Dustin Brian Hales pleads guilty to murdering Christina Cline
A 39-year-old man facing a first-degree murder charge in the 2011 death of his common-law wife has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
Dustin Brian Hales was accused of murdering Christina Kathleen Cline after her body was found in Dartmouth’s Shubie Park in November 2011. The mother of Hales's three young children had been stabbed multiple times.
Almost a year after that gruesome discovery, Hales and his second wife, Victoria Ann Weir-Hales, were charged with first-degree murder in Cline's death.
According to an agreed statement of facts from Weir-Hales's trial, Weir-Hales told an undercover operator in a so-called Mr. Big sting how she and Hales planned Cline's murder.
Weir-Hales pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in December 2013 to Cline's death. She got an automatic life sentence, without parole eligibility for 15 years.
Lured to park and killed
The court heard Weir-Hales helped plan Cline's death and lured her to the park where she was killed, but that Weir-Hales did not actually kill Cline.
Weir-Hales and Cline were in an intimate relationship. The two women started seeing one another after Cline broke it off with Hales.
On the night of Nov. 18, 2011, Weir-Hales asked Cline to go for a walk in the park, where Weir-Hales had already dropped off her husband.
Cline was ambushed and killed with a knife.
Hales and Weir-Hales then disposed of the evidence in Lake Banook.
According to the agreed statement of facts, Hales confessed that the motive for Cline's murder was based on Cline supposedly interfering in the relationship between him and Weir-Hales. Another reason for Cline's killing, Hales told police, was the financial burden placed on Hales to pay child support for their children.
- On mobile? See the agreed statement of facts here
