Daughter of killer tells Manitoba inquiry she saw bruises on victim

WINNIPEG – An inquiry into the death of a Manitoba girl has been told there were bruises on her body a year before she died.

The inquiry is examining how child welfare failed to protect Phoenix Sinclair from being fatally beaten in June 2005 by her mother, Samantha Kematch (KEE’-match), and Kematch’s boyfriend, Karl McKay.

The inquiry has heard from McKay’s daughter, who cannot be identified under a publication ban.

She said she saw bruises on Phoenix twice in 2004 — once on the face and once on her arm.

The woman, who was 17 at the time, said she was told one bruise resulted from a fall in a bathtub and the other came from a vehicle accident.

The woman also said that in early 2006, Kematch asked her to help Kematch find another young girl who would pretend to be Phoenix for welfare investigators.

The woman testified she thought Kematch was simply trying to commit welfare fraud, when, in fact, Phoenix had been dead for months. Kematch and McKay had continued to pretend she was alive.

The couple was arrested soon afterward. The trial in which they were convicted of first-degree murder heard that Kematch tried to pass off a friend’s daughter as Phoenix, but the girl did not play along.