Sex killer John Lee Jr. believes that he should be freed from prison, even though experts still believe he poses a high risk to commit new, violent crimes. The Parole Board of Canada says Lee was “superficial, grandiose and lacking in insight” when he demanded release during his latest parole hearing, held March 25 this year at the medium-security prison in Ontario where Lee is serving his life sentence. The parole board refused to grant Lee (inset in 1986) any form of freedom, after concluding that he’s still too dangerous.

Bill MacLeod, 16, when he was murdered in 1986 in Kingston, Ontario

Lee was convicted of the savage murder in May 1986 of William Patrick MacLeod, a 16-year-old star athlete at a high school in Kingston, Ontario. Lee, now 48, was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years after his conviction for first-degree murder. He abducted MacLeod off a Kingston street by posing as a police officer. He handcuffed the teen and drove him to a secluded spot. Police who investigated the crime believe Lee tried to sexually assault MacLeod and when the teen bolted, Lee chased him down and stabbed him to death. Lee stabbed MacLeod 22 times and left him to die in a dark corn field. His body was found five days later. During his latest hearing, Lee appears to have concocted a new explanation for the crime, claiming that he was so high from taking painkillers that he drifted into a psychosis. He claims that he has limited recall of the murder. At a previous hearing, Lee claimed that he was angry about past treatment by his father and had decided to kill someone to quench his homicidal rage. Lee has refused to acknowledge that the crime was sexually motivated, even though he has a long history of hunting young, straight men who he would attempt to “turn” into having gay sex. Lee has claimed to have had more than 700 sex partners, mostly male.

He recalled lost loves when he professed remorse at his parole hearing. It was an apparent sham that the parole board members could see through:

The board also found your expressions of remorse to be less than genuine. On each occasion when you expressed remorse for killing your victim you related the family’s anguish to your own anguish at losing lovers in the past. The idea that the loss of a lover through non-violent means could compare to the loss of a young man through horrific and unexplained violence is callous.

Eight members of MacLeod’s family attended Lee’s latest parole hearing and five made presentations about the devastating effect the murder had on them.

The board was struck by your response, or rather lack of response, as these statements were read today. There was not a flicker of emotion and, in fact, at one point you were playing with your file folder during the presentations.

The parole board noted that Lee has completed some programs while he’s been behind bars and he has been co-operative with staff working on his case, but prison officials expressed concern about his “know-it-all” attitude and his admission that he only took treatment programs to to satisfy parole authorities.

Lee claims that he got in touch with his native roots since he was imprisoned. He’s currently behind bars at medium-security Warkworth Institution, near Campbellford, Ontario.

Here’s the written record of his latest parole hearing:

On a mobile device? Click here to read the document.

Related

» Previous post
» Record of January 2009 parole denial
» Record of denial of parole appeal in 2009

Rarely have I seen surprising new information in the written record of a parole hearing I have attended, but it’s there in the internal document (read it after the jump) for paroled former pro hockey player Rob Ramage (inset). The onetime captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs recently won release to a halfway house after a hearing held at the Kingston, Ontario prison where’s serving his four-year prison sentence for driving drunk and killing a friend. The four-page parole document reveals that Ramage had a driving-related brush with the law while he was free on bail.

Ramage was convicted in October 2007 of impaired driving causing death and other charges in the crash that happened in December 2003 just north of Toronto, Ontario. Ramage was free on bail after the crash, awaiting the trial, and he remained free on bail after his conviction, awaiting the outcome of an appeal. He went to prison in July 2010 to begin serving his four-year sentence after he lost the appeal. The internal parole document, just released by the Parole Board of Canada, notes that:

You were on bail for approximately 6.5 years with no incidents, although you did reside with your family in the USA where driving was not prohibited to you, and you incurred a speeding ticket.

That information was not discussed during Ramage’s three-hour parole hearing that I attended at Frontenac Institution on May 5. It’s not clear if that was an oversight by the board members, who grilled Ramage about his drinking and his driving history. You would have thought that it would be germane to a discussion of the risk that Ramage poses to society to ask him about his apparent refusal to abide by driving laws while he was free from prison? You might also have expected some discussion of Ramage’s decision to continue driving in the U.S., knowing that he was banned from doing so in Canada as his case wound its way through the courts.

But those things didn’t happen. A cynic might suggest that a double standard was applied. Ramage is an articulate man who holds a privileged position in society as a once-revered pro athlete. He was reportedly a model prisoner who was respectful, remorseful and compliant. He had no criminal record and he expressed a desire to do whatever was necessary to rehabilitate himself and to convince the parole board that he posed no danger to society.

He clearly did convince them, though they never asked him why he chose to ignore the traffic laws while he was free on bail.

Here’s the parole document (reference to Ramage’s ticket appears on the second page):

Parole record of killer drunk driver Rob Ramage by Rob

On mobile? Click here to read document
» All Cancrime coverage of the Ramage case

Sex killer Guoxi Wang is getting full parole after 17 years behind bars, parole board records reveal. He will be deported to China immediately. Wang has been in a Canadian penitentiary since 1995, when he murdered Xiaoting Liu, 33. The two were housemates in Kingston, Ontario, and studying on student visas at Queen’s University, when Wang’s obsession with Liu drove him to kill her.

Wang admitted, at his sentencing a year later, that he was obsessed with Liu, who had a husband and young daughter in China. She had rebuffed his advances. He was sentenced to life in prison, with no chance of parole for 15 years. Wang rendered Liu unconscious, raped her and strangled her to death. He put her body in the refrigerator and called police, telling an operator: “I killed my housemate. I used my hands.” Wang thought he would be immediately deported and then executed in China. The Parole Board of Canada decision says that Wang, who had no criminal record before the murder, has been “polite and courteous” in prison, has completed a number of treatment programs, including sex offender therapy and shows what appears to be genuine remorse. Wang plans to live with his brother in China. Even if he is not subject to supervision there, the parole board concluded that he “would not present an undue risk to society.”

Here’s the full decision of the Parole Board, after the June 2012 hearing:

Sex killer Guoxi Wang release decision of Parole Board of Canada by Rob

» On a mobile device? Click here to read the document.

» An excellent account of Wang’s sentencing in 1996, by former Whig-Standard reporter Jeff Outhit, is preserved here and pasted below:

By Jeff Outhit, Whig-Standard Staff Writer

A tragic tale of deprivation, obsession and murder was told
yesterday as Guoxi Wang pleaded guilty to killing Xiaoting Liu
because she rebuffed his romantic advances.

Wang, 34, killed Liu, 33, in August 1995 in his bedroom on the
second floor of the Colborne Street rooming house where both lived.
Wang and Liu were Chinese students studying at Queen’s University on
student visas, strangers until they met in Kingston.

Madame Justice Helen MacLeod sentenced Wang to life in prison
with no parole eligibility for 15 years after the Crown, which had
charged Wang with first-degree murder, accepted his plea to second-
degree murder.

“A child has lost her mother forever, a husband has lost his
wife, they have lost a sister”, MacLeod said at the Frontenac County
Court House after reading victim-impact statements filed by Liu’s
husband and sister in China.
“[Liu] had everything in life to look forward to. The healing
will take years on the part of her family…
“The senselessness of this killing will never be understood to
them.”

It was the first time that the horrible and sad details of Wang’s
life and Liu’s death were made public.
The court heard that Wang, working towards PhD in chemistry since
1994, had become infatuated with Liu, who had arrived at the rooming
house three months earlier and who reminded him of his lost love, his
first girlfriend in China.
But Liu, a chemical engineering scholar whose husband and young
daughter remained in China, rebuffed Wang’s persistent attempts at a
romantic relationship, saying she wanted only to be friends.

Around 10 a.m. on Saturday, Aug.5, 1995, Liu left her room at 22
Colborne St. to go to her office at Queen’s. Wang, who had been up
all night anguishing over Liu, confronted her on the stairway, forced
her into his room and told her he wanted to have sex.
Liu said no. Wang, who was holding Liu on the floor beside his
bed, forced himself on top of her and rendered her unconscious by
strangling her around the neck with his hands, and by holding a cloth
soaked with a powerful sleep-inducing chemical called pyridine around
her mouth and nose.
A petite woman, Liu resisted, scratching Wang on his face and
chest, but she died of strangulation. “It is unclear whether
intercourse took place prior to her death or after,” Crown attorney
Jack McKenna told the court.

After killing Liu, Wang put her body in his refrigerator and took
some time to straighten up his affairs. He mailed a computer to his
brother in China, returned some books to the library, cleaned out is
Queen’s office and tried but failed to rent a car form several
agencies.
He also wrote a two-page letter to Liu’s husband Jianguo Zhang,
an associate professor in biology and technology at Zhejiang
University in China.
The next morning, at 4:18 a.m., Wang made his way to the Kingston
police station on Queen Street, where he placed a call from the lift
phone at the main entrance. The call was received by a dispatcher
and recorded on audio and video tape.
“I killed my housemate,” Wang said. “I used my hands.” Minutes
later, he was arrested at the front entrance of police headquarters.

The court heard that Wang came from a farming family so poor that
five of his siblings essentially starved to death in their infancy.
Wang, a natural intellect, overcame great odds to make it to
university, thanks to the sacrifices of surviving relatives who made
his academic success their family goal.
But Wang’s drive to succeed was made at the expense of his social
skills, said defence lawyer David Crowe, who described his client as
“brooding and obsessive.”
Justice MacLeod was moved by Wang’s desperate childhood, which
she called one of the most “meagre existence” she has ever read.

But she was also moved by the innocence of Liu, who was trying to
make a better life for her family and who wrote letters and
electronic e-mail constantly to her husband, who was due to visit her
in Canada in three months.
Liu’s misfortune, MacLeod said, was to resemble Wang’s lost love,
a girl-friend whose status-conscious family had intervened to end
their relationship because of his “poor, country village background.”
On the rebound, Wang had entered into a loveless marriage with
another woman.
“The human tragedy of these facts cannot be underestimated,”
MacLeod told the court.

Wang, asked by MacLeod if he had anything to say, sobbed through
a rambling statement in broken English, crying at one point.
“I’m very sorry that this happened. Please trust me, I did not
want to do that,” he began, adding later: “I did not mean to kill
her.”

Liu’s husband was not in court for the verdict. He had been
scheduled to fly from China yesterday for the trial that was to start
next week, but his trip was cancelled when Wang decided to plead
guilty.

