“He was evil”: Skye Sanderson describes Myles Sanderson at inquest

“I knew Myles was up to something,” she said. Damien had also told her “I think my brother is the devil.”

Days before, Myles had told Damien that he was planning to kill Vanessa and 10 other people.

In the hours leading up to the start of the killings and while Myles and Damien were driving around the community, she went to her home and took a 30.06 rifle that she kept hidden between the box spring of her bed and the wall.

Skye said she knew that Damien and Myles would come for it and later saw that they had searched the room and moved the mattress.

It was the first the coroner’s counsel had heard of any weapons involved besides the knife Myles used to attack his victims, so some time was spent asking more details.

That information and some other inconsistencies in the testimony Skye gave led to the counsel asking for some time to investigate further and the ability to call Skye back to the stand.

The relationship that Vanessa Burns had with Myles began when he was 17 and she was 23.

She described it as a “love bomb”.

“In the beginning, he was charming, funny. He seemed normal,” she said.

Within months, however, she began to see a different side of him. The physical abuse happened regularly, Vanessa said. She noticed that if she questioned him about some things, he would react.

“It depended on what problem we had. He would get angry and violent and that was his way of stopping me.”

She called the police on multiple occasions and then would ask for charges to be dropped later, “for Myles sake. He put a lot of guilt in me.”

Asked if he was a good father, she said sometimes. Was he a good provider? When he wanted to be.

She said she knew he had a drinking problem and that he used marijuana and that is all she knew about until 2022, when she learned of his drug use.

He would lie to her about what criminal charges he was facing and also lie about his release conditions.

Vanessa said one of the things she would like to see changed is the role families have in parole decisions.

She wrote a letter of support for Myle’s release in 2021 because she thought their children needed their father and it was difficult raising five children on her own.

By 2022, Vanessa had not seen Myles between May and mid-August when he contacted her, asking for a ride to go sell cocaine in James Smith.

“I would be the one messaging the people because a lot of people didn’t like Myles,” she said. That sentiment was echoed later by Skye.

They had gone back and forth between Saskatoon and James Smith several times, staying with Damien and Skye but not being open about their real motives.

When Damien learned his brother’s main purpose in visiting was to sell cocaine, he became upset and asked them to leave.

“We were just driving around making sales,” Vanessa said. She was not comfortable though and told Myles she wanted to stop. Sales fluctuated depending on the day of the month.

“On a welfare night, we made more than $2,500 in two hours,” she said.

Following a physical altercation with Myles, she went back to Saskatoon but met her mother the following evening to pick up her children except for one son, who was close to his grandparents and wanted to stay with them.

When she woke in the morning, she saw multiple messages on her phone and learned of the unfolding tragedy.

“My son texted me and said, Dad tried to kill me,” Vanessa said. He was 13 at the time and had heard his father come in the house and stab his grandparents.

After learning of the full scope of the deaths, Vanessa was terrified that Myles would be coming for her and their children.

“Where am I supposed to go? I have nowhere to go. I can’t go home to my parents,” she said.

She ended up in Prince Albert after two cousin paid for a hotel room for her and so she could be close to her mother, facing four surgeries in one day as she fought for her life.

She and her children are struggling to make a new life, Vanessa said.

“I wouldn’t say we’re doing really good, but we’re all right. The first words my daughter said to me after she heard her dad had died was ‘at least you won’t be getting beat up’.”

Vanessa would like to see longer jail terms for spousal violence because “it would help the women too”.

For Skye, the journey has been extremely difficult. Neither she nor her children are fine.

“They’re lost because I’m lost,” she said.

“He was evil”: Skye Sanderson describes Myles Sanderson at inquest

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