EP 4: Keep David Shearing in Prison Part 2

[00:00:00] - [Speaker 0]
Welcome back to mishaps and mysteries. I'm your host, Cassie.

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And I'm your host, Mina.

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Our podcast explores stories of misadventures in the wild landscapes of British Columbia, Canada. This episode contains discussions of murder, violence, and pedophilia. It's a heavy story, so please take care of yourself when listening. Episode four, keep David Sheering in prison, part two.

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Today, we are continuing the story of the murder of six family members while they were on a camping trip in a beautiful quiet part of BC near Wells Gray Provincial Park in a small town of Clearwater. We're gonna go through the investigation, what happened as far as we know, and what is happening today with this case. We would encourage you to listen to our last episode so you've got the full story.

[00:01:00] - [Speaker 0]
For those who were here last week, let's do a quick refresh on where we left off. The Johnson and Bentley families were on a two week camping trip. The group consisted of Edith and George Bentley, the grandparents. Jackie, their daughter, with her husband Bob, and two daughters Karen and Janet. When Bob, with his absolutely legendary work attendance record, didn't show up to work after he was expected back, His manager reported him and his family missing to the RCMP a week later.

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The case not only shattered the nearby small town of Clearwater, but it was huge in the news across Canada. It has shocked the nation how an innocent family camping trip has ended in first mystery and later horror. The search for the Johnson and Bentleys initially began in Wells Gray Provincial Park, as that is where other family members believed that they would be meeting up. Though later in the investigation, a tip helped RCMP find where they had been camping, which was the site of the murders about 18 kilometers south of the park. And police made a point to not release this information to the public.

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The site of the murders was not where the remains were found. The search for the family and for answers led to the Johnson's car being found in Wells Creek Park up a mountain in a remote area. It was burnt with an accelerant, and unfortunately, the skeletons of the six were found inside. The camper and truck belonging to the Bentleys were still missing, and this led to a search across Canada for it, hoping it would lead to more answers. It was eventually also found in Wells Gray Park.

[00:02:51] - [Speaker 1]
It was up a different mountain and also incinerated. With the information they now have, the RCMP are investigating locals of the Clearwater area. They have a couple of pieces of holdback evidence that they're hoping will help identify the killers. The first piece is the fact that the murder site was at the old Bear Creek Prison site. And the second piece of evidence is that there was a bullet hole in the truck door.

[00:03:19] - [Speaker 1]
And that's where we left off.

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So, in interviewing the community, they came to a door and asked about the murders. The gruff man who had answered said he'd already told them that he knew nothing. But his wife questioned from behind. Aren't you gonna tell them about David and the truck that got shot up? I bet the officer's ears perked up there.

[00:03:44] - [Speaker 0]
Oh, you bet they did. But the man would not allow his wife to talk any further and told the officers they wouldn't be sharing anything more. So they left only to surveil the property later. And when the man left, they asked the wife to come down to the station. They learned from her that a man named David Sheering, who lived on a ranch near the park, had been asking specifically about how to register a stolen vehicle and how to repair a bullet hole in a door.

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So there it was, a key piece of holdback evidence.

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So they tracked down this David Shearing, a 24 year old who spent his whole life on a ranch near Clearwater until recently. He's living in Tumblr Ridge now, nearly 900 kilometers away. He's recently been in trouble with the law for a run-in with police with friends up near Dawson Creek. You can read more about this incidence and the details of his arrest and capture in the book Murder Times six, the true story of the Wells Gray Park murders by Alan r Warren. Interestingly, we read in Murder Times six that when the news broke that the truck encounter had been found, Schering was in the Dawson Creek detachment for one of his weekly appearances.

[00:05:02] - [Speaker 1]
And he actually volunteered the fact that not only was he from the area, but just how close he grew up to it and how thick the brushes, making it difficult to find things such as the burnt out car. Why do you think he shared that?

[00:05:18] - [Speaker 0]
I don't know. I guess he thought he was safe or he just didn't really think too hard about it. He didn't need to share as much as he did. Certainly seems crazy looking back on it now that he shared so much with that RCMP officer. But this was ultimately a real life foreshadowing.

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So fast forward to the investigation in Clearwater revealing his name. They track him down to Northern BC. So when Dawson Creek RCMP are contacted by the Kamloops investigative team about the murders and cheering, they came up with a strategy to bring him in before he caught on that anything was wrong. So they put surveillance on him. He comes up via bus to Dawson Creek with a friend.

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RCMP approached them and arrest his pal on an outstanding warrant. Constable Ron German plays it cool with Shearing during all of this. He doesn't arrest him, doesn't let on what's happening, but says that Dawson Creek officers wanna talk to him. When Shearing seems annoyed by this, German keeps calm and manages to get him to come along. He even stops on the drive there to pull over and look at Brokehill with him.

[00:06:30] - [Speaker 0]
I mean, kudos to him. You've got the suspected evil mass murderer in your grasp, and you're trying to get him securely in place of the detachment before he even catches on that he's a suspect. Constable German's mind must have been running at a mile a minute, all while he presented as cool as a cucumber on the outside.

[00:06:50] - [Speaker 1]
Sitting at the detachment is detective Mike Eastman. When Shering sees him, his face shows the panic because anyone who has been watching the news on the investigation would certainly recognize lead detective Eastman. So they bring him up into an interrogation room, and it doesn't take long for Shearing to break and confess to the murders. Fifteen months after the Johnsons and Bentleys went missing, their killer was finally caught. And the confession he provided outlines a level of calculated predation that is difficult to process.

