William Harvey Green will spend the next 37 months and eight days behind bars after being sentenced for the 2008 manslaughter of a Princeton man.
A trial by jury had been scheduled in Kelowna supreme court this week, instead Green pled guilty to the manslaughter of Willard Bruce McInroy. Justice Peter Rogers issued an eight year sentence to Green on Tuesday, leaving the Merritt man with just over three years after deducting time served.
“Crown was asking for a sentence of 13 to 15 years and he got an effective sentence of eight years less time served awaiting sentencing. It was scheduled to go to trial, but he entered a guilty plea to manslaughter on Monday and we accepted that,” said Crown Counsel John Swanson.
The Town of Princeton was shaken up in December of 2008 after RCMP converged on an old funeral home at 133 Bridge St. in the downtown core. At the time, a neighbouring business proprietor stated she had smelled something awful days previous to the discovery of McInroy’s lifeless body. Const. Joe Huoben of the Princeton detachment told media at that time they found the body in a decomposition state and unrecognizable. The coroners report determined McInroy had died exactly one week before his body was discovered.
RCMP caught up with Green, locally known as Bill, in Merritt four months after McInroy was found. The building in which the body was found was well-known in the community as it previously had been taped off while investigators searched through the death certificates and documentation of the mortuary manager, Fred Netherton. A series of complaints had been lodged against him and the building has since been torn down.
Green has a lengthy criminal record including assaults, possession of a weapon and resisting arrest. Defence lawyer Ray Dieno asked for a sentence of four to seven years.