Yesterday, investigating officer Sgt. Paul Thompson was trying to
secure a refund from Canadian Airlines for Liu’s husband, who put up
four months’ of his meagre wages towards air fare. Most of his air
fare was paid by donations from Kingston police officers, Crown
attorney staff and others saddened by his wife’s murder.
“Everybody is struck by the pointlessness of this,” said
Thompson, who described the victim as small, innocent and
defenceless. “It is the saddest thing that I personally have been
involved in in a long, long time.”
The murder might have been prevented, Thompson said, if Liu had
complained to police or to Queen’s officials about Wang’s behavior,
which was harassing. (The court heard that Wang had followed Liu and
sometimes stayed in her room long after she asked him to leave).
But Liu was suspicious of police because of police activity in
China and did not complain, said Thompson, who hopes that other
foreign students at Queen’s will be less resistent about coming
forward.
“If she had come forward to Queen’s or to us, I’m sure steps
could have been taken that would have prevented this tragedy,” he
said.

The Kingston and university communities rallied to support Liu’s
husband after her murder, in part by stetting up an education trust
fund for her daughter Tianmin, 6.
It is expected that Wang will eventually be deported to China,
where “he is likely to be executed by the authorities,” his lawyer
said.

Ten years after ex-NHLer Rob Ramage (inset) killed one person and seriously injured another while driving drunk, he has his Ontario driver’s licence back and has been given the go-ahead by the Parole Board of Canada to drive again, though he remains on parole. Ramage, a steady defenceman and onetime captain of the Toronto Maple Leafs, was convicted of impaired driving causing death and three other charges after a crash in 2003 near Toronto that killed his good friend, former NHL star Keith Magnuson, and seriously injured a 39-year-old woman, Michelle Pacheco. Ramage was sentenced to four years in prison but he was paroled after serving just 10 months. The parole board recently agreed to lift the driving ban it had imposed, following a “rare” request from Corrections Canada, a written record of the parole board decision reveals (read it in full after the jump). The board says it lifted the ban because Ramage is assessed as a low risk to reoffend, his “reintegration and motivation levels continue to be high” and, this measure will “further your gradual reintegration into the community as a law-abiding citizen.”

The parole board’s description of Ramage, in its February decision to lift the driving ban, is glowing, noting that he is a 54-year-old first-time offender.

You have been on full parole since May 1, 2012. You are described as accountable in the community, have abided by the conditions of the Board and remain totally engaged in your Correctional Plan. Your continued transparency both with those that supervise you and in your openness to the community as it relates to your index offence are to be commended.

In January, the parole board also lifted a requirement it had imposed previously, requiring Ramage to undergo psychological counselling ordered by his parole supervisor. The decision to lift that requirement was made because the clinician had terminated treatment.

The latest psychological report dated September 12, 2012 states that you have been totally compliant during treatment and have, since beginning your initial day parole release, presented in a postive, cheerful and optimistic manner and have been candid in discussing personal life challenges as well as alcohol and the consequences of your offending.

Ramage was first released from prison on passes in March 2011 and he was granted day parole in May 2011, after he had served just 10 months of his four-year prison sentence. He remains on parole in the community until July 2014, until he completes the sentence. At the hearing in May 2011, Ramage was grilled by parole board members about his spotty memory of events of Dec. 14 before the crash. Ramage and Magnuson attended the funeral of another former NHLer and then went to a reception. They also stopped at a beer store at 11:30 a.m., bought a six pack and drank in the parking lot inside their car.
“I don’t really remember going in there,” Ramage said. He described the parking-lot episode as “totally out of character for both of us.”

A toxicologist concluded that Ramage had 15 to 20 drinks in the hours before the crash, yet no one at the reception recalled that he seemed impaired, suggesting he had developed a tolerance for large quantities of alcohol. Ramage told the parole board he is a social drinker, not an alcoholic, although alcohol caused problems very early in his marriage.

“That’s a mystery, as far as my tolerance level,” he told the parole board. Ramage said he does not remember how many drinks he had at the reception. “A tragedy did happen,” Ramage said. “I take full responsibility. I wish I could recall every detail of that afternoon.”

Ramage landed a job as a scout for the St. Louis Blues, a National Hockey League team, according to an August story in the London Free Press newspaper.

Ramage has been giving speeches and making public presentations, like this one in September 2012, a “Recovery Breakfast,” held in London, Ontario and sponsored by several community agencies that deal with addictions.

The parole board has granted him other special privileges since his release, permitting him to travel out of the country for medical and employment reasons. Ramage’s destination in the U.S. was withheld in copies of the parole board documents released publicly.

Ramage played 18 seasons in the National Hockey League, including two in Toronto, during which time he served as captain of the famous franchise.

Below is the February parole decision lifting Ramage’s driving ban:

On a mobile device? Click here to read the document.

Below are three decisions of the board, from October 2012, January 2013 and early February 2013:

On a mobile device? Click here to read the documents.

» All coverage of Ramage’s case on Cancrime

Imprisoned killer Daljit Singh Dulay (inset), who gunned down his sister, her husband and another man 22 years ago in the name of family honour, is viewed as a “hero” by some members of his Sikh community, a Parole Board of Canada document reveals (read it in full after jump). Concern that family and community members still condone Dulay’s actions and strongly endorse the concept of honour killings was cited by the board in a decision last month to deny him unescorted passes or day parole, though Dulay has been out of prison previously on escorted passes.

Victims murdered by Daljit Singh Dulay in 1991 in Calgary, (from left) Gurdawr Singh Dulay, Kulwinder Dulay, Mukesh Kumar Sharma

He is serving life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in the 1991 honour killings in Calgary, Alberta of his sister Kulwinder Dulay, 20, her husband Gurdawr Singh Dulay, 28, and, Mukesh Kumar Sharma, 28. Sharma was a close friend of the couple and their employer. The six-page written record of Dulay’s parole hearing on April 24, 2013 is the most detailed expose to date of the chilling motive that drove him to murder. It documents the widespread conspiracy and encouragement of family and community in the murders and a plot to aid Dulay’s escape from justice. The revelations contradict the protestations of other honour killers in Canada and the defence arguments that they have presented during trials in an attempt to convince judges and juries that honour killings are not a growing threat in Canada fueled by widely-held traditional beliefs.

According to a 2006 psychological risk assessment, your understanding of the index offences remained shallow. You admitted that your actions were wrong but also noted that the murders maintained the status of your family in their community.

- excerpt from April 2013 parole decision

Dulay’s family lived in Vancouver when his sister moved to Calgary. The strict Sikh family grew up in an area of India where long-held cultural traditions about the honour of families were drilled into him. Dulay’s sister had eloped with a man who had grown up in the same village, an act that the Dulay family considered shameful and one that they believed required her death to restore the family’s honour in the eyes of the wider community.

You noted that, after negotiations with your sister and elder members of the family failed, you understood your family to ask you to do “whatever it takes” to maintain family honour. You confirmed with the board that the beliefs associated with honour killing motivated you to commit three murders, and that these beliefs could be considered risk factors in your case. With persistent questions, you noted that honour killings may be conducted for reasons other than a forbiden intimate relationship. However, until it was raised by the board, you did not mention honour killings involved concepts such as domination and control of women.

Dulay hired a private investigator who tracked his sister to Calgary. Dulay followed her there. He bought an AK-47 assault rifle and a car. He stalked the couple to a video store where they worked and when they emerged and began to drive away, he rammed their vehicle and sprayed them with bullets. Mukesh Kumar Sharma, who was a friend of the couple and their employer, attempted to flee. Dulay shot him in the back. Dulay hid out with family members for five days before turning himself in to police. In 1992, he was convicted but in 1996, he attempted to escape, part of a scheme to flee to India, back to the village where he was raised, where friends and family would shelter him.

You claimed that you were acting in conformity with your religious beliefs in committing the murders, and that you would not be considered guilty of any crime in India.

Dulay claimed in his parole hearing in April this year, as he did in 2007 in a failed bid to seek earlier parole, that he has renounced honour killing.

You stated several times during the hearing that honour killings were wrong and stupid, and that you were very ashamed and remorseful for your actions.

Although Dulay has been out of prison several times on escorted temporary absences, the board expressed concern about the influences of family and friends. In 2006, a psychiatric assessment concluded he was a low risk to reoffend but noted “there were differing versions on file about your family’s influence on you at the time of the murders.”

The psychiatrist also had concerns about your request for ETAs to the Sikh Temple as some members of your community viewed you as a hero.

In 2010, Dulay was granted escorted temporary absence passes for family contact and to visit a Sikh Temple. The parole board now appears to be grappling with changing accounts from family members about whether they supported the murders and encouraged Dulay to carry them out. As part of the process of determining whether Dulay can be released into the community, family and friends are interviewed by Corrections staff. In 2011, interviews revealed that some people “indicated that they were more accepting” of the murders. In the past, family members had openly condoned Dulay’s actions. In recent assessments, people interviewed appear “less sympathetic” about the murders.

The authors of a [community assessment] completed in January 2013 on family members concluded that the contacts said “all the right things” but the authors were unsure of the genuineness of the contacts’ comments.

Dulay told the parole board that, if released, his goal was to “educate [his] younger family members with respect to honour killings.”
He could not explain, other than saying ‘No,’ how he would stand up to family or community members who might pressure him to continue to endorse honour killings.

Dulay is subject to a deportation order to India that was imposed in 1993. If he is granted unescorted passes or day parole, he could be immediately removed from Canada. Dulay is not subject to stricter immigration and parole rules that came into force 11 years ago. A killer sentenced after June 2002, and who is subject to a deportation order, is not eligible to seek release on unescorted absences or day parole. Most murderers are eligible to seek those two forms of freedom three years before their full parole eligibility. In the case of a murderer like Dulay, who is serving life with no parole for 25 years, it meant he was eligible to seek unescorted passes and day parole after 22 years behind bars.

Here is the complete written record of the parole hearing held April 24, 2013:

Note: The document embedded here contains a typo made by Parole Board staff. On page five, the document states that Dulay “completed six years of family contact UTAs.” These were, in fact, ETAs, escorted temporary absences and not Unescorted Temporary Absences.

On a mobile device? Click here to read document.

