A psychopathic sex offender has been set free again in British Columbia, after being briefly detained, despite the revelation that he was “harassing a vulnerable female” near the halfway house where he’s under supervision and other troubling discoveries. Authorities expressed “significant concern” after learning that Donald Gazley (inset) secretly struck up a pen-pal relationship with a female sex offender in a U.S. prison – a woman who helped a man abuse her daughters. Gazley has a three-decades long criminal record that includes sex crimes against children and vulnerable adults and a conviction for involvement in a murder. He appears to be a rare and particularly dangerous offender – a sexual psychopath who preys on children and adults, male and female. Most offenders like him resist treatment and never stop committing crimes.

Gazley was taken into federal custody on February 16, 2016, seven weeks after he was released from a penitentiary in British Columbia. Sources tell me that Gazley had been released to a community residential facility, a site similar to a halfway house, in North Vancouver. His eight-year sentence for sex crimes committed in Ottawa, Ontario had expired but he was subject to a 10-year supervision order that included seven special conditions. The supervision order is a seldom-used legal leash reserved for dangerous, persistent criminals, particularly sex offenders who resist treatment.

In late April, the parole board reviewed the troubling discoveries about Gazley’s behaviour during his seven weeks of freedom and decided to turn him loose again. His case management team recommended to the board that the suspension of his release be cancelled, even though the board was given “no further details about who you apparently harassed or how you harassed her,” according to the written record of the April 21, 2016 parole decision (read entire document below).

Gazley denied the harassment allegation.

“At your post-suspension interview when you were told by [Correctional Service Canada] that you were harassing a vulnerable female to the point in which she felt concerned for her safety, you claimed you had no recollection of doing so,” the parole document states.

Gazley is an admitted, chronic liar and manipulator. He confessed, during his testimony during a murder trial in Ontario in 2002, to lying “almost … all the time” when talking to police about the murder, before striking a deal for a lenient sentence in exchange for his testimony against the killer. Gazley was diagnosed in 1991, during a prison evaluation by a psychiatrist, as a “classic psychopath with all the typical features of superficial charm and good intelligence, manipulativeness, lack of true remorse, untruthfulness and insincerity.” (Learn more about Gazley’s past and psychopaths in this story and podcast).

Gazley has continued to reoffend despite going through many treatment programs during his multiple terms in prison and jail. His criminal record begins in 1977. Treatments given to sexual psychopaths “have shown little or no reduction in recidivism rates,” according to research by forensic psychologist Stephen Porter, an expert on psychopaths. His research shows that Gazley fits into a category of criminals who “can be expected to offend early, persistently, and often violently across the lifespan.” (Porter appears in Episode 4 of the Cancrime podcast)

Gazley was turned loose again by the parole board despite the alarming discoveries about his behaviour. New conditions were imposed that require him to continue living at a community based facility for another year, to immediately report any attempts to initiate sexual and non sexual friendships with females, not to associate with anyone involved in criminal activity or substance abuse and not to be “in, near or around places where children under the age of 18 are likely to congregate such as elementary and secondary schools, parks, swimming pools and recreational centres unless accompanied by an adult previously approved in writing by your parole supervisor.”

In addition to his sex-offending pen pal and his harassment of a female, authorities also found in his room at the halfway house a pamphlet for a youth business program. Many of Gazley’s victims have been boys and girls aged 11 to 14. A search of his room also turned up a list of names of federal offenders, including their confidential FPS (fingerprint sheet) numbers. Gazley claimed he was given the list when he was a peer counsellor in prison.

The new conditions were imposed on Gazley’s renewed freedom because he appears to be testing the boundaries of his supervision order and challenging authorities charged with watching him.

