Canadian butcher dubbed 'Satan’s helper' gets NO JAIL TIME for dismembering woman’s body

An Alberta butcher who tore apart and burned a woman’s body, earning the moniker “Satan’s helper,” has avoided jail time for his barbarous act.

Joseph Skelly pleaded guilty last Dec. 19 to dismembering and disposing of Treasa Lynn Oberly’s body after she was murdered. He was officially charged with causing indignity to a dead body.

Skelly’s son, Kenneth Skelly, is charged with second degree murder in that crime. He was Oberly’s boyfriend.

In her victim’s statement, Oberly’s mother castigated Joseph Skelly, a retired 69-year-old butcher from Beaumont, Alta. “You are Satan’s helper, and you will live with Satan when you die. I wish nothing but for you to be miserable for the rest of your life.”

She said Skelly misused her daughter’s body “like a piece of trash.”

Justice John Little last Thursday sentenced Skelly to a two-year conditional sentence based on his degradation of Oberly’s corpse. He will served 12 moths of house arrest, followed by a curfew.

The prosecution had demanded three-and-a-half years of jail time.

Kenneth Skelly is scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 16.

Little admitted his verdict will not go far in satisfying Oberly’s many friends and mourners in the community.

In a summary that both the defense and prosecution agree on, Kenneth Skelly turned up at his father’s doorstep on July 15, 2023 and announced that Oberly’s body was in the garage.

The elder Skelly was reportedly drunk and agreed to eviscerate and burn Oberly’s body so that it would be beyond recognition. That evening he set about tearing apart the woman’s remains and burning some of them in a backyard barrel used for destroying rubbish.

Skelly determined he was too impaired to drive so waited until the next morning to dispose of the rest of Oberly’s body, throwing it in the back of his truck and then burying it in a shallow grave in the nearby community of Whitecourt.

Skelly then went home and tried to clean up all evidence of Oberly’s body from his vehicle and garage.

Local RCMP officers visited Joseph Skelly within a week of the incident to question him about Oberly’s disappearance. He called the deceased woman a “nasty person” and claimed she had left Canada for the United States. He maintained that story until July 24, 2023 when he confessed what he had done.

A coroner had to identify the woman’s remains through DNA testing.

In addition to Oberly’s mother, Justice Little heard two other victim impact statements, including Zina Hinkley who said to Skelly:

“I do not understand how you could do this to your grandchild’s mother,” friend Zina Hinkley told Joseph Skelly. “You are not a person in my mind. You are a monster, and I hope you never get the chance to live in society again.”