It’s a familiar agony for Anita Johnstone, the North Saanich sister of a woman murdered in Terrace by a neighbour in a stabbing frenzy on Dec. 17, 1998.
Three times, the killer — who stabbed Linda LeFranc 83 times and was convicted of second-degree murder — has asked for his freedom. And three times, he has been turned down, to the relief of LeFranc’s family.
Now Johnstone is once again girding herself to try to persuade federal parole board members that Christopher Maurice Alexander, 31, should not be released.
Nor, she said, should he be allowed in the Victoria area, where she and LeFranc’s daughter both live. The girl, now a post-secondary student, was seven years old and alone when she found her mother’s body in their northern B.C. home.
“My sister is not coming back,” Johnstone said. “It’s not about revenge, it’s about people accepting responsibility and being accountable for their actions. … I don’t want him anywhere near me, or anybody I care about.”
Alexander, who was 17 at the time of the killing, was sentenced to life in prison. He received two days of credit for every day spent in custody prior to conviction and became eligible for full parole and release on Dec. 17, 2006.
This June — the date has not been set — Alexander will also be applying for a 60-day unescorted absence, possibly to attend a substance-abuse program in Victoria or in the Lantzville area, Johnstone said.
He is currently out on a 15-day unescorted absence — one of four he gets annually from the Kwìkwèxwelhp Healing Village, a federal institution with minimum security for Aboriginal men.
Alexander’s last request for full parole was turned down in 2012. Preparing for the fourth go-round takes a toll, Johnstone said.
“You don’t get a chance to move forward and start healing because every time you go through this, it just reawakens every time, and everything comes back to the surface and you have to acknowledge it again,” she said.
“You don’t get that opportunity to just breathe and start living life again.”
As she has done for Alexander’s previous parole applications, Johnstone started a petition — this one on change.org — asking Canadians to oppose Alexander’s full parole in the interests of public safety. More than 1,100 people have signed so far.
Johnstone believes the parole board is less apt to “slip somebody like that into our communities when they have that many people waiting on a decision,” although she said she is not suggesting the board won’t do its due diligence.
The petition will be part of the file given to parole board members preparing for the review, said Patrick Storey, spokesman for the Parole Board of Canada.
“It could work into the decision in different kinds of ways,” he said.
“The primary responsibility of the board in making a conditional release decision is to look at all the relevant and available information about the offender’s risk to reoffend.”
The law governing the board states it must give paramount consideration to public safety, Storey said. There are many offenders serving life sentences who are eligible for full parole but have not received it, he added.
Unescorted temporary absences for up to 60 days must be for a very specific purpose, such as a residential substance-abuse treatment program, Storey said.
“There has to be a very specific plan. It’s all laid out, moment to moment. And if it’s overnight, the place that he stays at has to be an approved place, and that’s usually a halfway house that’s maintained by Correctional Services of Canada or an approved treatment centre or something like that,” he said. A parole officer would also check on him.
“He’s never allowed to just roam freely,” Storey said.
Escorted passes are the decision of the warden and not uncommon, Storey said. They are often given to allow prisoners to perform work, such as shovelling snow for native elders, attending powwows or cutting wood as part of a contract, or related to schooling and rehabilitation.
“It’s not like he gets to walk down to the bus stop and jump on the bus and take off,” Storey said.
“The whole idea is to provide a gradual return to the community. The person has to be within sight and sound of their escort at all times.”
Alexander had more than 130 escorted absences last year from the isolated healing village near Mission where he is incarcerated, and a total of 60 days unescorted, Johnstone said.
While her parents in Kitimat are notified of Alexander’s every absence, Johnstone chooses not to hear — it’s too upsetting to know that he’s getting out so much, she said. Instead, she has asked to be notified of his absences only when he will be in parts of the Lower Mainland that she frequently visits.
Should parole be granted, Alexander could be released back into society as early as July 2013, she said.
It’s a prospect that horrifies Johnstone, who believes — based on seeing him over the years, from before his arrest to previous parole hearings — that Alexander is without remorse and remains a threat to society.
“He had absolutely no empathy for my sister whatsoever, or her child,” she said.
Alexander took a hunting knife and gained access to LeFranc’s locked apartment, viciously stabbing his neighbour, who had likely fallen asleep watching TV on the couch.
After the stabbing, he went home, hid the knife and gloves in a tape deck, washed his clothes and went back and wiped down LeFranc’s residence, Johnstone said. Yet, he maintained he was too drunk to remember the crime, she said.
Alexander was not arrested until a year after LeFranc was killed.
“He actually showed up at the funeral, wearing sunglasses,” Johnstone said. Alexander’s signature in the guest book, eventually matched to a missing cheque of LeFranc’s that he fraudulently cashed, contributed to his conviction.
For all her fears, she says that seeing first-hand how parole boards operate has restored her faith in the justice system. “Having gone to these parole hearings, I have been pleasantly surprised,” she said.
Had she lived, LeFranc would have turned 51 on March 18.
“I choose to celebrate her as opposed to think about the horribleness of it all,” Johnstone said.
