Regardless, Penny continued to tighten her grip, pulling the twine even tighter. To this day, Karissa’s last words are etched into the memory of everyone who was involved in or followed this case.
The fact that Penny chose a man over her own child, left her body in the snow to appear as if she had been sexually assaulted, leaving her exposed & vulnerable. Although Vernon McCumber told Penny that she had to choose between him or her daughter, he was never implicated in Karissa’s murder & faced no charges.
Karissa was a typical 12-year-old girl who loved swimming, stuffed animals, listening to music & playing with her Nintendo DS. She had only recently finished a babysitting course through Bridgewater Elementary School. She was a friendly child who had a love of animals & hoped to one day become a veterinarian. Sadly, she never had the opportunity to live her life & fulfill her dreams.
References:
- R v. Penny Boudreau
- National Post: Penny Boudreau, who strangled her 12-year-old daughter, tries for ‘early’ release
- CBC News: N.S. woman who killed daughter granted 60-day pass from prison, but not parole
- Find a Grave: Karissa Paige Boudreau
- Medium: Killed by her mother
- YouTube: Jessica Anne: The worst kind of betrayal – The harrowing story of Karissa Boudreau
