A Short and Tragic Life

Bad things happen to people that no one can foresee and none can prevent.  Imagine yourself to be a 23-year-old single mother of a seven-year old child.  Single women with families are notoriously cited as being hugely disadvantaged in any society, even one as wealthy as Canada.  Single mothers are disproportionately represented among the poor of society.

Needless to say, if a mother is poor, then her children are poor as well, lacking the comforts and the security that children in two-parent families may have in the knowledge that there are two parents to look to their futures and usually at least one secure paycheque, sometimes two.  Often, a low-paying, difficult job is all that keeps single mothers off welfare.

Victoria Shachtay was a single mother, a very young woman who was wheelchair-bound as the result of a 2004 car accident.  She was permanently disabled, and was the recipient of a $1-million court settlement.  She planned to live off the interest from that settlement.  And to ensure that the money was secure and well invested she entrusted it to the management of a former police officer, turned financial consultant.

"Basically [Victoria] threw her money at him and listened to his promises", her sister explained.  Victoria and her daughter, also named Victoria, lived on the west side of Innisfall.  This is a town with a population of fewer than ten thousand people, roughly 100 kilometres north of Calgary.  Brian Malley, the financial planner whom Victoria Shachtay trusted, also lived in the town.

In November of 2011 something quite startling occurred; particularly strange for a small town.  A package had been delivered to Ms. Shachtay, and when she opened it, the package exploded, killing her.  Police responded immediately but there was no one to rescue.  Seven-year-old Victoria hadn't been at home at the time. 

Police claimed they had no clues to one of the strangest crimes they'd ever seen.

Who would deliberately plan to kill a 23-year-old wheelchair-bound woman?  Could it have been the result of a drug deal gone bad?  Might the bomb in the parcel have been meant for someone else, and Victoria Shachtay just happened to have received it through a dreadful error? 

Six months passed before police felt confident enough to move in to make an arrest.  The well-liked and trusted Brian Malley, the financial planner to whom Victoria Sachtay had entrusted the funds through which she planned to be able to finance her life and that of her daughter, had not, after all, managed the $625,000 entrusted to him, as promised.

Mr. Malley has not been charged with theft, although it seemed, unbelievably, that as and when Ms. Shachtay attempted to withdraw living expenses from her carefully tended nest egg, there was nothing there to draw from. 

He has been charged with first-degree murder, one charge of causing an explosion with a substance likely to cause serious bodily harm, and one count of sending an explosive device.

Victoria Sachtay's sister Sarah is "extremely angry", but not, however, surprised at news of Mr. Malley's arrest.  "Everyone knows that it's the person you know the most and least expect. Certainly I had no idea", her brother Derek said. 

It took no fewer than 70 investigators months in attempting to understand what had occurred and why it had, and who had inscribed the fate of this young mother and her child on a bleak, black slate.