Murder conviction confirmed for man who stabbed cook in Calgary

The Alberta Court of Appeal has rejected the application of a man convicted of stabbing Calgary chef Christophe Herblin more than four years ago.

Anthony Dodgson, one of the men convicted of alleged second-degree murder in the 2020 stabbing, appealed his conviction because he was drunk at the time of the incident and could not remember stabbing the victim nine times.

At 3 a.m. on March 14, 2020, Herblin received a notification on his phone that an alarm had been triggered in his restaurant.

Without his knowledge, Dodgson and his co-defendant Tommy Holloway set off the alarm to break into the cannabis pharmacy next door.

The couple fled the scene before Herblin arrived, with the business owner calling 911 to alert police.

Several hours later, after police had cleared the scene, the two defendants and a third person returned to the restaurant in a stolen vehicle.

According to court documents, Holloway approached Herblin's parked vehicle, smashed the windshield and then walked away.

“Mr. Herblin is then seen leaving the restaurant and walking toward his car,” the court document states.

“The surveillance camera video shows the defendant running toward Mr. Herblin. However, it does not show what happens in the next minute, although the defendant admitted that he stabbed Mr. Herblin in a struggle.”

Herblin was wounded nine times and then made his way to a nearby gas station. He died before help could arrive.

The Court of Appeal heard that Dodgson admitted to having consumed drugs and alcohol prior to the incident and that he was therefore not in a state of mind to support a conviction of premeditated murder.

The panel rejected Dodgson's appeal on the grounds that he had conducted himself after the incident and claimed that he was drunk during the incident.

The court explained that at the time of his arrest, Dodgson denied being in Calgary at the time of the murder, but when questioned by the prosecution during the trial, he said he could not remember stabbing the victim.

“The defendant did not tell the police that he had no memory of what happened. Instead, he denied the crime when questioned by the police.”

The court also found that after the murder, Dodgson disposed of his clothes and the knife and then took out his anger on the third person who was with him and Holloway at the time of the stabbing.

That person, a woman named AB, testified about the conversation Dodgson and Holloway had in the vehicle prior to the confrontation with Herblin.

She told the court that they planned to steal his vehicle and would stab him if he resisted.

“The defendant referred to AB as a ‘rat’ on the first day of the trial,” the court’s decision states.

“The prosecution asked the jury to conclude that the defendant attempted to intimidate AB and prevent him from testifying about the conversation in the car about stabbing the victim.

“This evidence was relevant to the intent of premeditated murder because the discussion in the car about the stabbing was inconsistent with manslaughter.”