Peter Stark, a killer who disposed of the body of his teenage victim in an isolated, makeshift grave, was granted a “compassionate” pass to get out of prison to visit the grave of a dead friend. Stark, who was convicted of murdering 14-year-old Julie Stanton of Pickering, Ontario, was granted an escorted pass by the Parole Board of Canada that allowed him out of penitentiary last year, Cancrime learned. Police and prosecutors believe that Stark abducted, drugged and raped Julie, who was a friend of Stark’s teenage daughter, on April 16, 1990. Julie was last seen getting into a car with Stark on that day and it is believed he also had drugged and raped her a year earlier. Stark maintained his innocence but strong circumstantial evidence led to his conviction on December 1, 1994 for first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. Julie’s remains were found 35 kilometres north of Pickering on June 27, 1996. Stark, from Stoney Creek, in the Hamilton area, was granted the escorted temporary absence, a short-term get-out-of-prison pass, after a decision in June 2012 by the Parole Board of Canada (read decision after jump), based on a recommendation from the Correctional Service of Canada.

The Parole Board agreed to allow Stark out of prison, on the condition that he be kept shackled and under escort of correctional officers at all times, according to the written record of the board’s decision, dated June 5, 2012. The record does not indicate whether Stark took advantage of the pass. According to the document, Stark met “legislative criteria” for the pass, a “compassionate escorted temporary absence” because the person died in January 2012 but Stark did not learn about it until after the funeral had been held. The board wrote:

In terms of the relevant circumstances for your proposed ETA, the board is satisified that your overall risk would be manageable as there is a structured release plan in place. You will be within sights and sound of security officers at all times and you will be constantly supervised while on the ETA. Further, you will be in full restraint equipment. The ETA will be for approximately seven hours duration.

The identity of the person whose grave was to be visited was censored from the document, but the individual was identified as “a community support who provided you with family supports.”

The document provides the first insight into Stark’s time behind bars, since his conviction in 1994. The record reveals that he is no longer being held in maximum security, though the security level of the prison in Ontario where he is now held was redacted from the document. The Parole Board noted that “there are no security concerns noted in your file and that you have not come to the attention of the Security Intelligence Officer (SIO) since 1997.” The document does not explain why Stark came under the scrutiny of the prison’s SIO in ‘97. The document also appears to disclose publicly for the first time that Stark was involved in other sex crimes, before he killed Julie. The parole board document states:

Your file also indicates a history of involvement in similar types of offences where you drugged a young female and sexually assaulted her as well as stabbing a female hitchhiker and throwing her from your car.

The parole document indicates that Stark is now considered a “low-moderate risk for re-offending.”

I spoke to Stark in October 1996, by telephone from Kingston Penitentiary, after Julie’s body had been found. He insisted that DNA testing of samples from her remains would exonerate him. “I’m definitely innocent,” he said.

Stark told me that a jailhouse informant who testified against him, Gerald Udall, lied.

“He made up a phoney statement,” said Stark, who did not testify at his trial.

Forensic examination of Julie’s remains, which were in an advanced stage of decomposition, did not provide any conclusive evidence that she had been sexually assaulted or drugged. (For a detailed description of the state of the remains and forensic testing, read the decision released in 2000 by the Court of Appeal for Ontario, rejecting Stark’s appeal.) Stark is eligible to seek full parole in February 2017. He will be eligible in 2014 to apply for day parole and unescorted passes from prison.

Here is the decision of the Parole Board issued in 2012, granting Stark an escorted temporary absence pass from prison:

On a mobile device? Click here to read document.

Triple killer Daljit Singh Dulay (inset), who murdered his sister, her husband and another man, in a bid to restore his traditional Indian family’s honour, has won the right to leave prison with no supervision. At a hearing this month, the Parole Board of Canada decided to give Dulay unescorted passes (full record of hearing after jump) that will permit him to leave prison for short periods. He will be able to visit family at their homes in the Lower Mainland in British Columbia, unless the Border Services Agency decides to deport him. He’s subject to a deportation order imposed in 1993 but authorities could choose not to act on it immediately. Dulay is incarcerated at a minimum-security prison in B.C.

Victims murdered in Calgary in 1991, (from left) Gurdawr Singh Dulay, Kulwinder Dulay, Mukesh Kumar Sharma

Seven years ago, a psychological assessment found that Dulay had a “shallow” understanding of his crime. Now, the board says he’s a low risk to reoffend and so he can go free, with absolutely no supervision. Early in his prison sentence, he wanted to flee Canada and get back to his family’s native India. With other inmates, he staged an escape attempt from a medium-security prison in 1996. He was quickly caught by police and shipped to a super secure prison facility where he displayed a “defiant and oppositional attitude” for some time. Parole Board records from a hearing earlier this year revealed that some members of Dulay’s strict Sikh community believed he was a hero for killing his sister. Remarkably, parole officials now appear to accept the claim of a village committee in India, the Dulay family’s home, that “they no longer espouse negative values which condoned your crime.” Dulay was considered a hero because the murders were viewed as having restored the family’s honour because his sister, Kulwinder Dulay, 20, had married a man without her father’s consent (for more on the complex history of the ancient tradition of honour killings, read my coverage of the Shafia case). Dulay also killed Gurdawr Singh Dulay, 28, and Mukesh Kumar Sharma, 28. Sharma was a close friend of the couple and their employer. Dulay told authorities, after he was imprisoned, that he was acting in conformity with his religious beliefs and would not be considered guilty of a crime in India. Dulay his sister and her husband to Calgary from his home in B.C. with the help of a private investigator. He shot the victims with a high-powered assault rifle. He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

To read the record of Dulay’s previous parole hearing, and for more background on the case, read this previous post.

Here’s the written record of the parole board hearing that was held November 5, 2013:

Imprisoned serial rapist Selva Subbiah(inset) is an outrageous manipulator, in addition to his well-established record as a pernicious predator who has exploited and assaulted women and young girls, but his latest ploy fell flat. The Federal Court rejected Subbiah’s claim of negligence and breach of privacy against Corrections Canada and the Parole Board of Canada. Though the court didn’t say it, Subbiah’s claim was a laughably transparent attempt to extort money from the government after Subbiah was stabbed in May 2009 during a dispute with other convicts at Kingston Penitentiary. Remarkably, Subbiah claimed that he was attacked because his monstrous criminal past was exposed when Cancrime posted online a copy of a December 2008 parole decision. Subbiah, who is serving a 24-year prison sentence after he was convicted of 75 crimes, including 26 sexual assaults, claimed in his Federal Court action that it constituted a breach of privacy when the Parole Board released the written record of that 2008 decision. He claimed that other inmates at Kingston Penitentiary learned the details of his criminal past because of the release, though he conceded that convicts don’t have access to the Internet. He also claimed that Corrections Canada was negligent for failing to take steps to protect him from threats. The court ruled (read full decision below also) that “there is no causal connection between the stabbing and the release of the Decision; and, (b) that there is no negligence on behalf of either the PBC or CSC.”

The claims were patently absurd, since Subbiah had been at KP for more than a decade. His criminal past as a serial predator who stalked, drugged and raped women was well known. During a hearing held over Subbiah’s claim, prison authorities explained that a television documentary that catalogues Subbiah’s abuses – described by a judge as “so disgusting and so vile that no punishment ascribed by this court would do justice to you” – was freely available to other Kingston Pen inmates on TVs in their cells. His case received substantial news coverage when he was convicted in 1992 and 1997 and again in 2002, when he was caught trying to manipulate women by telephone from prison. Newspapers are available to prisoners. Subbiah gave evidence during the Federal Court case. In the decision, the court said his testimony was “evasive” and at times he “overstated” his case. The judicial official was being kind. Subbiah claimed authorities were negligent for failing to protect him, yet he acknowledged that he didn’t ask to be segregated after he became aware of threats in the institution. There was evidence that he was involved in a scheme in which he was selling cleaning supplies to fellow convicts and he ran afoul of some of his business associates and/or customers.

The Federal Court decision is the second failure this year for Subbiah. In June, the Parole Board confirmed a detention order that is in place. It allows Corrections to keep him locked up until his sentence expires in January 2017. The board concluded that Subbiah is still too dangerous to release – an official in an high-intensity sex offender treatment program assessed him in December 2011 as a high risk to commit new violent crimes and new sex crimes.

“Program gains are reportedly minimal as you continue to demonstrate a lack of insight or remorse, present as manipulative and tend to miminize your role with certain offences,” the parole board document states.

Subbiah will be deported to his native Malaysia as soon as he is paroled or when his sentence expires. Subbiah was in medium security for a time, but he returned to the Regional Treatment Centre (inside KP) and then to Kingston Penitenitary in January 2013. Sources tell me that he was shipped to the new KP-unit created at Millhaven Institution when Kingston Penitentiary was closed in September this year.

In addition to sexual assault, Subbiah’s criminal record includes convictions for overcoming resistance by administering or attempting to administer a drug, administering a drug or noxious substance, procuring a person to become a prostitute, anal intercourse, assault with a weapon, assault causing bodily harm. Among his known victims, four were under the age of 18 and the youngest was 14. Police believe that he preyed on at least 500 women, and perhaps as many as 1,000, after he arrived in Canada in 1980, before he was first convicted in 1992. Two Toronto officers, constables Brian Thomson and Peter Duggan, were dogged in their pursuit of Subbiah.

Here’s the Federal Court Decision:

June 27, 2013 Parole Board decision confirming the detention order against Subbiah:

» Read all past coverage on Subbiah

James Giff (inset), an imprisoned killer who raped and stabbed a 16-year-old girl, leaving her dying in a snowbank, has been granted permission to leave prison with no supervision. Giff, who was diagnosed as a sadist – someone who derives sexual pleasure from inflicting pain – was granted unescorted passes that will permit him to leave prison for short periods of time. The decision was made at a parole hearing held in Quebec, where Giff is serving his life sentence. He has been in prison since 1985, when he killed Heather Fraser, a popular high school student in Smiths Falls, a small community in eastern Ontario.

Giff did not know Heather. He bumped into her as she was walking home from school on a bitterly cold January evening. He forced her to a secluded spot in a park, stabbed her twice, raped her and fled. Heather crawled hundreds of feet through deep snow on her hands and knees, desperately trying to get to a nearby road. Her father, who had gone searching for his late-to-arrive-home daughter,  found her, near death, lying in the blood-stained snow. She gasped one word as her father clutched her in his arms: “Stabbed.” She was declared dead when an ambulance carrying her arrived at a hospital in a nearby community.

