‘Feral butchery’: Scottish judge sentences man to life for killing Alberta girlfriend

EDINBURGH – Claire Leveque was a young Alberta woman who had travelled to Scotland with a boyfriend when she was brutally stabbed and drowned by the man in an act of “feral butchery,” a judge said Wednesday.

In the fall of 2023, Leveque left her rural hometown north of Edmonton to live with Aren Pearson and his mother in Sandness, a village in the remote Shetland Islands of Scotland.

“In the words of your late mother … she was ‘just a lovely young girl,'” Judge Paul Arthurson of the High Court in Edinburgh said in a transcript posted on the court’s website.

But the judge also said Leveque was vulnerable and isolated, with no work permit and no driver’s licence in a foreign country. The 24-year-old was killed in February 2024.

On Wednesday, a jury found 41-year-old Pearson guilty of murder. It heard Pearson stabbed Leveque at least 26 times in a hot tub and held her head under the water to “make sure” he had killed her.

The judge sentenced him to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

“Ms. Leveque died a squalid death of quite unimaginable multi‑faceted violence, including in particular severe and frenzied instrumental violence, all at your hands,” Arthurson said.

“This was a sustained episode of feral butchery.”

Court heard police were called to the home by Pearson’s mother, who had found an injured Leveque in the hot tub, moaning and groaning. Her face was smashed up, with her right cheek looking like it was ripped, said the judge.

As the mother spoke with the emergency operator, Pearson took the phone.

“I’ve just killed my girlfriend in the hot tub in the garage at Ringville,” he told the operator.

“I stabbed her about 40 times, in the heart, chest, face, neck and back … I definitely killed her. To make sure, I drowned her after I stabbed her.”

Responding officers found Pearson in the tub with the woman’s body. A video taken by Pearson and played for the court showed Leveque lifeless in the tub and Pearson shouting at officers.

An autopsy identified 55 distinct injuries, including at least 26 defined stab wounds. There was also bruising on her neck suggesting she was strangled. 

The judge said Pearson had a “sinister pattern” of abusing the girlfriend from the moment she arrived in Scotland. He sought to belittle the woman’s character, said Arthurson.

The judge acknowledged the woman’s family for their restraint and impeccable behaviour in court.

“One cannot imagine how her father has found the courage to do so, each day reliving the trauma of his daughter’s violent death so vividly in this courtroom,” Arthurson said.

In a statement, Scotland police Insp. Richard Baird said Pearson was “cruel and selfish.”

“Today’s verdict cannot change what happened, but I hope it brings a degree of closure to Claire’s family,” he said.

Hope Ingram, the woman’s cousin, told reporters outside court her family got justice for their loved one.

“She was such a bubbly, fun girl who brought life to every room she walked into,” she said. 

“I miss her terribly.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 15, 2025.

— By Aaron Sousa in Edmonton