A 30-year-old inmate of Cowansville prison convicted of murdering a member of his extended family in 2004 was found unresponsive in his cell Friday and later declared dead.
Jonathan Finnamore, 30, was found in his cell at the medium-security Cowansville Institution on Friday evening and transported to the Brome Missisquoi Perkins Hospital in Cowansville, where he was pronounced dead at 7:55 p.m.
The police and coroner were identified and Correctional Service Canada will investigate, the federal prison authority said in a statement. Correctional Service Canada officials could not be reached for comment Sunday.
Finnamore plead guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Jeffrey John Shannon, 38, in 2005, and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years. He began his sentence in Cowansville in February 2005.
Charlene Rideout Winmill, a mother of three, testified during her murder trial she and Finnnamore drove Shannon out to a wooded area in August 2004 near Bath, N.B., where he was beaten to death, dropped in a shallow grave and set on fire. Shannon was set to testify a few days later in an auto theft case implicating the murderers.
Two weeks after Shannon’s murder, Winmill and Finnamore drove 20-year-old Jesse-Jo Finnamore, Winmill’s niece, and murder victim’s Shannon’s step-daughter, to a wooded area nearby, dropped her in a shallow grave and Wimill cut her throat. They were concerned Jesse-Jo Finnamore might have information about Shannon’s death and would tell police. Shannon’s body was discovered in the fall, but Jesse-Jo Finnamore was only found nine months after her. Winmill was convicted of two-counts of second-degree murder.
The murderers and victims were all from the same extended family, and lived in the village of Greenfield, N.B., which has a population of 5,483 people.