Giff, 17 at the time of the killing, was tried as an adult. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. The boy-man who has grown up in prison will now taste real, untethered freedom, 29 years after he savagely murdered Heather during what he has told me was a frenzied rage. In an interview in a Kingston, Ontario prison in 2010 – his only interview with a journalist – Giff said he was furious with his girlfriend, Annette Rogers.

Victim Heather Fraser

“It was rage, it had nothing to do with Heather,” Giff told me. The day of the murder, Giff said he was tortured by substance abuse, sleep deprivation, thoughts of abandonment and a growing rage that could not be contained. “I was up all day drinking at my aunt’s,” he said, in an interview at the minimum-security Pittsburgh Institution, a federal prison near Kingston, Ontario. “I didn’t sleep … I had some valiums.”

“They were all the makings of what they would call the perfect storm. It all came to a head this day and my rage, I was totally focused on all the negative things that had happened between me and Annette.” Giff had previously threatened to kill Rogers, who he has acknowledged abusing in the past. “That day, the rage to kill became uncontrollable,” he said, without emotion. “Annette was the intended victim. Heather Fraser was an innocent victim.”

The decision was made in November during a parole hearing in Quebec. Giff is being held at the Waseskun Healing Centre, an aboriginal facility that functions like a halfway house. It is located roughly 100 kilometres north of Montreal.

The board concluded that Giff does not present an “undue risk to society” and there is a “declining risk of recidivism” although he has offered varying accounts of his murder during his time behind bars.

The unescorted passes will permit him to attend church services in a nearby community, to attend AA meetings and he might also be permitted passes for special occasions, such as Christmas. Giff is under orders to “refrain from consuming, purchasing or possessing alcohol and drugs other that [sic] prescribed medication taken as prescribed and over the counter drugs taken as recommended by the manufacturer.” Giff also is forbidden to have any direct or indirect contact with victims, which include his former girlfriend. She appeared at the parole hearing to read an impact statement. Rogers continues to fear that Giff will harm her. After Giff stabbed Heather Fraser in 1985, he dragged Rogers to the scene, in a bizarre scheme to involve her in the crime and to terrorize her.

Although Giff has previously admitted that was aroused by violence and sex, key ingredients in his diagnosis as a sadist, experts now seem to disagree about whether Heather Fraser’s killing involved sadism. A psychiatric assessment done in March 2012 concluded Giff’s risk of committing a new sex crime was low.

He indicated that the former diagnosis of sexual sadism could no longer apply in your case … the most recent psychological assessment was produced in June 2013. It indicates a substance abuse problem resolved in a controlled environment and an antisocial personality disorder. The psychologist mentions that in light of your compliant behaviour during your long term period of incarceration, the antisocial personality disorder seems to be far less prevalent. She also agrees with the psychiatrist that the diagnosis of sexual sadism does not apply to your past behaviour.

Sexual sadists are notoriously hard to treat, making them candidates for virtually permanent imprisonment. Giff was diagnosed a sadist, in part, because Heather Fraser suffered knife wounds to her vagina. In a prison group therapy session, Giff once admitted cutting her with his knife, because she wasn’t screaming in terror as he had fantasized about. He later claimed that he was pressured into the admission.

Here is the written record of Giff’s November 2013 parole hearing:

On a mobile device? Click here to read the document.

» All of Cancrime’s coverage of Giff
» Video walkthrough of crime scene
» Detailed review of case, including evidence photos, statements, reports

After more than two decades behind bars, serial rapist Selva Subbiah (inset), a predator who assaulted hundreds of women, still blames his victims for his predicament. The “disturbing” revelation appears in the latest decision on his case by the Parole Board of Canada. The board ruled, in a decision in July this year, that Subbiah is too dangerous to be released from prison before he completes every day of his 24-year prison sentence. The board ordered Subbiah detained in prison until his sentence expires in January 2017, when he’ll immediately be deported to his home country of Malaysia. This marks the sixth consecutive year that the board has taken the unusual step of keeping him locked up, rather than granting conditional release, a form of early freedom that is given to most imprisoned criminals.Subbiah completed a sex offender maintenance program in June this year. It is a booster or refresher course for sex offenders who already have been through treatment programs. According to the written record of the latest parole decision, Subbiah continues to blame his victims:

The program report contains disturbing information where you continue to believe that many of the [women] who charged you had lied in order to receive attention or monetary advantage from book deals. You have refused to meet with your institutional parole officer, but have recently stated that you wish to do so.

The decision notes that Subbiah has shown “minimal gains” after completing a number of violence and sex offender treatment programs. His criminal history demonstrates “a pattern of violent sexual behaviour as established by your lengthy convictions and numerous victims.” He’s considered a high risk to commit new violent crimes including sex offences.

Subbiah was first convicted in Toronto in 1992. Police believe he began preying on women as soon as he arrived in Canada from Malaysia in 1980. He amassed a 24-year prison sentence for 75 crimes against 30 women and girls in Ontario, including 26 sexual assaults on victims as young as fourteen. Four of his victims were in relationships with him. Police investigators believe Subbiah victimized at least 500 women and perhaps as many as 1,000. One judge who sentenced him said his crimes were “so disgusting and so vile that no punishment ascribed by this court would do justice to you.” Subbiah’s catalogue of crimes includes 2002 convictions for trying to manipulate women from behind bars. At the time, he was confined at maximum-security Kingston Penitentiary.

Last year, Subbiah failed in a bizarre legal claim that Corrections Canada and the the Parole Board had breached his privacy by releasing the written record of a parole decision in 2008. The record was published on Cancrime and Subbiah claimed that disclosure allowed convicts at Kingston Penitentiary, where he had been imprisoned by then for more than a decade, to discover his monstrous record as a sexual predator. Subbiah was stabbed at Kingston Pen in 2009.

In May 2013, Subbiah was transferred to medium-security Warkworth Institution, near Campbellford, Ontario, where he remains behind bars.

» Read all of Cancrime’s coverage on Subbiah’s case

Here is the complete written record of the Parole Board decision in July 2014 to detain Subbiah until he has served all of his 24-year prison sentence:

On mobile? Click here to read document

Terror took root in central Saskatchewan on this day 40 years ago. On June 15, 1975, two children, 12-year-old Dahrlyne Cranfield and Robert Grubesic (inset), 9, disappeared while riding their bicycles along the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon. Roughly a month later, Samantha Turner, 8, and Cathy Scott, 7, disappeared. Parents kept their children home behind locked doors. Finally, a tip led police to David Threinen, a truck driver with a history of sex attacks against children. He confessed and led officers to the bodies of his victims. He had strangled them and dumped them in two remote locations outside Saskatoon. A psychiatric report revealed in parole records (read document after the jump) would later describe Threinen as “a cold, amoral individual who felt compelled to offend sexually against children and who experienced no remorse for his victims even when he killed them.”

Threinen, who is serving life in prison on four counts of murder, appeared before the parole board in 2000. At the time, he was behind bars at Mountain Institution, a medium-security prison in British Columbia. Threinen told the board members that he deserved to die in prison. According to a Canadian Press report of the hearing, Threinen said: “I will spend the rest of my life in prison. I will die here. I’m where I belong. They’re still forcing me to take programs geared for release, a release I don’t want, and I’m getting tired of it. I’m just looking for help any place I can get it.”

The written record of that hearing (appears in full below) states that Threinen had a juvenile criminal record that began at an early age and included rape and molestation of young females. Threinen was charged with the murder in 1972 of a 16-year-old girl in Lethbridge. The charge was dropped because a cause of death could not be established.

Parole board members were told at the 2000 hearing that Threinen still represented a “significant risk” to the community. He was denied any form of release.

On mobile? Click here to read document.

Serial killer David Threinen parole record by Rob

An unrepentant sex offender labelled by police one of the most prolific online sex predators caught in Canada was too dangerous for early release from prison when he last appeared before the parole board, but he’ll soon be free. Mark Bedford (inset), a 29-year-old Ontario man, was ordered detained behind bars until he serves every day of his latest sentence, a 26-month term imposed in 2013. Corrections Canada will have to release him when his sentence expires August 22, 2015 and that should alarm anyone in his path.

I’ve been writing about Bedford since his first conviction in 2008. In 2009, I attended his first parole hearing held inside medium-security Warkworth Institution, a federal prison near Campbellford, Ontario. I had the distinct impression it was the first true glimpse of his deviance. He is remorseless, emotionally flat and deceptive and blames his victims. He seems upset only by the fact that he was caught. During the parole hearing, the words ‘psychopath’ and ‘psychopathy’ weren’t uttered, but I couldn’t help but feel that a far more disturbing diagnosis of Bedford was yet to be written. Under grilling by the parole board members, Bedford admitted he had a “big problem” but he also continued to duck blame for his acts. It was revealed that he tried to trick sex offender experts in prison who sought to assess him. In 2008 Bedford was convicted of 10 crimes, including commit/incite bestiality, luring a child under age 14 by computer, several child pornography offences, two charges of extortion and criminal harassment – though authorities believe he committed many more crimes and may have preyed on hundreds of victims. Experts who have assessed and treated Bedford concluded he is a pedophile but they aren’t certain if he prefers girls who are pre- or post-pubescent. The victims in his first convictions in 2008 were aged nine to 15.

At the 2009 parole hearing, Bedford explained that his online deviance began at age 16, when he started looking at photographs. He sometimes received pictures from older, experienced online pornographers. At age 19, from the safety of his computer screen, he sought to force young girls to perform sex acts in front of webcams, typically by hacking into their online accounts and masquerading as friends. He would convince them to undress, then use the photos he captured to blackmail the girls into performing more explicit acts. Bedford said he did it, “for control” and “for my own excitement.” He could not clearly explain why he moved on from pictures to victims. “That was more real at the time, live,” he said. “You could talk to them.”

He grudgingly acknowledged, as a parole board member grilled him, that he masturbated each time a girl performed for him, though he mumbled through parts of his answers, in apparent embarrassment. Bedford was asked if there were more than 63 victims who are named in his files.

“Ahhh, possibly,” he answered. “I’m not sure though, I can’t recall every one of them.”

Bedford was charged with a sexual assault before he went to prison in 2008 but the charge was withdrawn.