Despite his history of abusing vulnerable adults and children, and despite specific direction that he cannot “take on any role of trust, coaching or volunteering with community members,” he asked, after his release from prison in December, if he could volunteer as an English teacher for refugees. He was refused permission. He also has asked if he can work at a university campus in a position related to prison health care. On another occasion, Gazley asked staff at the halfway house to help him apply for a pass to attend a community centre so he could exercise and go swimming. Gazley also argued with his case management team, according to the recent parole record, when he was told he could not socialize with other sex offenders in the community. His case management team “notes the concern is significant given that associates have been a factor in your offending.”

Gazley has proven problematic for staff supervising him. He has complained that they have “spoken down” to him. He claims that he has been “isolated in the community” and he has expressed frustration at the way his case has been managed. The parole document reveals that, before Gazley was released from penitentiary in December, another inmate accused Gazley of sexually assaulting him.

The parole board decided to set Gazley free again because it concluded that he does not presently pose “a substantial risk of reoffending.”

“You are clearly a challenge for your [case management team] to manage,” the board stated. “You are argumentative and oppositional but to date you have apparently not breached any of your special conditions or disregarded the clear instructions of your CMT to the point that you have become unmanageable or that you were preparing to do so.”

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The written record of the decision by the Parole Board of Canada April 21, 2016, lifting the suspension of Gazley’s release:

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» Listen to Gazley in manipulation mode in Episode 4 of the Cancrime podcast
» Gazley’s parole records from 2013-16

Killer James Giff convinced the parole board he’s not a threat to reoffend if given the least restrictive form of freedom from prison but, in an unusual step, the board barred the murderer from accessing social media such as Facebook and Instagram. Giff, who raped and stabbed a 16-year-old girl, then left her to die in a snowbank, was granted full parole, a form of early release from penitentiary that permits him to live on his own, without direct daily supervision. It’s a big step for a criminal once classified as a sadist, and who spent most of the past 30 years behind bars. The parole board decided, after a hearing July 7, that Giff won’t present an “undue risk to society” but it imposed several special conditions on his full parole (read them all in the parole document, after the jump). Giff has been living and working in Montreal.

Giff was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, after he raped and stabbed to death Heather Fraser, 16, in Smiths Falls, a small town in eastern Ontario, in 1985. Giff told me, in the only interview he’s ever granted, that Heather was a random target, a victim of his uncontrollable rage to kill and his furious hatred of women. He had intended to kill his girlfriend at the time, Annette Rogers. Giff committed the murder when he was 17 and he insists that he has changed.

A recent edition of the Cancrime podcast features an interview with Rogers. The accompanying story features a detailed account of the murder of Heather Fraser and the investigation that led to Giff’s arrrest and conviction. The story includes crime scene photos and other key documents available exclusively on Cancrime.

All of the decisions made by the parole board in Giff’s case are available in the PAROLE RECORDS library.

Here’s the written record of the decision made July 7, 2016, granting Giff full parole:

More than 40 years after Richard Ambrose (inset) was sentenced to hang for murdering two New Brunswick police officers, he is continuing to deny that he shot the victims. At a hearing in British Columbia this month, Ambrose, 68, told the parole board that he was only hired to “bury something” – he just didn’t know ‘something’ was the bodies of two policemen, Const. Michael O’Leary and Cpl. Aurele Bourgeois of the Moncton police department. At a hearing February 1 (read parole document, after the jump), the board refused Ambrose’s bid for full parole, noting that in the past year he has becoming increasingly hostile with prison staff and he was charged twice with breaking prison rules. Ambrose, who has changed his name to Bergeron, was ordered to remain behind bars in B.C.

The parole board says, in its recent decision, that psychological testing completed recently found that Ambrose is a moderate-high risk to reoffend. He’s considered a moderate risk for violence towards an intimate partner.

He has a long history of belligerence and threatening behaviour. The new parole record notes that “you have continued to make threats towards those you feel have wronged you.” It reveals that Ambrose made threats toward a lawyer who had worked for him. “The lawyer believed that you may be able to carry out such threats, so police and your [case management team] were both advised,” the written record of the February 1 hearing states.

