What is the appropriate sentence for multiple murderers?

In 1976 when the members of Canada’s Parliament and Senate were going to decide once and for all whether or not Canada should continue executing Canada’s murderers, I wrote a paper which was prepared for the members of Parliament and the Senate. One of the members of Parliament actually quoted part of what I had said in my paper during the parliamentary debates with respect to my fear that Canada may in fact execute an innocent person.

In 1980, while attending a United Nations crime conference in Caracas, I addressed the delegates about a similar concern and suggested that what might be an appropriate alternative to capital punishment would be a sentence of natural life in prison without any hope of parole. Years later in the United States, many of the states abolished the death penalty and the courts began sentencing murderers to natural life in prison without parole.

When the Canadian parliament abolished the death penalty, it decided that the alternative would be life in prison with no hope of parole until the murderer who has been convicted of first degree murder (with premeditation) has served a minimum of 25 years in prison. Then came the ‘faint hope’ clause which made it possible for such murderers serving 25 years in prison to apply to a court comprised of a judge and jury for a release from prison after serving only 15 years in prison providing that they were convicted of only having killed one person.

Now Canada does have first degree murderers who are still in prison or in a mental institution for the criminally insane who probably will never be released back into society. Here are some of the kinds of monsters I have in mind.

Robert Pickton

This monster was arrested in 2002 in Vancouver British Columbia, after the RCMP (federal police and also provincial police for B.C.) served a search warrant at his pig farm for illegal firearms. However, the investigators found more than they bargained for when they stumbled across human remains in one of the slaughter houses on the farm. In early 2002 police laid their first murder charged against Pickton which eventually lead to his property being excavated. Robert Pickton was suspected of killing over 50 prostitutes but he only claims he killed 49 because he got caught before he got the chance to do his fiftieth victim. He killed his victims, dismembered them, then gutted them and fed the remains to his pigs from 1983 to 2002 when police finally caught him. Robert was charged with killing six women and upon conviction of first degree murder; he was sentenced to life in prison in which he can only apply for parole after he has served 25 years in prison. The government decided not to proceed against him for another twenty victims in which they had DNA from the crime scene comes since everyone knows that with the six convictions, he will never be released back into society.

Clifford Olson

This sick monster was an active serial killer in and all around British Columbia in the 1980’s until being caught by police. Olson had killed 11 young people that the police knew about. They were all between the ages of 9 years to as high as 18 years. After being caught for one murder, Clifford Olson had made a deal with police to confess and show where 10 other children’s bodies were buried only if his wife received $100,000, basically $10,000 per body and confession. Clifford at the time of this deal said “The First One Is a Freebie”. The police made the deal so families could have closure about their missing loved ones. In January 1982 Olson pleaded guilty to 11 counts of first degree murders and got 11 concurrent life sentences. In 1997 Clifford Olson was eligible to apply for parole but of course his application was denied as it will always be.

Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka

These two monsters, Paul and Karla were convicted of killing three people; one of which was her sister. Their first victim was in 1990, 15-year-old Tammy Homolka, which was Karla’s baby sister. After one night of drugging and raping and video tapping the young girl, she eventually died of choking on her own vomit. Police suspected no foul play at that time. Their second victim was 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy who they kidnapped on her way home from school June 1991. This poor girl was raped and beaten by the pair for over 24 hours before Paul strangled her with an electric cord. After this, he dismembered her body and sealed her remains in concrete which he dumped in a lake. Two days later, (June 29th) the concrete had broken up and the body parts floated to the surface. Also, the couple was married the day the body parts where discovered. Their final victim was 15-year-old Kristen French. She was raped, videotaped and beaten also by the pair and finally strangled by Paul with the same electrical cord he used on his previous victim. After that, he dumped her body in an illegal garbage dump. After being caught in late 1992, (after his wife turned him in) Paul Bernardo was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and one of second degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison while his ex wife Karla Homolka got only 12 years. She would have got more but they only discovered a video of her role in the murders after she was already sentenced. It would appear that he will never be released from prison.

Russell Williams

This man was a colonel in the Canadian Armed forces who broke into the homes of many women to steal their undergarments. He later raped two women (whom he let live) and later raped and murdered two other women. He was convicted of two counts of first degree murder and of the rapes and break-ins. In October 2010, he was sentenced to life in prison and must wait 25 years before he can apply for parole. It would appear that it is unlikely that he will ever be released.

John Martin Crawford

This monster committed his first murder in 1981 two days before Christmas after meeting a woman at a bar. He was convicted of that murder and was sentenced to jail until 1989 when he was paroled. Only three years after being released, John Crawford went on to kill three more Aboriginal women in Saskatchewan. He was finally caught and convicted in 1996 of the three murders and got three concurrent life sentences and is serving his time in a Saskatchewan Penitentiary. John Crawford is also suspected of three other murders that were committed by him in Saskatoon. It is unlikely that he will ever be released from prison.