He told the parole board, during the 2009 hearing, that it was consensual sex at his parents’ home with a 16-year-old girl, when he was 19. The girl was likely “confused” about his age, he claimed.

“She started it,” he said. “She exposed her breast.” They began to fool around. “We kissed, I, ah, masturbated her, got her off,” he said. “Afterward nothing else happened.”

The girl went to police and Bedford was charged. He claimed that she reported the incident because he had hijacked her online account after she would not leave him alone.

Here’s the Kingston Whig-Standard story from June 2013, when Bedford was sentenced to 26 months in prison, his second penitentiary term:

By Elliot Ferguson

A convicted sex offender was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison for breaking the conditions of his release.

Mark Bedford, 27, pleaded guilty to two counts of breach of recognizance related to where he was living following his March 2011 release from a three-year sentence for Internet-related sex crimes.

Bedford, wearing a blue, short-sleeved plaid shirt, declined to say anything as Justice Allan Letourneau accepted a last-minute joint submission from Crown attorney Gerard Laarhuis and defence lawyer David Crowe.

“While he was in breach, he did not go out of his way to commit a breach,” Crowe said.

Crowe said Bedford had contacted police shortly after being released from prison but there was no record of that meeting.

Bedford received credit for nine months of pre-trial custody, meaning he is to serve 27 months.

After his 2011 release, Bedford was required to notify police if he was living with a child and was prohibited from being alone with a child without another adult in the room.

The court determined he violated both of those conditions because he was living in the same residence as a child in the months after his release from prison.

Bedford had been charged with sexual assault and sexual interference but those charges were withdrawn Tuesday.

Laarhuis said there was not enough reliable evidence to ensure a conviction on those charges.

“There wasn’t a reasonable expectation of conviction,” Laarhuis said.

Laarhuis said he was pleased with the sentence because the maximum penalty Bedford faced was four years — two years per count.

In 2008, Bedford pleaded guilty to 10 crimes, including luring, related to sexually exploiting girls on the Internet.

Bedford’s illegal activity involved hundreds of girls on two continents, who were extorted into performing sex acts in front of webcams. In one case, he coerced a 12-year-old girl into simulating sex with a family dog.

He was sentenced to three years in prison in 2008 and the next year was denied parole.

Parole board members noted Bedford had been diagnosed as a pedophile and was likely to commit a new sex crime involving a child before his sentence expired.

He served his full sentence.

Laarhuis said Bedford had refused counselling while in prison earlier.

“Mr. Bedford is essentially an untreated sex offender,” Laarhuis said.

When Bedford is released in August 2015, his sentence will have expired so he won’t be subject to any conditions and he won’t be required to report to a community parole officer. It’s possible that police in the jurisdiction where he plans to live may seek a judicial order (like this one imposed on him at release in 2011) that gives authorities some ability to track Bedford and to restrict his activities.

Here’s the written record of the Parole Board of Canada decision August 13, 2014 to keep Bedford locked up until he serves every day of his 26-month sentence (on mobile? click here to read doc):

Child molester Gary Walker (inset) has languished behind bars for nearly one third his 71 years, tormented by his desire for sex with young boys. The septuagenarian has never had a sexual relationship with an adult. He has confounded keepers. Despite undergoing a battery of treatment programs to root out his sexual deviance, experts say he grapples still with “intrusive sexual thoughts” and remains a “significant risk” to molest more young boys if he is released.

I have written previously, at length, about his crimes and the swath of destruction wrought by the former police officer, Scout leader, hockey coach, Judo club official and school bus driver who may be Canada’s most prolific child molester. It is believed that he victimized 2,000 children during a 30-year span. He preferred 12- and 13-year-old boys. At least three victims committed suicide. Walker’s case has fallen from public view, largely because he is no longer a threat. Declared a dangerous offender, he has spent the past 23 years confined in penitentiaries in Ontario. By law, his case must be reviewed every two years. Walker’s latest review was conducted on June 26, 2015. The parole board ruled that he must remain behind bars.

He remains notable for what he has demonstrated, a remarkable immunity to treatment and deviant resilience despite advanced age. Prison authorities have given up on treatment, noting that Walker has now completed all recommended programs. His “deviant sexual preference” for children is intact and a psychologial risk assessment completed in December 2014 concluded he is a “high-moderate to high risk for sexual recidivism.”

Though Walker may never get out of prison – and, statistically speaking, most dangerous offenders die behind bars – he is a reminder of how little is understood about the most intractable and persistent child sex predators. Despite decades of assessment and treatment, Walker is no less a threat to society than he was when he was first imprisoned in 1992. Strides have been made in treating sex offenders, even pedophiles, with some success in reducing the likelihood they will commit new crimes. But Gary Walker appears to be, simply, incurable.

Here is the written record of the parole decision June 26, 2015, denying Walker any form of release (on mobile? click here to read doc):

Just weeks before he’ll be freed from prison, a prolific sex predator boldly told authorities that he didn’t know his actions were wrong when he preyed on hundreds of young girls over the Internet to feed his deviant sexual desires. Mark Bedford, 29, (inset) made the startling admission at a parole hearing 20 days ago, a document obtained by Cancrime shows (read it after the jump). Bedford will be released from a penitentiary in Ontario late in August after serving his second federal prison sentence.

Bedford’s seemingly absurd statement is consistent with his ongoing attempts to rationalize his crimes and his desire to shake the label pedophile and sex predator. In one of his crimes, he coerced a 12-year-old girl into simulating sex with the family dog in front of her webcam. In some cases, he coerced young girls  to insert items, including pencils and combs, into their vaginas. When his victims wouldn’t do as asked, Bedford would threaten to kill them or other family members – and yet, he claims, he didn’t know what he was doing was wrong. He once told a probation officer that his victims were liars. The parole board members didn’t swallow Bedford’s claim.

“The Board challenged you on this statement and then you changed it to say you blocked the knowledge that this was wrong,” according to a written record of the July 3 hearing. “Credibility and transparency became an issue for the Board.”

A recent report concluded Bedford is a “high risk for sexual recidivism” yet he told the parole board he believes he’s a low risk to commit new sex crimes.

“This statement indicates that you have limited insight and are over confident in your ability to control your deviant sexual interests,” the parole document states.

Since he was first convicted in 2008, Bedford has resisted treatment, tried to trick experts who sought to assess his deviance, denied responsibility for his crimes and blamed his victims. Bedford was convicted of 10 crimes, including commit/incite bestiality, luring a child under age 14 by computer, several child pornography offences, two charges of extortion and criminal harassment. Authorities believe he may have preyed on hundreds of young girls in five countries though his parole and prison files document only 63 victims. In Canada, he had victims in Alberta and Ontario. Bedford is part of a wave of so-called sextortionists who trick young victims online. It is a problem that has drawn the attention of law enforcement worldwide. In November 2014, a Florida man was sentenced to 104 years in prison for producing child pornography. He was believed to have extorted 350 victims over four years in three countries, including Canada.

Bedford’s first conviction earned him a three-year prison sentence. He was released March 2011 but was back behind bars in August 2012, charged with sexually assaulting a four-year-old girl and breaching rules imposed in a special judicial order. He pleaded guilty to the breaches in a plea bargain that saw the sex assault charges dropped.

An August 2014 parole board report noted: “Apparently this was to avoid the possibility of convictions for the sexual assault and sexual interference offences which could lead to an application for a dangerous offender designation.” If Bedford were declared a dangerous offender, he could be kept in prison indefinitely.

The July 3 parole hearing was required, under law, to review a previous decision to keep Bedford locked up until he had served every day of his 26-month sentence (Bedford lost an appeal of that decision, in which he argued his detention was “totally unreasonable” because he had no plans to reoffend). The parole board members ruled July 3 that the detention order would remain in place. It will keep Bedford in prison until his sentence expires August 22. Bedford, who turns 30 on July 25,  told the board at a previous hearing that he hopes to live with his parents again after his release.

Below is the written record of Bedford’s most recent July 3, 2015 parole hearing (on mobile? click here to read doc)

» Read all of Cancrime’s coverage of Bedford

An imprisoned double cop killer sentenced to death 40 years ago has failed again in a bid to overturn a parole board decision that denied him freedom. Richard Ambrose, 66, is confined to a medium-security prison in British Columbia but he desperately wants out. He is “aggressive,”  “hostile,” “confrontational,” has threatened his lawyers and, recently, a psychologist concluded he is a “high risk” to reoffend, according to documents acquired from the Parole Board of Canada. In 1974, Ambrose (inset) and career criminal James Hutchison shot two Moncton, N.B. city police officers in the head and buried the bodies in shallow graves. Quickly caught and convicted, Ambrose and Hutchison were condemned to hang but the sentences were commuted to life in prison after the abolition of the death penalty in Canada. Ambrose has been rebuffed twice in the past three years in complaints to a parole appeal body.

Ambrose also claims that he doesn’t remember the Moncton murders because of a head injury he suffered after he was released to Edmonton on full parole in 2000. Ambrose was working and fell from a roof. His parole was revoked and he was returned to prison in 2005 after he assaulted his wife, choked his sister and threatened halfway house staff. According to parole records, he “over-exaggerate(s) the symptoms” of his head injury and “the board questions whether you are being truthful or selective in your recall abilities.” The board notes that Ambrose has perfect recall of many past incidents in which he claims prison and parole authorities treated him unfairly.

It is a familiar complaint. Ambrose accuses the parole board of treating him unfairly during his most recent hearing, in December 2014. At that hearing, the board ruled that Ambrose presented an “undue risk to society” and denied him any form of release. Ambrose lodged his ‘unfairness’ complaint with the appeal division of the parole board, a second decision making body. It ruled that Ambrose was treated fairly and the decision to deny his bid for freedom was reasonable. Ambrose sought to turn the appeal into an attack on the correctional system but the appeal division rebuffed him.

“The Appeal Division will not address your submission with regard to your complaints that some Institutional Parole Officers are liars and that reports were withheld from you by Correctional Service of Canada staff,” the June 16, 2015 decision states.

The appeal division also concluded that it was reasonable to deny release because of the gravity of Ambrose’s crimes, his past failure on parole, and “your failure to take responsibility for your behaviour, your lack of insight, your inadequate release plan, your high risk to reoffend, your distrust of CSC staff,” according to the written record of the decision.

Ambrose also failed in a complaint to the appeal division after he was denied parole in 2012.

