After 25 years, David and Elouise Lord still believe their only son, Derik, is innocent of a notorious double murder that gripped B.C. in 1990.
It’s an enduring faith that has led them here, to a rundown house on Yale Road in Chilliwack that the insurance company won’t touch.
It’s the kind of home that the neighbourhood kids might tell stories about. The yard is overgrown, the shoddy stairs near collapse. Inside, the small rooms are full of clutter, including several large cabinets stuffed with papers and documents relating to Derik’s case.
David Lord, 69, acknowledges the place is a dump. But for better or worse, it’s home. And it’s from a chair inside his congested living room, surrounded by stacks of DVDs and cassette tapes, that Lord recounts his theories of the events surrounding the Oct. 5, 1990 murders of Doris Leatherbarrow, 69, and her daughter, Sharon Huenemann, 47.
“We knew the day after the murders took place because Derik was friends with Darren Huenemann,” Lord begins.
“So Darren Huenemann had called Derik and said his mother had been murdered. So it had nothing to do with us, I mean, it had nothing to do with Derik, either, but we knew the day after she was murdered.”
It was 25 years ago Monday that Leatherbarrow and Huenemann were brutally murdered inside Leatherbarrow’s Tsawwassen home as part of a twisted inheritance plot orchestrated by Darren Huenemann, their charming 18-year-old grandson and son, and carried out by two of his classmates at Saanich’s Mount Douglas secondary school: Derik Lord, then 17, and David Muir, 16.
Lord and Muir, from Saanich, had each been promised a slice of Huenemann’s estimated $4 million inheritance in the form of a monthly allowance, as well as other gifts, such as a car and property, in exchange for carrying out the hit.
On the night of Oct. 5, 1990, the two Saanich teens took the ferry to Tsawwassen and knocked on Leatherbarrow’s door. Recognized as friends of Darren, they were welcomed in and offered dinner. Lord and Muir acted quickly, using crowbars and knives to kill the two women, and then staging a break and enter.
But instead of riches, all three boys were handed life sentences.
The violent murders rank among B.C.’s most chilling and infuriating, in great part because Derik Lord continues to believe he was wrongfully convicted, despite a confession from Muir and a stack of compelling evidence. In 1992, Lord was sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 10 years. It’s where he has remained ever since.
His claims of innocence have positioned him at odds with his two co-accused and bankrupted his fiercely loyal parents, who estimate they’ve spent $800,000 in legal bills over the years. His campaign has also ensured a regular flow of headlines over the past 10 years during which he’s been eligible for parole — the latest hearing another unsuccessful, and emotionally charged, event this past March.
By contrast, Muir, who at the time of the killings was a cherub-faced 16 year old, admitted his guilt and was granted full parole in 2003. He’s lived a quiet life ever since.
Huenemann, meanwhile, who was sentenced in 1991 to life in prison, became eligible for full parole this year. By his request, a parole hearing scheduled for this month was postponed until 2016, according to the Parole Board of Canada. According to a newspaper report from 2003, he has also admitted to his role in the murders, after years of denial. It’s believed he’s in Quebec.
Decades on, the case continues to illicit a raw rage from the victims’ families, many of whom have dutifully attended all of Lord’s parole hearings. Over the years, Ed Beketa and John Kriss, relatives of the victims, have asked themselves countless times why Derik Lord doesn’t just admit his guilt. Their words of grief and anger have been a regular feature of Lord’s parole hearings.
“I hope they never get out,” Kriss, Leatherbarrow’s 87-year-old brother, says of Lord and Huenemann. “It’s very hard to believe how two bullies, strong kids, could take two crowbars and then club somebody and slit their throats. These were frail women — it’s just beyond me. The victims, the people they killed, don’t get any parole. They shouldn’t get out.”
Kriss speaks with a blunt anger when remembering the past. He says he enjoyed a close and loving relationship with his sister, with whom he was in business. The murders hit the family hard, he says, and caused deep divisions. He remembers his nephew as a spoiled kid who was handed everything — from a car to nice clothes to cash — by an overindulgent grandmother and mother.
