A Vancouver Island killer who boasted of torturing his victims has been sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 23 years for the second-degree murders of two men.
"These acts were a manifestation of incomprehensible evil," B.C. Supreme Court Justice James Williams said Friday as he sentenced Darcy Kozak for the murders of Kenneth Robinson, a 45-year-old disabled, homeless Nanaimo man, and Kenneth Leask, 44, a tree faller from Powell River.
"These offences are that rare case which would warrant the imposition of the maximum period of parole ineligibility."
As Kozak was sentenced, Leask's youngest daughter, Hailey, screamed at Kozak, "You f---ing killed my dad."
Last month, Kozak, a 40-year-old former Victoria man, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder and one count of manslaughter for his involvement in the death of Luc Dulude, 49, of Quebec.
Robinson was confined and tortured for several days in Kozak's Shawnigan Lake-area trailer in May 2007, in retaliation for taking a truck. He was strung up, stabbed, burned and beaten with pliers, bolt cutters and his own walking stick, before being left, still breathing, under a tarp, where he died.
The following year, Leask, who had raised Kozak's ire for spending $5,000 he'd been given to start a marijuana grow-op, was strung upside down and beaten for several days with a hammer and pliers. Kozak and his friend Robert Cook eventually smothered Leask with a plastic bag. His body was weighed down by a bucket filled with concrete and dumped in the ocean off Campbell River.
Kozak admitted that in the fall of 2008, he planned for a week to kill jail-friend Dulude, who was shot in the abdomen by Cook when he turned up at a garage on a Campbell River property.
He was wrapped in plastic while he was still alive and his body stowed in a metal pickup truck box. The body was later found by the RCMP in an old bakery on the property.
Williams called Kozak's crimes sadistic, but noted second-degree murder sentences with the maximum parole ineligibility of 25 years are unusual and include cases like Robert Pickton, whom he also sentenced.
In setting parole eligibility at 23 years, Williams said he considered Kozak's guilty pleas, which meant the victims' families didn't have to testify in court. He imposed a concurrent 11-year sentence for Dulude's death.
"Although the victims had seen their share of trouble in life and law, they were members of our society. They had families. They were loved by others. They deserved basic dignity, which Mr. Kozak's actions denied them," said Williams. "The lives were taken cruelly and they were disposed of like so much refuse."
Outside, an emotional Roddy Leask said his brother Kenny was a good man who loved jokes.
"When I first told my mom of Kenny's death, she said, 'Why would anyone want to hurt Kenny? He doesn't have a malicious bone in his body,' " Leask recalled.