For most of the past four decades, Ambrose has remained behind bars, although prison has not always contained him.

In July 1980, just six years after the Moncton murders, Ambrose and a fellow convict at maximum-security Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick sawed through the bars of their cells, climbed to the roof and used a homemade ladder to scale the wall and escape. They were caught three days later. Eight years was tacked onto Ambrose’s life sentence.

For the first 17 years of his prison sentence, Ambrose refused to speak to prison officials about the murders. He did not admit his role in the killings until 1992, when he told a prison psychologist that he fired one of the fatal shots.

In previous parole hearings, he has been “condescending and sarcastic.” His answers have been “evasive” and he has insisted that prison staff can’t be trusted. He still harbours a “significant amount of resentment,” records state, over the revocation of his parole in 2005.

Ambrose has not been a model prisoner. Recently, he has been “confrontational” toward prison staff and shown “aggressive and intimidating behaviour.” In May 2014, while being interviewed by two female prison staffers he became aggressive and loud. He has treated lawyers poorly. In 2013, a lawyer refused to represent him any longer because he had become demanding and threatening. In 2014, another lawyer complained to the prison warden and police because of what he considered a threatening letter from Ambrose.

Ambrose, who changed his name to Bergeron after he was imprisoned, married while behind bars and fathered a daughter in 1992 but he is, according to the parole records, now divorcing his “pro-social” wife and plans to live on his own if released.

Ambrose told the parole board in December 2014 that he has the support of his adult children and he insisted that he won’t “screw up” if released.

He’ll be eligible again in 2016 to seek release.

Here’s the written record of the decision June 16, 2015 by the Appeal Division of the Parole Board of Canada:

Here is the written record of the decision by the Parole Board of Canada on December 4, 2014 denying parole to Ambrose:

» Read the complete story of the 1974 murders
» Read the full story of the 2011 death behind bars of fellow killer James Hutchison
» Decision of Parole Board of Canada August 2012 denying parole
» Appeal Division of Parole Board of Canada decision December 2012

[See image gallery at www.cancrime.com]

Dread has stalked Annette Rogers for 30 years, since her abusive former boyfriend, Jamie Giff (inset), first threatened to kill her in 1985. “I’m scared of him,” she says, her voice trembling. “I don’t care what anybody says.” Giff is a killer. He raped and stabbed to death a teenage girl in 1985. For the past three decades, Rogers fought, but ultimately failed, to keep him behind bars. She was horrified when she learned recently that Giff, free on parole, had done something that so alarmed his supervisor that he was taken into custody and his parole suspended. When he was freed a month later and his parole was reinstated, authorities cited privacy laws and refused to tell anyone, including Rogers, what happened. “So I sat here, vibrating, didn’t know what to do,” she says.

On January 28, 1985, when Giff first threatened to kill Rogers, he could not find her, so he raped and stabbed to death Heather Fraser, a 16-year-old girl he did not know and who he encountered by chance while prowling the streets of Smiths Falls, the small eastern Ontario town where he lived. Giff was enraged, in part, because Rogers had told him she was ending their dysfunctional relationship. Heather was a gifted student and athlete.

“That day, the rage to kill became uncontrollable,” Giff told me, in an interview in 2009 at the Ontario penitentiary where he was then incarcerated. “Annette was the intended victim. Heather Fraser was an innocent victim.”

From left, intended victim Annette Rogers, victim Heather Fraser and murderer Jamie Giff

It is the only time Giff has spoken publicly about the murder – he did not testify at his trial in which he was treated as an adult, although he was 17 when he killed Heather. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. In prison, he was diagnosed as a sexual sadist, someone who derives pleasure from inflicting pain. Giff confessed to prison counsellors that he had mutilated Heather’s genitals with his buck knife during the attack though he later claimed the admission was untrue and that he had been pressured to make the statement in a therapy session. In an unusual development, recent prison reports backtracked. Experts now say that “the former diagnosis of sexual sadism could not longer apply in your case.” A 2012 report from a psychiatrist assessed Giff’s risk of sexual recidivism as low. Other reports point to “compliant behaviour” in prison and a conclusion that his “antisocial personality disorder seems far less prevalent.”

Giff insists he has changed. He says his alcohol and drug addictions are contained and he and is no longer driven by misogynistic rage. In his interview with me in 2009, he said that the day he raped and murdered Heather: “I was a psycho. I had no remorse, no compassion for nobody. I didn’t even care about my own life — but I’m different now.”

Rogers doesn’t believe him.

“No, I don’t,” she answers without hesitation. “Would you? – and I’m the one who’s kept him in there.”

In there is in prison. Giff was behind bars until he was granted significant freedom early in 2015. He was released on day parole, a form of supervised release that permits him to live at a halfway house in Montreal. He can leave the halfway house daily but must return nightly and he must report to a parole officer. He is under orders to stay away from Rogers and her family. But something went wrong with Giff’s parole recently. In October, his parole was suspended and he was taken into custody to assess his risk to the community. In early November, the suspension was lifted and Giff was returned to the halfway house. Rogers was notified that Giff was free again but she was not told what had transpired. Because a parole hearing was not conducted, there is no publicly accessible, written record of Giff’s transgression.

“Unfortunately I can’t comment on this issue because the board is not responsible for the supervision of the offender,” said Luc Desbien, a Quebec spokesman for the Parole Board of Canada, which first released Giff on day parole.

It is a bizarre feature of the parole and correctional systems in Canada – two separate and independent bureaucracies – that one can free an imprisoned murderer and the reasons for the decision are fully publicly accessible but, once free, the paroled murderer is supervised by a parole officer who works for the Correctional Service of Canada, and whose actions are secretive.

“We won’t be able to comment on the case because we don’t give information related to an offender but usually in that kind of situation we only give general information,” said Jean-Francois Cusson, a spokesman for Corrections Canada in Quebec. Cusson said he could not disclose why Giff was taken into custody and why he was later released.

“That’s not the kind of information that we provide,” Cusson said.

Rogers is exasperated.

“Doesn’t the public have a right to know if he messed up?” she asks.

Heidi Illingworth, a longtime advocate for rights of victims, says it is a bad system that leaves victims in the dark.

“Not informing victims of the behaviour that caused parole to be suspended causes additional anxiety and is a revictimization,” said Illingworth, head of the Ottawa-based Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime.

Even if the offending behaviour is minor, victims should be told immediately about it, she said, so that they can “feel safe or take steps to address their safety.”

Rogers, who has been to every one of Giff’s many parole hearings and has argued at those hearings that he should be kept locked up, remains fearful and angry.

“Why should I have to go into hiding?” she asks.

***

Here’s the written record of the Parole Board of Canada decision January 13, 2015, granting Giff day parole release (on mobile? click here to read doc):

Here is the written record of the decision by the Parole Board of Canada on July 10, 2015, permitting Giff to continue to remain free from prison on day parole (on mobile? click here to read doc):

» Read all of Cancrime’s coverage of the Giff case

The Parole Board of Canada has released the written record (read it after the jump) of a decision last week to grant freedom to sex predator Graham James, 62, (inset), a former hockey coach who exploited and abused young men he coached, including several who went on to successful professional careers in the National Hockey League. James was granted day parole after a hearing January 25 in Quebec, where he is completing a seven-year sentence for sexual assault, the latest in a series of convictions related to hundreds of incidents that date to the early 1970s. It is his second federal prison term.

The parole document notes that some of the young men, often teenagers at the time of the attacks, reported being abused by James hundreds of times. James was a successful coach in the Western Hockey League in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. Among his victims were Theo Fleury and Sheldon Kennedy, who both went on to careers in the NHL. James was first convicted in 1997 in Calgary, after pleading guilty to abusing players. He also has a conviction from an incident in 1971 involving a 14-year-old boy, according to a chronology of his case compiled by the Toronto Star. James will be released to a halfway house with six conditions, including the requirement that he not be in the presence of any male children under the age of 18 unless he’s accompanied by a responsible adult who knows his criminal history and has been approved by his parole supervisor. The parole document notes that James admitted to a psychologist that he’s still attracted to adolescent males and particularly to young men aged 15 to 25. It also appears that the board isn’t convinced his his empathy for the suffering of his victims is genuine. The document states that James seem to “have intellectualised [his] empathy but the Board cannot conclude that it is heartfelt.”

Here’s the written record of the parole decision:

Pedophile James Alfred Cooper (inset) knew that he was being watched closely while he was out of prison on early release. Yet he still schemed to procure children while he was free in 2014. The depth of Cooper’s deviousness is detailed in the internal parole records (read them after the jump) of the Ontario man who tortured and raped children. Cooper was convicted only of 16 crimes involving six children over a span of 17 years but it is likely there are other victims. Most predatory pedophiles do not abuse just a handful of victims. The six victims for whom convictions were registered were aged seven to 14 at the time of the abuse that included whippings and beatings and forced sex including intercourse. Five of them, four girls and one boy, were his stepchildren from two of his marriages. One was a neighbour’s daughter.

Online searches lead to many stories about Cooper’s crimes – including this powerful 2012  feature by Susan Clairmont that includes interviews with five stepchildren abused by Cooper when he lived on a farm near Hamilton, Ontario.

In January 1994, Cooper was sentenced to 30 years in prison for 16 counts of sexually and physically abusing the six children. Dozens of other charges were dropped. Cooper was convicted of charges of rape, buggery, gross indecency, indecent assault and having sex with girls under the age of 14. The victims had testified that Cooper beat and violated them with his fists, sticks, wet towels, a buggy whip, cat-o- nine-tails, wooden spoons, belts or cattle prods.

“You are a low-down, mean, despicable, evil manifestation of a human being that preys on little children,” judge Nick Borkovich said, in passing sentence. Cooper appealed and the sentence was shortened to 21 years.

Pedophile James Alfred Cooper in a Hamilton, Ontario police booking photo in 1993 (left) and a photo released by Toronto Police in January 2015 when Cooper was freed from prison at the end of his sentence

Now 80, Cooper appears remorseless and unremittingly predatory, despite his age and despite taking lupron, a drug intended to reduce his sex drive. He has repeatedly violated rules imposed on his early freedom from prison and he has deceived and manipulated corrections and parole staff, records show.