Ambrose told the board that he wants to live on Vancouver Island, if he’s released, but he provided no concrete release plan. He has no community support contacts in the area. Ever the pest, Ambrose warned the parole board that he intends to fight any decisions that keep him locked up and it’s his intention to “embarrass the Board and CSC” and pursue court action. Ambrose hasn’t been successful in the past. Last year, he was ordered to pay court costs to Corrections Canada after a failed court action.

Ambrose was released from prison on day parole in 1999 but, after a fall that caused a brain injury, he assaulted an intimate partner and made threats towards others. Ambrose has sometimes claimed that he doesn’t remember the 1974 murders that put him behind bars, because of his brain injury, although his latest claim that he didn’t pull the trigger seems to suggest he remembers precisely what transpired 43 years ago. The only person who could corroborate Ambrose’s claim about his lack of culpability is conveniently dead. James Hutchison, the mastermind of the 1974 kidnapping that led to the murders of O’Leary and Bourgeois, died behind bars in 2011 at age 83.

Hutchison and Ambrose kidnapped the 14-year-old son of a wealthy Moncton restaurateur, Cy Stein, in December 1974. Stein paid a $15,000 ransom to the kidnappers, who returned the boy unharmed. O’Leary and Bourgeois were part of the police dragnet hunting the kidnappers and had been assigned to check out a suspicious car when they disappeared. 

Hutchison and Ambrose subdued the two police officers and took them to a wooded area about 25 kilometres outside Moncton, where they were shot in the head and buried in shallow graves. (Read a detailed account of the crime).

Dale Swansburg, a retired RCMP officer who caught the killers, told me in 2009 that the pair should have been hanged. Their sentences were commuted to life in prison after capital punishment was abolished in 1976.

“When they committed the crime, there was capital punishment,” Swansburg said. “It should have been carried out.”

» Previous coverage of Ambrose and Hutchison and the 1974 murders

The written record of the February 1, 2017 parole hearing:

The parole board has recommended the laying of a criminal charge against a serial sex offender living in Vancouver because he breached conditions designed to protect the community. The board also imposed new conditions on him as it struggles to control the psychopath with a 30-year record of crimes including sexual assault and accessory to murder. Donald Gazley (inset), who is living at a halfway house in Vancouver, already is subject to an onerous 10-year supervision order, a rarely used form of close observation imposed on the most dangerous criminals. Gazley, 56, was diagnosed in prison as a “classic psychopath” and is considered a high risk to commit new sex offences. His last federal penitentiary sentence expired in December 2015 and he was released to a halfway house. His 10-year supervision period began at that time. In the roughly 13 months that he has been free from prison, Gazley has been repeatedly caught engaging in worrisome behaviour that appears designed to test the boundaries of his legal leash and put him in a position to procure new victims.

In this most recent decision, November 4, 2016, the Parole Board of Canada concluded that Gazley’s recent conduct constitutes a breach of the conditions of his supervision order and he should be charged with a criminal offence. A conviction could put him back in penitentiary for two years. It’s unclear if he will be charged. The final decision rests with Crown prosecutors. Spokesmen for the Parole Board of Canada, which makes decisions in Gazley’s case, the Correctional Service, which supervises him in the community, and Vancouver Police, could not tell Cancrime if a charge has been laid or will be laid. It appears that Gazley is again free from custody.

The latest parole decision came after Gazley was arrested August 29, 2016 and his release was suspended. It was the second such suspension (read about his previous suspension) since he was released from prison in December 2015.

The parole board notes, in this latest decision, that, despite 10 supervision conditions and the requirement that Gazley live at a halfway house, he engaged in behaviour that substantially elevated his risk of reoffending.

“The Board is satisfied that no appropriate program of supervision can be established that would adequately protect society from your risk of reoffending,” the decision states.

