Sarnia man pleads guilty to manslaughter in wife’s smothering death, gets 7 years

Michael Adamson said Monday he was deeply sorry for what happened nearly one year ago.

“I took away a mother, a daughter, a friend, my wife. I’ll never be able to change that fact,” Adamson said gently from a Sarnia courtroom’s prisoner’s box as a gallery of about a dozen family members and friends of the late Christine Adamson listened to. “I’m sorry.”

Adamson, 47, was charged on Oct. 7, 2022, with first-degree murder after the body of his wife of nine years was found in the basement of their Roger Street home. But that charge was dropped Monday after Adamson, now 48 and looking much different after spending almost one year in jail, pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

With his former clean-shaven head now sporting a thick, bushy beard and messy hair, Adamson was sentenced to seven years in prison as lawyers on both sides requested.

“No sentence can replace Christine or place this tremendous loss,” Justice Mark Poland said as he imposed the suggested sentence.

Through a statement of agreed facts, Adamson admitted to smothering his wife with a pillow during a fight about cocaine – they were both heavy users – in the basement on Oct. 1, 2022. He didn’t mean to kill her and only wanted her to stop yelling, but after realizing she’d died he didn’t call 911. Instead, he hid her body and misled Sarnia police officers until they discovered it during a missing-person search six days later.

“You have taken a life. You’ve committed a homicide. You have taken away from this family and community,” Poland said to Adamson while sentencing him.

But along with telling the family no sentence will fill the void in their hearts, the judge pointed out the Crown didn’t have a strong case if it’d gone to trial. Adamson should get credit for accepting responsibility and pleading guilty, the Crown agreed, something defense lawyer Dan Scott said his client wanted to do all along.

Nila Mulpuru, Lambton’s acting Crown attorney, called it a special case due in part to a pathology report that didn’t say exactly how Christine Adamson had died. Adamson also had no prior criminal record after an additional charge of cocaine possession was dropped soon after it was ugly.

Several victim-impact statements were either read out loud or filed in court Monday detailing how losing Christine Adamson has affected survivors.

“Your voice has been heard today and it’s important,” Poland told them.

Adamson’s guilty plea came days after Lambton County council officials declared intimate partner violence an epidemic and urged the province to act. He has five years and 220 days left to serve after shaving off pre-sentence custody credit.

This was the 16^th of 17 homicide cases in Sarnia-Lambton since 2020, one of the deadliest stretches locally in recent memory.

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