He was released from a minimum-security prison in January 2008 but he was back behind bars by 2012, after repeated violations of his release conditions. In one case, he attended a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of a woman who did not know his criminal history. Two children were at the dinner. Cooper sent inappropriate emails to a member of his community support group and a complaint was filed to police that he touched a woman he knew in a sexual way. Charges weren’t laid but Cooper kept the information from his parole supervisor for days.  In January 2012, the parole board revoked his release.

He was again released in December 2013, sent to live in a halfway house in Brantford, a small city 100 kilometres southwest of Toronto. Two months later, he was arrested after authorities gathered troubling information that suggested that Cooper was actively hunting victims.  The written record of  a May 2014 parole decision details what Cooper had done:

… you made calls to a local community centre inquiring about programs for seniors but during one call, asked if “there would be women chasing you around” and during another call, indicated you would have a young child with you and wanted to know what children’s activities coincided with the senior’s programs. The day prior to this event, it is reported that you asked your doctor about lowering your medication dosage so that you could be more sexually responsive to your wife. File information indicates your wife lives in [REDACTED], has not visited you since release and has no plans to do so because of financial strains.

Cooper’s scheming prompted authorities to revoke his freedom and he was returned to penitentiary to serve out the remainder of his 21-year sentence behind bars. The parole board noted, in explaining the decision, that the staff who had supervised his case believed he was “engaging in behaviour which strongly suggests a return to predatory behaviour, potentially against women and children.” Cooper wasn’t charged with any crimes and there’s no way to know definitively whether he assaulted more victims during his brief stretch of freedom. Many child victims of sexual and physical abuse do not report their victimization until many years after the events (see Myths and Facts below).

Cooper was released from prison in January 2015, after he had served every day of his 21-year term. Toronto Police issued a public alert and a current photo, citing Cooper’s “potential to re-offend against children.” A court order was obtained that bars him from visiting daycare centres, school grounds, playgrounds, arcades, public swimming areas or public parks. He was also prohibited from having contact with anyone under age 16 and was prohibited from living with or engaging in a relationship or marriage with a person who is the parent or guardian of children under 16, until that person has been identified to police.

*****

Written records of five decisions (20 pages) of the Parole Board of Canada in Cooper’s case between 2007 and 2014. “Page 2″ in the top right corner denotes the beginning of a new decision:

*****

MYTHS about disclosure of child sexual abuse

» If a child is sexually abused s/he will immediately tell a safe adult in her/his life.
» All adults will take action and report a child’s disclosure of sexual abuse.
» Children are more likely to disclose if directly questioned by their parent or an adult authority figure who can help.

FACTS about disclosure of child sexual abuse

» Disclosure of sexual abuse is often delayed; research indicates that only 30% of children disclose their abuse during childhood (Hon. Sydney Robins, 2000).
» Children often avoid telling because they are either afraid of a negative reaction from their parents or of being harmed by the abuser. As such, they often delay disclosure until adulthood.
» Children do not always realize that what they have experienced constitutes abuse.
» Disclosures often unfold gradually, and may be presented in a series of hints.
» Children might imply something has happened to them without directly stating they were sexually abused — they may be testing the reaction to their “hint.”
» If they are ready, children may follow-up with a larger hint if they think it will be handled well.

SOURCE: Canadian Centre for Child Protection

*****

There may be 3,500 psychopaths behind bars in Canada’s prisons, roughly one quarter the male penitentiary population, according to researchers. They are conscienceless predators and manipulators driven only by a desire for self-gratification. Until recently, Don Gazley (inset) was among them. Gazley (listen to him, after the jump, in manipulation mode, in Episode 4 of the Cancrime podcast) has a two-decade history of sex crimes and involvement in a murder. He’s been diagnosed a “classic psychopath” who poses a high risk to commit new sex crimes. Yet Gazley was released in early January from a penitentiary in British Columbia, in part, because the top legal official in Ontario, where he was last sentenced, chose not to seek to keep him locked up forever through a dangerous offender designation. Gazley’s treatment by the criminal justice system isn’t unusual. A Canadian expert on psychopaths, forensic psychologist Stephen Porter, says the system must take psychopathy “much more seriously.” His research reveals that, although psychopathy is one of the most powerful predictors of criminal recidivism, psychopaths win conditional release 2.5 times more often than non psychopaths.

***

Porter believes psychopaths get out of prison early, in part, because they fool decision makers with “Academy-award winning” emotional performances (Porter explains this, in more detail, in the podcast). He calls psychopaths “emotional chameleons” that are expert at faking feelings, yet they feel virtually no true emotion themselves. They lack empathy and remorse, are selfish, callous, impulsive and manipulative. One psychopath can cause widespread destruction. Serial child killer Clifford Olson, who murdered at least 11 children, and serial rapist and murderer Paul Bernardo, are two infamous Canadian psychopaths. Olson scored 38 out of 40 on a psychopathy test developed by noted Canadian researcher Robert Hare.

Although professionals have good tools, like Hare’s test, to identify psychopaths and we know well the horrible damage they can inflict, each year, only a handful of psychopaths are declared dangerous offenders. It’s a legal designation that permits authorities to keep a criminal locked up until he’s deemed no longer a danger to society. In practice, most dangerous offenders are never released and die behind bars. Authorities have been far more willing to use another measure in criminal law, a far less restrictive tactic, with dangerous and persistent criminals. A long-term supervision order, which can last for 10 years, can be imposed. It permits authorities to attempt to monitor and control an offender when his sentence expires and he’s free in the community.

Forensic psychologist Stephen Porter of UBC Okanagan

Gazley, 55, is subject to a 10-year long-term supervision order that was imposed when he was sentenced in Ottawa, Ontario in 2008 to eight years in prison for sex crimes involving a 14-year-old girl and a 13-year-old boy with a learning disability. Ontario’s Attorney General declined to seek a dangerous offender designation for Gazley, even though the 2008 convictions were part of a two-decade pattern of sex crimes against children and vulnerable adults and long after he was first diagnosed as a psychopath. At his sentencing in 2008, ever the manipulator, Gazley sobbed and pleaded with the judge to be lenient, claiming that the sentence wasn’t what he had agreed to in a plea bargain. The judge ignored Gazley.

Gazley’s sentence expired on January 4, 2016 and that’s why he had to be released from prison. In the years leading up to the expiry of his penitentiary term, he had fought for early release but was repeatedly turned down because of warnings by professionals that he still posed a high risk to commit new sex crimes (read about his failed attempts for early release in parole documents below.)

The Parole Board of Canada imposed seven conditions on Gazley’s long-term supervision order, including the requirement that he live at a halfway house for 180 days. The parole records don’t reveal where Gazley was sent, but in earlier parole hearings he had asked for permission to return to Ontario, where he has family. He’s also barred from being in the presence of any boys or girls under age 18 unless accompanied by an approved adult who knows his criminal history. He was ordered to report to his parole supervisor all relationships and friendships with anyone who has parental responsibility for children under the age of 18 and he must participate in counselling.

If Gazley violates his conditions, a parole officer can issue a warrant suspending his parole. Gazley would be taken into custody. The officer can choose, very quickly, to cancel the suspension or he can send a report to the parole board, which will hold a hearing. The board can cancel the suspension or recommend to a Crown attorney that charges be filed against him for breaching his parole conditions. A conviction for violating parole conditions carries a maximum sentence of two years in penitentiary. If Gazley were returned to custody after a conviction, the clock on his 10-year supervision order stops counting down.

I have interviewed Gazley dozens of times. I’m not sure anything he ever said, to me – or for that matter, to psychiatrists, psychologists, lawyers, and police officers – was the whole truth. Gazley is a ceaseless liar and manipulator. In 2002, Gazley testified at the murder trial of his friend James Wall that he “lied almost … all the time,” until he had a signed deal with authorities for a lenient sentence for his involvement in the murder in exchange for his testimony against Wall. Wall was convicted on Gazley’s testimony, which was the only evidence that linked Wall to the crime. In an interview after the trial, Gazley told me: “I know I’m not a true psychopath because I have feelings about this.” He also told me, cryptically, that there was “more to the story” of the murder, though he refused to elaborate.

One of Gazley’s familiar patterns of offending was to hire young girls, typically around age 13, to babysit his young son. Once in his home, the girls would be offered drugs and alcohol and pressured to perform sex acts. After I wrote about Gazley’s conviction in 2008 on sex charges in Ottawa, he called from behind bars to complain about how he feared the coverage would hurt his then-teenage son and other family members who lived in Ontario. In yet another remarkable moment of emotional manipulation, Gazley asked if I had my “pound of flesh,” accusing me of exploiting his misfortune in a way that hurt others (Listen to this exchange with Gazley in Episode 4 of the podcast, embedded here and available on iTunes).

***

Below are the written records of five separate Parole Board of Canada decisions involving Gazley between 2013 and 2016. The details of the conditions imposed on his 10-year long-term supervision order appear in the final record, pages 21- 24:

» Read more about Stephen Porter’s research on sexual psychopaths

Podcast music: Music For Podcasts 2 (Lee Rosevere) / CC BY-SA 4.0

We may never know exactly how many times Melissa Ann Shephard (inset) has killed. In a criminal career that spans five decades, Shephard has sown confusion, obfuscated with layers of lies and masqueraded as a victim. The criminal justice system, unable to affix the damning labels she may deserve – serial killer, psychopath – continues to turn her loose to kill again and struggles to contain her. She has learned from her criminal mistakes and profited from her predation. Infamous as the ‘Internet Black Widow,’ Shephard was released Friday (March 18, 2016) from a women’s prison in Nova Scotia – amid a police warning – after her latest stint behind bars, a three-and-a-half year sentence. It was imposed in 2013 after she admitting spiking drinks of her newlywed fifth husband, 74-year-old Fred Weeks, with potent tranquilizers. An attempted murder charge was dropped when Shephard pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Two of Shephard’s four husbands who preceded Weeks ended up dead and another mysteriously fell ill immediately after meeting Shephard. Recent prison assessments (read what experts say, in internal documents after the jump) warn that Shephard scores high for some psychopathic traits, she is resistant to treatment and indifferent to the suffering of her victims. The only thing that has contained her lethal greed in the past 40+ years has been time behind bars and yet, the system has refused to apply the brand that could keep her locked up.

Authorities in Halifax, where Shephard will live after her release from prison, are so concerned about her presence that a public warning was issued (read full release below) on Friday, March 18 by Halifax police, including a recent photo of Shephard. Police caution that Shephard “has a “history of violent criminal convictions dating back to 1992″ and she “has been assessed as being a high risk to re-offend.”

