Curtis Vey arrives at court in Prince Albert, Sask., on May 25, 2016. Two lovers who were convicted of plotting to kill their spouses in Saskatchewan are to be sentenced today. A jury found Curtis Vey and Angela Nicholson guilty in June of conspiracy to commit murder.

Image Credit: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jennifer Graham

PRINCE ALBERT, Sask. - Two lovers who were convicted of plotting to kill their spouses in Saskatchewan have each been sentenced to three years in prison.

A judge on Friday found Curtis Vey and Angela Nicholson equally guilty of the crime and said they should receive the same sentence.

But he also said the two were genuinely remorseful and unlikely to reoffend.

The two faced a maximum sentence of life in prison after a jury convicted them in June of conspiracy to commit murder. Defence lawyers had told court during the trial that their clients weren't serious about killing their spouses.

The trial in Prince Albert Court of Queen's Bench heard that the pair planned to kill Vey's wife, Brigitte, in a house fire, and Nicholson's husband, Jim Taylor, by drugging him and making him disappear.

Vey and Nicholson were sentenced to three years on two counts each, but are to serve their sentences concurrently. They received a few months credit for time spent in custody.

Vey's defence lawyer had asked for 16 months for his client, while Nicholson's counsel argued for a six-month sentence. The Crown had requested six years.

Justice Martel Popescul said there was no obvious leader and follower in the plot. He also said he opted to sentence on the lower end of the scale because of a lack of weapons and the unlikelihood of the pair following through.

"Why good people do bad things is a mystery," Popescul said.

Brigitte Vey read a victim impact statement in court and said it still scares her to think she was sleeping next to someone who was planning such things.

"You don't do these things to the person you claim to love,” she said.

The trial heard that Brigitte Vey hid an iPod under a kitchen table and secretly recorded her husband and Nicholson hatching the plan in July 2013.

In the scratchy kitchen-table recording, Angela Nicholson was heard chatting with Curtis Vey about her birthday and flowers that he gave her for Valentine's Day, before the conversation shifted to their spouses.

"It could be a number of days before anybody's suspicious he's gone,'' Vey was heard saying. "Is there going to be really anybody who really is worried about him?''

Nicholson and her husband had been married for 30 years at the time, but were separated. She was heard in the recording talking about getting into his house.

"If I go in there, if I turn over, say, the coffee table, and I open the cupboards, and I'd go upstairs and I'd pull dresser drawers out and make it look like they're rummaging through for something — that's going to make them suspicious, is it not?''

"Just make sure you got gloves on,'' Vey whispered.

A few minutes later, Vey wondered about a fire at his house.

"The bottom line is that's how, you know, it's set up to be an accident, right?'' he said. "Do you know what I mean? Like, the house burns down.''

Nicholson admitted in court that she and Vey talked about doing something to their spouses, but added they would never act on it.

"You know what, when the time came closer, that's probably all it would have been, just talk. You say things out of anger, but nothing that you intend to do,'' she said.

"I can't even kill a frickin' mouse.''

— With files from CJVR, CKOM and CKBI

News from © The Canadian Press, 2016