In an attempt to rein in Gazley, the parole board imposed two new conditions to his supervision order: he is forbidden from owning or possessing a computer or any other device that permits him access to the Internet, including a cellphone, unless approved by his parole supervisor and, he is not permitted to access the Internet without the direct supervision of an approved adult.

There are now 12 conditions on Gazley’s long term supervision order, up from seven when he was first freed in 2015. 

A host of troubling information about his recent activities is documented in the latest parole record:

• Gazley was seen by police meeting women at a coffee shop without reporting the meetings to his parole supervisor, as required

• he was providing legal representation to another inmate to obtain identity documents from another country, without the knowledge of his supervisors

• his cellphone was under another offender’s account

• he had established a web-based business under a different name and it was registered to another federal offender with whom he was forbidden to have contact. The business allowed people to contact him for editing work and falsely indicated he had worked with students, the federal government and non-profit organizations. 

• he had borrowed a camera from another halfway house resident to take pictures at Stanley Park

• he had communicated with a woman by email in order to obtain personal information.

Gazley is subject to onerous requirements that forbid him from initiating any friendships or relationships with women without informing his parole supervisor. He’s also barred from going near any places, such as parks, swimming pools, schools and recreational areas, where children would congregate.

Gazley’s criminal record stretches back to 1977 and includes sex crimes against children as young as 11, including girls and boys. He also has committed sex crimes against vulnerable adults.

Gazley is a chronic liar and manipulator. He confessed, during his testimony during a murder trial in Ontario in 2002, to lying “almost … all the time” when talking to police about the murder, before striking a deal for a lenient sentence in exchange for his testimony against the killer. (Learn more about Gazley’s past and psychopaths in this story and podcast).

Gazley has continued to reoffend despite going through many treatment programs during his multiple terms in prison and jail. Treatments given to sexual psychopaths “have shown little or no reduction in recidivism rates,” according to research by forensic psychologist Stephen Porter, an expert on psychopaths. His research shows that Gazley fits into a category of criminals who “can be expected to offend early, persistently, and often violently across the lifespan.”

Despite the threat Gazley poses and his resistance to treatment, top legal authorities in Ontario, where he was last prosecuted, chose not to seek to have him declared a dangerous offender. This designation could have kept him behind bars forever. Gazley was sentenced to eight years in prison in 2008 after pleading guilty in an Ottawa court to attempting to lure a 14-year-old girl into sex acts.

In 2000, Gazley was sentenced to the equivalent of 16 months in custody after he pleaded guilty to four sexual assaults on girls aged 11 to 14 in Kingston, Ontario, including a learning disabled girl he met at his son’s school. That year, he also pleaded guilty to accessory to murder and was handed a lenient 11-month sentence, in exchange for his testimony against the killer.

Gazley was convicted of sexual assault in 1985 for an attack on a 20-year-old woman with a developmental handicap. Gazley was a social worker at the group home where she lived.

The written record of the November 4, 2016 parole decision:

» Research on sexual psychopaths

» All Cancrime coverage of Gazley

Carolyn Solomon, a mother of two from Sudbury, Ontario, travelled 1,500 kilometres, past razor-wire topped steel fences and gun-toting watchtower guards, into the bowels of a federal penitentiary, to confront the man who murdered her son. Why did she do it? What did the killer say when Solomon looked into his eyes and demanded to know why he shot her son? Solomon explains in The Mother and the Murderer, Episode 8 of the Cancrime podcast (after the jump).

Solomon says she wasn’t on a “forgiveness journey” when she confronted triple murderer Michael Hector inside a Nova Scotia prison in 2013. Solomon felt that she needed to see firsthand that the career criminal was safely locked behind bars. At the meeting, held in a small room inside Springhill Institution, Solomon was the more fearsome of the pair – an aggrieved and determined mother bent on ensuring that the man who shattered her family and who has tricked the system repeatedly, remains imprisoned.

“I don’t trust them … to keep him from falling through the cracks again,” she says.