Police clearly fear Shephard will strike again. Remarkable conditions have been imposed, including an order that requires her to tell police about any possible romantic relationship, cohabitation or marriage, so that officers can explain her criminal background to her potential partners. It’s a luxury that four men victimized by Shephard did not have. She’s also barred from using the Internet, the hunting ground where she found most of her targets.

The conditions are impossibly difficult to enforce, particularly in the case of a criminal who has been set free at the expiry of her sentence. Shephard served every day of her latest term. The opportunity to delcare her a dangerous offender (DO), a designation that could have permited authorities to keep her locked up forever, passed. A DO application is typically brought forward by the prosecution immediately after conviction but before sentencing. An application can be made up to six months after sentencing, if new information comes to light. In 2008, criminal law was tightened to provide that a habitual criminal who had committed three serious offences was, presumptively, a dangerous offender. Shephard has been convicted three times of serious, violent crimes, including manslaughter, that earned her penitentiary terms, yet no effort was made to designate her a dangerous offender. This is why police are left with the difficult task of enforcing conditions that Shephard can easily circumvent.

There’s no reason to believe that Shephard, despite her age, will abide the rules or give up her predatory behaviour. In prison, she was caught hoarding medicine and fabricating stories. Expert assessments revealed that she did not respond to treatment.

“You continue to display a substantial degree of indifference … to your elderly vulnerable victims,” states a December 2014 parole document.

A psychological risk assessment completed in 2014, and which employed a widely accepted test for psychopathy, the Hare PCL-R, found that Shephard’s “score on Factor 1 items was notably high for traits related to psychopathy.”

“The psychologist noted that your criminal history is disturbing in that it is not clearly and explicitly recorded as a pattern of violence,” the record of the 2014 parole board decision states. “However, he described your behaviour as highly suspect and that your intent, if not murderous, was endangerment of life, showing wanton and reckless disregard for the lives or the safety of the men with whom you were romantically involved. He went on to caution as to the potential for volatility with respect to the management of your case.” (emphasis added) After the hearing in December 2014, the board ordered Shephard kept behind bars until she had served every day of her sentence, because she was “a significant threat to your target group of elderly vulnerable men” and too dangerous for early release on parole.

Recent photo of the ‘Internet Black Widow’ Melissa Ann Shephard, released by Halifax police on Friday, March 18, 2016

While Shephard has been convicted only once of manslaughter, in the death of her second husband, family members of Shephard’s third husband, Robert Friedrich, who died under suspicious circumstances and was quickly cremated, believe she poisoned him. Alex Strategos, her fourth husband, believes that Shephard spiked his food with prescription drugs in a bid to kill him and steal his life savings. The 73-year-old was hospitalized soon after meeting Shephard. They met through an online dating site. Police in Florida believed Shephard poisoned Strategos to get his assets.

“I truly do think she was either trying to incapacitate him enough to perform the crimes that she was doing, or actually end up ultimately killing him, which is what I think what would have happened to him,” Pinellas Park detective Sgt. Mark Lynch has said.

Police couldn’t gather enough evidence for an attempted murder charge but succeeded in convicting Shephard of seven crimes related to exploitation and defrauding a senior. She was sentenced to five years in an American prison. Her latest victim, Nova Scotian Fred Weeks, also has said that he believed she was trying to kill him.

“She was trying to kill me … there’s no doubt in my mind,” Weeks said, in an interview with CBC in 2013.

Shephard was released from her U.S. sentence in 2009. Within three years, she had stalked and poisoned Fred Weeks. The potent prescription drug benzodiazepine was found in his body. The same drug was found in Alex Strategos. The problem for police investigators has been connecting Shephard to the drugs found in the bodies of her victims. Tests done on Alex Strategos when he was hospitalized did not establish how much drug was in his system and police could not prove that he didn’t take it himself. Shephard seems to have learned that poisoning homicides are notoriously difficult for investigators. Symptoms often mimic natural disease and because murder-by-poison is rare, it is easily overlooked.

Poisoning hasn’t always been Shephard’s principal criminal enterprise.

She was born in a small fishing community in New Brunswick and began her criminal career as a petty thief and cheque forger. Between 1970 and 1985, she was in and out of jail in Ontario and Prince Edward Island, accumulating roughly five years behind bars for more than 30 convictions for fraud and related crimes.

She earned her first penitentiary term after the death of her second husband, Gordon Stewart, in Nova Scotia in 1991. Shephard went to trial on a charge of second-degree murder. She claimed Stewart was an abusive alcoholic who abducted and raped her before she killed him in self defence. Evidence showed that Shephard drugged Stewart, then ran him over with a car twice on an isolated road near the Halifax airport. Forensic tests found no evidence she had been assaulted. A toxicologist testified at the trial that Stewart was so full of prescription drugs and several kinds of alcohol that he likely would have been unconscious at the time he was run over. Two shopping bags filled with prescription drugs were found in Shephard’s apartment. Convicted of manslaughter, Shephard was sentenced to six years in prison. She had killed Stewart after draining his bank account and stealing his pension payments.

Her third husband, lonely widower Robert Friedrich, was dead two years after meeting Shephard. The couple were engaged three days after meeting at Friedrich’s home in Bradenton, Florida, in May 2000. Five months after they wed, Friedrich called his adult children to tell them he was changing his will to leave all of his estate to Shephard. Friedrich became strangely ill soon after he married Shephard. He began falling, necessitating hospital visits and nursing home stays. Friends couldn’t understand his sudden decline. He was hospitalized seven or eight times in his two years with Shephard. Records obtained later by family revealed that toxicology tests were not performed when Friedrich was hospitalized, according to a sweeping investigation of Shephard by my former colleague at The Kingston Whig-Standard newspaper, Tamsin McMahon. McMahon spent roughly a month criss-crossing North America, interviewing 30 people who knew Shephard. Her investigation included a revealing jailhouse interview with Shephard in Florida. In April 2005, the Whig published a novella-length, five-part series based on McMahon’s work that exposed Shephard’s many lies and the depth of her murderous greed.

On December 15, 2002, Robert Friedrich, 84, was rushed to hospital. McMahon’s investigation revealed that:

Melissa had called an ambulance, saying Robert was suffering from severe stomach pains, had been going in and out of consciousness and had been up vomiting since 2 a.m. In their notes, paramedics wrote that Robert’s story “completely conflicts with what [the] patient’s wife is saying. Patient denies abdominal pain. Admits one nausea episode and states he slept soundly all night,” the notes read.

Under [the heading] ‘chief complaint,’ a nurse at Manatee Memorial Hospital wrote that Robert had said: “I don’t know why I’m here.” His vital signs were normal, except for a racing heart. He was treated and released that day.

On Dec. 16, a day after he returned home from the hospital, Robert Friedrich died.

The death of an 84-year-old man at home in his bed hardly raised eyebrows in the retirement community. The doctor who signed the death certificate over the phone listed the cause of death as cardiac arrest.

It appears no one examined Robert’s body before he was cremated.

Melissa was out shopping when her husband died.

“They gave me a prescription I had to fill for him,” Shephard [told reporter McMahon]. “I went out to the drug store to get the medication and while I was away, this happened. When I got back home he was already dead in bed.”

Melissa said she shook Robert and tried to perform CPR before calling 911.

“He died of natural causes,” she said. “He had heart failure and he had had a stroke and cardiac arrest all at the same time. The doctor said that the cause of death was a massive heart attack. He died in bed at home and he was glad to be at home.”

Friedrich’s family members are convinced that Shephard poisoned Robert with prescription drugs. They found credit card receipts showing that Shephard was obtaining prescription drugs from different doctors. American police drew up six charges against Shephard for doctor shopping for illegally obtaining prescriptions from six different doctors for pain killers and benzodiazepines, a class of tranquilizers that work by slowing the central nervous system. The charges weren’t filed because prosecutors said they could not prove that Shephard withheld information from the doctors she visited.

In 2005, Manatee, Fla., police opened an investigation into Friedrich’s death, but it did not lead to charges. McMahon reported, in her expose:

Police spokesman Dave Bristow said that with no body and no autopsy it’s unlikely that charges will ever be filed. “This is an 84-year-old man who died and had a heart condition and his body was cremated very quickly and a doctor signed a death certificate,” Bristow said, in an interview. “We’re doing all we can do with very limited evidence and information. We don’t even know if there was any wrongdoing.”

Robert Friedrich’s son Dennis told McMahon: “I know my father was drugged to death. I can’t prove it, but I know it.”

***

The written records of the two most recent decisions in Shephard’s case by the Parole Board of Canada: The November 2015 decision confirming the order to keep her locked up until the expiry of her sentence and, the December 2014 original detention decision:

***

The “High Risk Offender Notification” issued by Halifax Police on March 18, 2016:

High Risk Offender Notification

Police Media Releases – Friday, Mar 18, 2016 at 1:18pm

In accordance with the Nova Scotia Release of High Risk Offender Information Protocol, Halifax Regional Police is advising all citizens, particularly those in the Halifax Regional Municipality, that a high risk offender is residing in our community.

Melissa Ann Shephard, 80, was released from the Nova Institution for Women today, after completing a sentence for serious assaults against her intimate partners, including administering noxious things and not providing the necessities of life for which she was sentenced in June 2013. Shephard has a history of violent criminal convictions dating back to 1992 that includes a conviction for manslaughter. Shephard has been assessed as being a high risk to re-offend. Her victims have included her intimate partners consisting of elderly men.

Shephard will be on a recognizance and will be required to follow a multitude of strict conditions, some of which include:

• should she alter her appearance, she shall upon a demand by a police/peace officer, submit to having her current photograph taken
• she shall not access the internet or be in the possession of, any device that is capable of accessing the internet
• she shall make no attempt to communicate, directly or indirectly with any of her past victims or family members of the victims in the case in which she was convicted
• she is not to enter into any romantic relationship, cohabitation, common-law relationship, or marriage until that person has been identified by a member of the police agency where she resides and there has been a reasonable opportunity provided to the said police agency to inform them of her history in these and other legal proceedings.

Shephard is an 80-year-old white woman, 5’5”, 181 lbs, with white hair and hazel eyes.

This information is provided to alert members of the public of her presence in our community. Any form of vigilante activity or other unreasonable conduct will not be tolerated.