Michal Wayne McGray

This monster was convicted after being arrested on April 26, 2000 for four counts of first degree murder. Michael McGray claims he’s personally responsible for at least 16 other murders he committed. McGray will only admit and prove he did these killings if his demands are met. His demands are not to get any additional time for those crimes, and to get mental help for the voices he hears in his mind. The authorities denied all his demands. Michael claims to be responsible for murders in Halifax, Saint Johns, New Brunswick, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver and even in Seattle. There is another man who will never be released from prison.

William Patrick Fyfe

This monster was arrested on December 22nd, 1999 at a Husky Truck Stop for five counts of first degree murder against five women in or around Montreal and Quebec which all occurred between the times of 1981-1999. He claims he first killed when he was 24 in 1979. He also claims he killed four other women he’s never been charged for. All William Fyfe’s victims were age 46, 50, 52, 55 and 59. He is now serving his life sentence in a psychiatric hospital in Saskatchewan. I don’t think a psychiatric board will risk their reputation by releasing him back into society.

Alan Legere

This monster was already serving a life sentence for the brutal murder of a shop keeper when he escaped from a New Brunswick prison in 1989. While he was on the run for seven months, the small community of Miramichi lived in constant fear and its citizens were even sleeping with loaded guns. While being on the run, Alan Legere had committed multiple rapes and arsons and also four murders. New Brunswick had launched their biggest manhunt in history to find this convict before he could kill again. Alan Legere is now in a Quebec prison for multiple life sentences for the murders. He is currently 1 of only 90 prisoners to be held in Canada’s Maximum Security Special Handling Unit. It’s largely suspected there’s a fifth victim that he killed on the run but to date, Alan hasn’t been charged with any other murders. He will never be released from prison.

The cost of incarceration

Obviously, these monsters have to be kept in special cell blocks for one main reason. If they were permitted to be with the general population of the prisons, their life expectancy would be cut very short. But what does it cost the taxpayers to imprison each of these monsters in these special cell blocks? The taxpayers will be paying almost four and a half million dollars towards the incarceration costs of each of the seven of the killers I have written about if they spend 30 years in prison.

There are as many as 4,930 murderers serving life sentences in Canadian penitentiaries and it costs as much as $147,135 a year to house each one of them. That means that the taxpayers of Canada are paying as much as $72.5 million dollars each year to incarcerate these monsters. Multiply that by 10 years and that comes to $725 million dollars and multiply that by 20 years and that comes to almost a billion and a half dollars. The taxpayers pay out almost as much as three million dollars over a twenty-year period towards the incarceration costs of each of these murders.

As many as 23% of the prisoners in Canadian penitentiaries are lifers in which 20% have been convicted of first or second degree murder. The other 3% have been designated as ‘dangerous offenders’.

Would it be cheaper to simply execute them? Possibly but because there is a risk that we might execute an innocent person, the risk is not worth taking. A great many people who were convicted of murder in the United States and Canada have been later found to be innocent. This is sufficient evidence to prove my point that the risk of executing an innocent person is risky at best. There is the cost of appeals that may very well have an impact of the reason why many states abolished capital punishment. For example, the State of New Jersey spend on average, $4.2 million dollars in each case where the death penalty was appealed.

What really bothers me and I know that it bothers everyone else in Canada is that a murderers like Bernardo and Williams who killed more than one victim will become eligible to apply for parole after having served only 25 years in prison. That would mean that if they are released after having served 25 years in prison, then they really will have served no sentence for the second murder they committed.

The government is seriously considering changing that policy. This means that if passed by parliament, a murderer who kills more than one person, will receive multiple life sentences in which the sentences must be served consecutively. For two first degree murder convictions, the sentences would total 50 years before he can apply for parole. For three first degree convictions-----well, you see where I am going with this.

In Canada, a person convicted of second degree murder can be sentenced anywhere from ten years to twenty-five years in prison. If the murderer is convicted of two counts of second degree murder, then his sentence should be doubled also depending on just how horrific the murders were.

The worst example of a man getting away with multiple murders took place in Peru in the 1980s. I mentioned this in my speech before the delegates at the UN crime conference held in Caracas. The man I was talking about was convicted of murdering close to 360 children over a period of several years and because Peru’s maximum sentence for murder (irrespective of how many victims the murderer killed) was only twelve years, the man would be released in twelve years and sure enough, twelve years later, he was released.

Justice in Peru wasn’t just blind, it was also brain dead.