Michael Hector was on parole when he murdered 29-year-old Kevin Solomon on January 9, 1997 in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Hector murdered another man, Solomon’s roommate, Robert McCollum, that day, and, roughly a month later, he shot to death a third man, gas bar attendant Blair Aitkens, 20. Hector shot Aitkens in the head twice after robbing him of $944. Hector pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. The events sparked investigations of the correctional and parole systems that had freed a repeat offender with a history of parole violations who went on to commit three murders, while supposedly under the watchful eye of supervisors. 

The investigations produced troubling revelations. The community parole supervisor didn’t have a complete picture of Hector’s violent criminal past and didn’t check in with Hector’s family and friends. He didn’t know that Hector was spiraling out of control in the months leading up to the murders. Parole board members who freed Hector didn’t read his complete file before making their decision to turn him loose. The head of the Correctional Service at the time, Ole Ingstrup, admitted these failures, in an appearance before a parliamentary committee (Read a transcript of that hearing).

An investigation report deferred blame, asserting that not even a complete and thorough tracking of Hector’s case could have foreseen his murderous rampage.

In effect, three deaths were bloody evidence that, in many cases, Corrections experts and parole authorities are just guessing when they predict whether a violent criminal will reoffend and can be set free.

Carolyn Solomon and her son Kevin, who was 29 when he was murdered in January 1997 in Thunder Bay, Ontario, by federal parolee Michael Hector, who murdered two other men, Blair Aitkens, 20, and Robert McCollum, 29 (photos courtesy Carolyn Solomon)

Hector had been paroled from prison and jail sentences many times before the 1997 murders. He was 32 years old in 1997 but already had a lengthy criminal record stretching back to his teen years that included armed robberies, conspiracies and weapons offences. Each time he was freed, he committed new, violent crimes. In 1995, roughly halfway through a cumulative 13-year sentence, he was given full parole, the most permissive form of freedom. His most recent crime was an armed robbery of a store in Winnipeg in 1991. Records documenting the 1995 decision to parole him claimed that he had made “positive progress on his day parole,” he had “recognized the motivating factors of his past criminal behaviour” and he learned that it was necessary to “put his greed for money aside.” The record also noted that his federal record began in 1982 and was followed by “a relatively consistent pattern of increasingly serious offences.” The records suggest he didn’t have a problem with drugs and alcohol and did not have mental health problems. One psychiatrist wrote that “it is doubtful Mr. Hector will require ongoing therapy on a regular basis.” A judge would later says Hector was a psychopath – a remorseless and egocentric predator bent on self gratification at any cost.

Carolyn Solomon and the family of victim Blair Aitkens sued Corrections, the parole board and the John Howard Society, which was contracted to supervise Hector in the community. Lawyers for those Solomon sued put her through hell, she says, until they finally made a cash settlement – a paltry amount she says was a “joke” – enough only to cover her costs. It was hush money, Solomon says, designed to silence her.

Instead, she has raised her voice. Solomon joined a prominent organization based in Ottawa, the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime. Solomon is now a board member with the agency. She has given speeches and lectures and joined government-established advisory bodies. She has pushed politicians to give victims a greater role and voice in the criminal justice system and she has demanded greater access to information about criminals. Her commitment to the issue is unflinching.

She says there have been some small improvements in the way the criminal justice treats victims but, she says, it still fails many. She believes the entire system is too focused on criminals. Senior bosses, including the commissioner of the Correctional Service, don’t give, in her words, “two hoots about victims.” She says she’ll never stop pushing to balance the scales of justice in favour of victims.

Two parole records for killer Michael Hector, a 1994 decision granting him day parole (release to a halfway house) and a 1995 decision granting him full parole:

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» In a decision released in 2000, Ontario’s top court rejected Hector’s appeal. Read the decision

» The Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime provides support and information for victims and their families. You can call them at 1-877-232-2610 or contact them through their website

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