“It never goes away, it’s always there,” says Beketa, Leatherbarrow’s brother-in-law. “It has definitely affected the whole family.”
So far, Lord’s inability to admit his involvement in the crimes has been a barrier to his receiving parole, despite some noted progress in his correctional plans, records show. During his most recent appearance before the parole board, he was again assessed as a moderate risk to reoffend, primarily because of his “inability to discuss” his role in the crimes.
“The board cannot know whether you are innocent or in denial, but the reliable and persuasive evidence is that you are guilty of two homicides,” the latest parole records read.
“We have tried to get some understanding of your denial, and the factual basis upon which you make it, because it goes without any doubt that someone who is capable of a well-planned and deliberate ‘contract killing’ of vulnerable persons could conceivably be quite capable of doing something like that again.”
Lord’s father maintains that such conclusions baffle him. While he accepts there was a plan, he says it didn’t involve his son or the other two boys.
His theories have been well aired in the past. He acknowledges they are awkward-sounding tough to swallow. An articulate man with a long grey beard, Lord pitches a version of events involving spies, a government coverup, police incompetence, and nunchuks.
It’s a hard story to believe, Lord acknowledges, but one supported by his reading of the facts, including his wife’s claim that their son was home the night of the murders. As he speaks, various versions of Derik Lord’s face stare from pictures mounted on the walls, the images collectively telling his story of 20 years behind bars.
“Why admit to a murder you didn’t commit, so you can get out prison?” Lord asks. “That’s what David Muir did. He spent 10 years in prison and he got out. Derik is now 22 years in prison. Why would someone submit themselves to that unless they were innocent of the crime?”
Lord doesn’t believe, as has been suggested, that his son, who remains incarcerated at the Matsqui Institution, can’t admit his guilt because of all the support he’s received from his family. Before the murders, the Lords lived a relatively comfortable life in Saanich, where they owned a home and the father worked as an electrician. With zero savings, they now rely on their small pensions.
Until recently, a Free Derik Lord Facebook page, featuring regular posts from his mom and partner, was actively chronicling his family’s pursuit of justice. Among the posts are updates on some of the woodwork projects Lord has made and sold to prison staff, and pictures of Lord with his partner, mom and young son.
David Lord says he understands the victims’ frustrations, but maintains their anger is misdirected. In the meantime, he has no intention of giving up his fight, although it remains unclear what legal option the family has left.
“They have a right to be (angry), they lost their relatives,” says Lord. “But it wasn’t my son who killed them.”
Ian Stabler’s voice trails off as his mind searches the past for details of a murder case he worked 25 years ago while a detective with the Delta Police Department. Somewhere in the background a TV is on, its volume turned low. For a brief moment, it’s the only thing that can be heard over the phone line. A beat or two passes. Then Stabler, having found the thread he was searching for, begins.
“It is a long time ago and you do forget a lot of things,” Stabler says. “It was different because it was two dead people, with their throats slit and stuff. It was a shock. Anybody would be shocked that a person would plan to kill mother and grandmother. I mean, how many people do you know who have done that?”
Stabler was one of the lead detectives in the Leatherbarrow/Huenemann murders, following the trail of evidence that ultimately led to the trio of teens. While time has taken away some of the details, Stabler, who retired from the force 12 years ago, can still recount how Lord and Muir were identified coming over on the ferry, and the damning testimony Huenemann’s girlfriend provided.
In his mind, there is no question about what happened. And, like Ed Beketa and John Kriss, he can’t understand why Lord and his parents continue to plead innocence.
“What are they hoping for? What is the hope there?” Stabler asked “He’s done 20 years in jail already. I don’t understand why he wouldn’t want to get it off his chest and get going again. He’s still a young man.”
Lord and Huenemann both declined to be interviewed for this story, as did Muir, who politely turned down an offer to meet a Province reporter.
“I’ve never really felt that I have a story that needs further telling,” Muir wrote in an email. “And there will never be redemption for all the victims of this tragedy.”
