COBBLE HILL — When Charlie and Beverley Underwood were notified in mid-August that the man who murdered and beheaded their daughter, Shannon Guyatt, 22 years ago had died in prison, they felt nothing.
Time has eased their grief and, perhaps, diminished the pain of never finding her remains.
But the death of their former son-in-law Doug Guyatt, 67, on Aug. 13 at the Pacific Institution in Abbotsford means they almost certainly will never have Shannon’s body returned to them.
“I didn’t have much of a reaction at all. I knew he was dying. I knew he was very sick. Every time he went to see a doctor, Corrections would phone us,” Charlie said Wednesday at the couple’s home on Arbutus Ridge.
“Well, you know, as a father, I wanted to kill him anyway. So there was no sense of relief. But as far as closure goes, we accepted what happened years ago and that was our closure.”
Beverley said she has also come to terms with the tragedy.
“He was dead the first time we met him. I didn’t like him at all,” she said. “But you can’t change anything, so you have to accept it.”
In October 1994, Doug Guyatt was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 15 years.
Shannon Guyatt, a 36-year-old computer programmer, disappeared after leaving work in Victoria on June 17, 1992.
Eight days later, her husband pulled a garbage bag from the ditch in front of his Colwood home containing his wife’s severed head. Her long, silver hair had been cut off.
After a year of painstaking police work, the RCMP charged Doug Guyatt, a Department of National Defence firefighter, with murdering his wife.
The couple had been having problems. In January 1992, Shannon told her husband she wanted a divorce and went to see a lawyer.
The Crown believed Doug killed Shannon to collect on a life-insurance policy to pay off the mortgage on their home on Cecil Blogg Drive.
Three days after Shannon disappeared, Doug learned he could not collect insurance without proof of death. The proof turned up in the garbage bag.
After Doug Guyatt’s conviction, the Underwoods hoped the prospect of early parole would serve as an incentive for him to tell them where their daughter’s remains were. They also offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could lead them to her body.
Over the years, investigators tried to help, interviewing Doug Guyatt in prison, trying to get information about Shannon’s remains, without success.
“The great tragedy of the case was that the fact that he never gave that up. I have no idea why,” said Don Morrison, who prosecuted the case in 1994. “Finding the rest of her body is very much like the Michael Dunahee case. It would be very nice to resolve it,”
Now 79, Charlie does want to find his daughter’s remains. He believes Shannon was buried in the woods and can’t understand why no one has stumbled across her.
They remember her as fun, beautiful and a good worker — with a bad habit of picking creepy men. Today, their lives are busy with grandchildren and their three children, Cathy, Vern and Charlie.
Shannon’s son Jason, who was 13 at the time of her death, is working in the oilpatch and doing well, said Charlie. He has a seven-year-old daughter and two-year-old twins. “Losing Shannon was terrible. But life’s a bitch and then you go on,” said Charlie. “She’s gone, but not forgotten.”
To their knowledge, Doug Guyatt never applied for parole and never admitted his guilt.
The police, coroner and the Correctional Service of Canada will review the circumstances of his death, said Samantha Cater, Pacific Institution assistant warden.
