Warning: This story contains details of intimate partner violence and details about a murder scene.
When Chantal Lee McLaren’s violently abusive boyfriend told her to go buy supplies to clean up the scene of a gruesome, brutal murder, she did it.
“I was terrified for my own safety. I had begged for my life and said I would do whatever I was told,” she said through tears in a Saskatoon courtroom last month.
Details about the case were under a publication ban to protect McLaren’s right to a fair trial on a different charge, of possessing benzodiazepine for the purpose of trafficking, regarding drugs that were allegedly found in the same home where the murder took place.
McLaren pleaded not guilty to that charge, and a jury in Saskatoon Court of King’s Bench began hearing the drug trafficking case on Oct. 5. The jury was sequestered to begin deliberating on Wednesday, which means information about the murder case can be shared publicly for the first time.
The details are horrifying.
On Feb. 3, 2024, Lee Perkins was killed in a home on Lisgar Avenue in Saskatoon, in the Pacific Heights neighbourhood.
His body was cut into pieces and stuffed into a large plastic tote.
Police tape surrounds the house on Lisgar Avenue where police found the body of Lee Perkins on Feb. 3, 2024. (Liam O’Connor/CBC)
Photos of the scene displayed in court showed blood stains in the room where a Christmas tree still stood with gifts poking out from underneath.
And they showed what police saw when they took the lid off the tote: contorted body parts, wrapped in plastic.
McLaren, 35, has pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to murder. She was not present when Perkins died and she did not help clean up the scene, according to the agreed statement of facts filed at her sentencing.
But she did make two separate trips to stores to buy the plastic tote, bleach, scrub brushes, plastic gloves, disinfectant wipes and garbage bags that others used to try to conceal the murder.
McLaren’s then-boyfriend, Edin Vrazalica, is charged with first-degree murder. His judge-alone trial is scheduled to begin in Saskatoon Court of King’s Bench on Nov. 9.
Another accused, Dillon Singler, was also charged with first-degree murder, but he pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He has not yet been sentenced.
‘Just a pile of ashes now’
Lee Perkins’s family is still waiting for answers to all of their questions about what happened to him on that February day in 2024.
At McLaren’s sentencing hearing in September, they shared their grief — and their anger.
Lee’s father Cam Perkins wrote his victim impact statement as a letter to his son, starting with describing the day Lee was born, when the doctor handed him the warm little bundle and he felt “so much love, uncontainable love.”
Cam said he will never forgive the people responsible for his son’s death.
“They wouldn’t let us see your mutilated body. We had to cremate you, son,” Cam said in court, sobbing as he spoke.
“And the funeral director handed me you, my son, in the urn.… You were still warm, and for a few seconds, I thought back to that day in the hospital when you were born, to that blissful day when the doctor handed me this warm little baby.
“And then back to the horror of this day, when I was holding in my arms my dead son, just a pile of ashes now.”
Lee Perkins’s family shared their grief on Sept. 2, 2026, during the sentencing hearing for Chantal McLaren, who pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact to his murder. From left, Lee’s brother Austin, his father Cam, his mother Nannette and his sister-in-law Natasha. (Hannah Spray/CBC)
Lee’s mother Nannette Perkins said she not only lost a huge part of her soul when Lee died, but she also lost “another gigantic chunk” of her soul watching his older brother Austin suffer in the wake of Lee’s murder.
Lee’s sister-in-law Natasha Perkins talked about how Lee met some new “friends” who were involved in illegal activities and promised him money — after he had fallen into addictions and homelessness.
She said she can’t erase from her mind the images of how Lee would have suffered in his final moments.
“I struggle even more to understand how after his life was gone, there were choices that denied him dignity, even in death,” Natasha said.
‘Escalating’ intimate partner violence
McLaren’s trial on two charges — being an accessory after the fact to murder and offering an indignity to human remains — began in May and was scheduled for three weeks.
After the jury was selected but before they began hearing evidence, she pleaded guilty to the accessory charge. Her sentencing hearing was set for Sept. 2. The indignity charge is expected to be withdrawn once her sentencing is complete.
One of the factors in her sentencing, laid out in the agreed facts, was that McLaren was in an intimate relationship with Vrazalica “characterized by escalating and repeated physical, emotional and coercive abuse by Mr. Vrazalica towards Ms. McLaren.”
The abuse included incidents where McLaren “was punched in the head and face, strangled, tied up and threatened, and resulted in multiple presentations to emergency departments as a victim of domestic and intimate partner violence.”
The agreed statement of facts described two incidents in the two months before Perkins’s murder where McLaren went to hospital with injuries she said were from being assaulted by her boyfriend, Vrazalica. On Dec. 21, 2023, she had injuries “consistent with strangulation” and bruising on her face and arm.
On Jan. 7, 2024, she returned to hospital and said her boyfriend had tied her wrists with duct tape, punched her and choked her. She escaped when he fell asleep.
“Nursing and physician notes document duct tape removed from her wrist, lacerations and abrasions to her head and face, a broken front tooth, extensive bruising to her face, arms and legs, and a minimally displaced nasal bone fracture,” the agreed facts said.
Her mother told social workers that she had “grave concern” for McLaren, and that Vrazalica had purchased “a vat” and told McLaren, “This is where your body will go,” the agreed facts said.
Crown argues for jail time
McLaren’s lawyer Zachary Carter said in court that McLaren’s actions in February 2024 should be considered alongside “a documented history of real and sustained, escalating, intimate partner violence.”
McLaren purchased the cleaning supplies “at her abuser’s direction” in the context of the “continuing threat of violence,” Carter said.
Prosecutor Muhammad Zubair said the Crown concedes McLaren suffered “grave intimate partner violence” from Vrazalica.
“This is powerful mitigation which reduces Ms. McLaren’s moral blameworthiness,” Zubair said in court.
Still, Zubair said McLaren should serve time in jail for buying the cleaning supplies.
He argued for a sentence of two years less a day.
“Although she was fearful of Mr. Vrazalica, she knew and understood these items were intended for use with Mr. Perkins’s body and to help Mr. Vrazalica not get apprehended,” Zubair said.
Defence argues for community-based sentence
Carter argued for a sentence of the same length, except served in the community, and minus the six months of credit for the time McLaren spent in custody before she was granted bail.
In addition to the background of intimate partner violence and McLaren’s fear for her life, Carter pointed to the fact that since her release, she has been complying with a 24-hour curfew and wearing electronic monitoring equipment, with no breaches.
“We’re looking at someone who … has passed a Herculean task for over two years of the strictest form of house arrest,” Carter said.
McLaren has sole custody of her six-year-old daughter, and Carter asked the judge to consider the “collateral consequences” for her child if McLaren is sent to jail.
Justice Daryl Labach commented that he has to balance that with the fact that Lee Perkins’s family will never see him again, and Carter replied that that’s certainly part of the consideration, but McLaren isn’t being sentenced for causing Lee Perkins’s death.
Labach is scheduled to give his decision on McLaren’s sentence on Dec. 9.
‘Lee did not deserve what happened’
After her lawyer made his arguments, McLaren read a prepared statement in court.
Addressing Lee’s family, she said she struggles with the fact that she survived and Lee did not.
“Lee did not deserve what happened to him and I feel sincere empathy for his family, particularly his mother,” she said.
“As a mother myself, I cannot imagine the pain of losing a child. I think about the fact that I am able to hug and care for my daughter, while Lee’s mother can no longer have that opportunity.
“And that is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life.”
