Submitted
The Alberta Court of Appeal has denied an appeal for the man convicted of murdering a Bentley hotel worker.
The appeal by Walter Anderson to overturn his 2007 murder conviction was dismissed by the Alberta Court of Appeal on Friday.
An appeal of Anderson’s sentence, which was filed by defense at the same time as the conviction appeal, is still pending. Defense has three months to file material for that appeal.
Anderson was convicted on March 6, 2007 of second-degree murder by a jury in Red Deer Court of Queen’s Bench in the death of Kenny Gibson, 69, a mentally handicapped hotel worker at the Bentley Hotel.
Anderson has been serving a life sentence without a chance of parole for 16 years.
Gibson was beaten in the face and stabbed once in the heart in the early morning hours on Sept. 17, 2004. About $4,200 was also stolen from the hotel safe.
Anderson had lived in Bentley and previously worked at the hotel.
The conviction appeal, heard last October in Calgary, challenged the admissibility at trial of statements made by Anderson during an interview by police, the trial judge’s instructions to the jury, and the judge’s ruling that allowed rebuttal evidence by the Crown after defense closed its case.