Woman receives 8½-month sentence for disposal of body

A Winnipeg woman who helped dispose the body of a slain Mexican man under threat of death from his killers has been ordered to serve another 8½ months in jail.

Devlin Langlois, 25, had pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to murder in the March 2025 killing of 28-year-old Diego Moscoza in a Selkirk Avenue house.

Court of King’s Bench Justice Candace Grammond, in a written ruling delivered Friday, rejected a recommendation by Langlois’s lawyer Joshua Rogala that she be sentenced to the equivalent of nearly 16 months of time served.

Grammond said she accepted that Langlois feared for her life. However, she made no effort to help Moscoza when he was gravely injured and his killers were not present in the home and had not yet threatened her.

Releasing Langlois from custody “would not send the appropriate message to individuals associated with the criminal underworld relative to the consequences that they must face for assisting those who commit violent crimes,” said Grammond, who sentenced Langlois to an additional two years of supervised probation.

Taylor Gilbert Linklater and Noreen Ceara Remona Thomas, both in their 20s, are charged with second-degree murder in Moscoza’s killing and have not yet stood trial.

Circumstances of the killing were detailed in an agreed statement of facts previously provided to court.

Langlois lived at a home on Selkirk Avenue, just off Salter Street, with her 36-year-old boyfriend, a member of the Bloods street gang. Thomas and Linklater were also members of the gang.

Langlois had been assaulted by Linklater and her boyfriend in the summer of 2024, suffering at least one stab wound to her back in a gang-related attack, and remained fearful of the two men, the agreed statement of facts noted.

At about midnight on March 17, Linklater and Thomas showed up at the Selkirk house with Moscoza and another person. Linklater gave fentanyl to Langlois, her boyfriend and another roommate and told them to stay in their bedrooms and out of the basement, court heard.

When she awoke, Langlois heard Moscoza’s moans coming from the basement, but neither she nor the others in the house called for police or an ambulance due to their fear of Linklater and Thomas.

An autopsy found he had been stabbed at least 16 times.

Linklater and Thomas were made aware Moscoza had died and returned to the home. The two told Langlois to leave the home and get a shopping cart, while they tried to clean the victim’s blood from the basement.

Linklater and Thomas, who had put Moscoza’s remains in a hockey bag, told Langlois to move his body and threatened her with death if she didn’t comply.

Langlois pushed a cart she had found to the back lane behind nearby Pritchard Avenue, where a passerby discovered Moscoza hours later, at about 10:30 a.m, and called police.

Moscoza, a Mexican citizen, had been living in Manitoba for two years, the Winnipeg Police Service said after his death.

A friend of the victim told the Free Press last year that Moscoza “got involved with the wrong people” in Winnipeg. He was known to city police and had lived in the U.S. at some point, police said last year.

Court heard Langlois has a troubled background marked by substance abuse, domestic violence and housing instability.

A pre-sentence report prepared for court found Langlois’s behaviour in custody has been “largely positive” and she has taken part in rehabilitative programs, including addictions counselling.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca