Roger Bilodeau, 58, was convicted Friday of two counts of murder. Bilodeau will receive about four and a half years of credit for time already served. His son Anthony, 33, will be sentenced in November for second-degree murder and manslaughter in the deaths of Jacob Sansom and Maurice Cardinal. Anthony and Roger Bilodeau were found guilty in May in the deaths of Sansom and Cardinal, who were shot and killed on a rural Alberta road after a brief chase. The families of Sansom and Cardinal told the Court of Queen’s Bench on Friday of the horror of discovering the two men had been shot to death. In a victim impact statement delivered to a packed courtroom, Ruby Smith recounted seeing the body of her son, Sansom, at the morgue five days after he was shot. Two days later, she did the same with Cardinal, her brother. She said she was haunted by the images and the flashbacks and the questions. “Who would leave them dead in the street like they were some filthy species?” Smith told the court. “Is there a chance they could have been saved? Why did they make the cold-blooded choice to murder both of them?” Sansom’s widow, Sarah Sansom, sobbed as she listened to her family members share their pain. He was the last person to deliver the victim impact statement. Jake Sansom, left, and Maurice Cardinal were hunting near Siebert Lake, Alta., when they were shot to death in March 2020. They took this photo the day they were killed. (Submitted by Mike Sansom) She described the death toll to her three children. She said her two daughters were always smiling and laughing. Now one of them barely manages to leave the house. When Sarah goes out for any reason, she said her son calls her every 15 minutes to make sure everything is okay. “It completely blew up our lives and our family in a way that we can never recover from,” he said. Jacob Sansom’s sister, Gina Sansom, also spoke about the deaths of the two men as she addressed her comments to the convicted killers. “You are thieves of our happiness and joy,” he said. “You were the only thieves present that night and in the courtroom today… You stole so much in just a few moments.” The trial heard that on March 27, 2020, when Anthony Bilodeau saw truck lights in his yard on a farm property outside the northern Alberta village of Glendon, he and his 16-year-old son jumped into his truck to give chase. He told the court he believed the lorry occupants might be thieves.
The father of nine called his son Anthony during the chase and told him to bring a gun. Seconds after arriving on the scene, Anthony shot Sansom in the chest. He then shot the Cardinal three times in the back. Sarah and Jacob Sansom with their three children. (Court Report) The Bilodeaus left the bodies of the two men in the street.

“He shouldn’t have done any of this”

Prosecutor Jordan Kerr asked the judge to impose a 15-year sentence, describing the actions of father and son as vigilante justice. “It wasn’t impulsive,” Kerr said. “He didn’t have to do any of that.” Defense attorney Shawn Gerstel argued that the evidence does not support a theory of vigilante justice. “If he could turn back the clock he would,” Gerstel told the court. “It was an unfortunate chain of events that unfolded and he will have to live with it for the rest of his life.” The defense recommended a prison sentence of six and a half years.
Before being sentenced, Roger Bilodeau addressed the court, reading a written statement. “This got out of hand in a matter of minutes and I didn’t have time to react,” Bilodeau said. He admitted to using poor judgment that night. “I did not mean to hurt anyone and I am truly sorry for my actions and the hardships I have caused,” Bilodeau said as he choked back tears. In handing down the sentence, Judge Eric Macklin said “two innocent men were killed. Roger Bilodeau tried to take the law into his own hands.” A freeze frame from a surveillance video shown to the jury the night Jacob Sansom and Maurice Cardinal were shot to death. (CNRL/ Court Report) Outside court, Sansom’s widow said she felt vindicated by the judge’s words. “The judge said what we all knew,” he said. “That these boys were innocent. “They were hunted down and killed for nothing.”