WATCH: A Saanich man says his family was never notified that the man who brutally murdered his sister had died. April Lawrence reports.
Wayne MacIntyre has lost his entire family in the years since his sister Debbie was brutally murdered.
“So many of my siblings gave up on life because it’s hard, it’s a hard thing,” he said.
23-year-old Debra MacIntyre was stabbed 99 times and raped with a knife in her Victoria apartment in December 1983.
26-year-old Philip Wilkin was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no parole for 25 years. That parole came up in 2014 and Wilkin was released from William Head Penitentiary. He remained in Victoria and that left the MacIntyre family on edge.
MacIntyre installed surveillance cameras on his home while his sister, who died last year, went even further.
“There were baseball bats by her door, club golf clubs by her bedroom door, she was just that afraid,” he said.
So when MacIntyre was making funeral arrangements for his brother Doug a few weeks ago, he was stunned when they told him Philip Wilkin died in November.
“I was angry. I mean, how cold can you be not to tell somebody that killed your sister, that this guy is gone now, you can relax he’s not around anymore, I was just angry,” MacIntyre said.
MacIntyre says he was told by Victim Services that the parole board was still waiting on a death certificate.
The Parole Board of Canada says it is actually the Correctional Service of Canada’s responsibility for the custody and supervision of offenders on parole and statutory release.
All MacIntyre knows is that he never got a chance to tell Doug, Debbie’s twin, the news.
“It would have been nice to put his mind at ease before he died if the parole board had at least notified us that Mr. Wilkin had passed away in November,” he said.
“I guess we kind of robbed him of that unfortunately.”
April Lawrence
