A 24-year-old Mississauga woman convicted in 2005 of murdering her mother will be allowed to attend the University of Waterloo. 

A 24-year-old Mississauga woman convicted in 2005 of murdering her mother will be allowed to attend the University of Waterloo in September. 

She will live at an undisclosed residence under a form of house arrest and other conditions. 

The woman and her younger sister, now 23, were dubbed the “Bathtub Girls” during their Brampton murder trial.  The soon-to-be Waterloo freshman was the driving force behind their mother’s murder and held her head under water in the tub for four minutes. 

She has served four years of the maximum 10-year sentence she and her sister received for their first-degree murder conviction on June 15, 2005. 

To allow her to start university, Justice Bruce Duncan on Tuesday amended some of the restrictions he imposed last summer when he granted her release from a federal prison to a Barrie halfway house. 

No details were revealed about the new phase of her reintegration into society.  Crown Mike Cantlon and her lawyer, Stephen Gehl, agreed she should begin her university studies but they will return to court Sept. 22 to review the new conditions. 

“This never-ending saga will continue then,” Duncan said. 

The young woman’s previous release conditions included restrictions on family visits and prohibitions on consuming alcohol and recreational drugs.  She had to remain in her halfway house except for medical reasons or emergencies, volunteer work or for other purposes approved in advance. 

Last year, she was accepted at Waterloo for science and engineering programs with a scholarship and planned to begin her schooling through correspondence. 

The two women were 16 and 15 when they plied their 43-year-old alcoholic mother with lethal levels of liquor and codeine from Tylenol 3 before drowning her on the night of Jan. 18, 2003. 

The sisters got away with the murder for more than a year until a friend went to police and revealed their mother’s death wasn’t the liquor-fueled accident it had appeared to be, but a well-planned murder complete with an Oscar-worthy 911 call and a celebration dinner at a local restaurant. 

Because of their ages at the time, neither woman can ever be identified. 

The younger of the two received parole last month.  She was eligible for early release because she remained in the federal prison system. 

Canada’s laws required the sisters to serve only six of their 10 years.  An appeal court decision in April ruled youth serving adult sentences would get parole after serving two-thirds of their time, so the younger sister was released after four years. 

Not being in the federal system any more, the older sister isn’t eligible for release under federal parole.  She remains under probation and must return to court each year for a mandatory review. 

The sisters were the first ever convicted of murdering their mother in Canada. 

They were also the first to serve youth sentences in an adult federal prison since Canada’s new youth laws were enacted in 2003.