Ashley Simpson posted this photo of herself on Facebook on April 11, 2016, just a couple weeks before she disappeared.
Image Credit: Facebook
October 30, 2023 - 12:48 PM
Derek Lee Favell pleaded guilty to the 2016 murder of Ashley Simpson today, more than seven years after she was first reported missing.
He was charged with second-degree murder and appeared in a Salmon Arm courtroom today, Oct. 30.
Simpson was 32 years old when she was reported missing from the Enderby area in 2016. There were few public updates until her body was found in a forested area near Salmon Arm in November 2021.
She came to BC from Ontario in early 2016 with her dad and worked in a lodge in the northern community of Pink Mountain. She met Favell there and moved south to Yankee Flats Road, near Enderby, where they lived together.
The couple had only been together two or three months when Ashley was reported missing.
Her mother told iNFOnews.ca police revived the cold case homicide investigation that found her body in November 2021.
Favell, born in 1982, was charged with her murder around a week later.
"There was no storybook ending. The detectives from her case travelled from B.C. to personally tell us that they had found our daughter’s remains, and had arrested a suspect. All we could muster were tears of joy mixed with sadness," a statement posted online after Favell's arrest, written by her father, John Simpson, reads.
Favell was scheduled for a multi-week trial and initially chose to be tried by a jury, but on Oct. 30 he fast-tracked the court process and submitted his guilty plea.
He's tentatively scheduled to be sentenced in February, returning again to a Salmon Arm courtroom to hear a decision.
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