[00:07:26] - [Speaker 1]
Shearing admitted he spotted the family camping on his way home one day and made the conscious decision to come back and stalk them, watching them from

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the shadows. Just horrifying. So what really happened to the Johnson Bentley family on that fateful day in August 1982? This monster waited until the two young girls, Janet and Karen, were asleep in their tent. He then came up on the four adults who are still awake at this time and gathered around the campfire.

[00:07:57] - [Speaker 0]
And he opened fire on them with his 22 caliber rifle. We won't get into the details of the brutality here, but violence rained down on the campsite then. As much as the family tried to save their lives, we know that Bob tried to run and get his gun, and Jackie ran to her daughters at the tent. The fact that this caught them completely off guard sealed their fate.

[00:08:22] - [Speaker 1]
But after he killed the adults, he didn't immediately shoot the girls. He went up to the tent and lied to the girls to try to lull them into a false sense of security. He told the girls that there had been some bad guys there and that their family went out to get help and asked him to stay with them. In telling the story, he remained delusional about being the girl's hero after, quote, saving them from the shooting. I don't know, Cass.

[00:08:50] - [Speaker 1]
Based on the girls' ages, I feel they might have known what was going on, and they must have been so scared. And what followed was a week long atrocity. So please, again, listener discretion is advised here. He kidnapped the two girls, held them hostage in the wilderness, and we can't really say what happened here. But there was torture, and ultimately, he murdered them both after about a week.

[00:09:16] - [Speaker 0]
That was his motivation for the killings. He was preying on the girls. He had seen them at the campground and his disgusting impulses brought him back with his gun. You guys should have seen my face during the chapter in Murder Times six when they go into detail on David's side of the story here. I was so pissed and disgusted, and I know that I was just sitting there frowning.

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This man was delusional and sick. We don't wanna get too into it here and give this monster's delusional thinking any more airtime.

[00:09:48] - [Speaker 1]
So they've got him. They've got a confession, and anger is prevalent everywhere. The Johnson and Bentonleys family and friends, their communities of Port Coquitlam and West Kelowna, and of course, the small town of Clearwater, which was not only thrust into the spotlight of the national news with this case, but where someone who was supposed to be one of their own committed such atrocities towards an innocent family and especially children. The anger the public felt was heavy and palpable. When he was brought into the courtroom to stand trial, they had to have security to make sure no one tried to shoot him.

[00:10:27] - [Speaker 1]
Schering pleaded guilty the six counts of second degree murder. Each sentence carried life for six concurrent terms, twenty five years each. The keyword here is concurrent. Instead of serving the sentences back to back, which would mathematically ensure he never sees the outside of a cell, the sentences were served at the same time. And in our research, we found that is generally the way the law is set up here in Canada.

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Though that doesn't sit well with many, generally, the law will default to concurrent sentencing.

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So the sentences being concurrent made him eligible for parole after twenty five years. He was sentenced in April 1984, so it's been forty two years now. But remember, David was in his twenties when he was caught, so he's only in his sixties now. He has applied for parole multiple times and been denied in 2008, 2012, and 2021. And by law, he is scheduled for another review this August 2026.

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This creates just a torturous bureaucratic loop for the surviving family members.

[00:11:40] - [Speaker 1]
And this brings us directly into the heart of the battle happening right now in 2026. Family, friends, and the general public do not want sharing released. On paper, he appeared to be a quiet farm boy. In addition to running the farm, his father actually worked at the Bear Creek Minimum Security Prison prior to it being abandoned and later becoming the site of the horrors. He knew the whole area where the story took place really well.

[00:12:09] - [Speaker 1]
So he lived at the same place basically his whole life and was unremarkably average. But the clinical diagnosis tells a very different story. He was officially diagnosed with mild psychopathy and known features of being a total sicko and a pedophile.

[00:12:25] - [Speaker 0]
You know what the description of his early life reminds me of? Robert Pickton. He lived his whole life on a family farm and was unremarkable. He didn't stand out to anyone, but was an absolutely vile human being. Even if you're a listener who's not from BC, you have probably heard of the Robert Pickton case.

[00:12:46] - [Speaker 0]
It's very famous.

[00:12:48] - [Speaker 1]
Yeah. Totally. And we are talking about deeply ingrained neurological and psychological wiring here logical wiring here. And this is why standard rehabilitation programs in the prison system don't work with these types of individuals. Many go on later to reoffend.

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We're not even armchair psychologists, but we've learned here that standard rehab relies teaching an offender to recognize the impact of their actions, build empathy, correct impulsive behavior. But for a diagnosis like this, the violence isn't a mistake, it's the motivation. Essentially, you can't rehabilitate someone like this.

[00:13:27] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. I think we as a society, we intuitively understand this. I believe generally that people can change, but my personal opinion, I don't believe it when it comes to people like sharing. The tension lies between the rigid wording of the law and the dark reality of psychopathy and sadism that led him to commit a freaking mass murder and violate children. This leaves the loved ones of the Johnson Bentley family trapped in the middle, carrying the weight of constantly having to ask that the killer who was already caught be kept behind bars for his actions.

[00:14:07] - [Speaker 0]
We read the accounts of Tamiya Rishnikov, a childhood friend of Janet, and Crystal Wolf, a relative of the victim. The psychological toll on them is immense. Every time the parole cycle comes up again, they have to rally public support and essentially relive their trauma. Their wounds can't truly heal. The family said they've been told that he could be moved to a minimum security facility and he could possibly get date parole.

[00:14:35] - [Speaker 0]
Can you even imagine?

[00:14:37] - [Speaker 1]
I really feel for them. Parole is coming up and he waived the parole panel option so it will just be a paper review. This has denied family and friends the chance to speak at a hearing, which has got to be even tougher on them. They were able to get over 63,000 signatures on the petition, and we are wishing them well with the review this August. I know we'll be following this very closely.

[00:15:03] - [Speaker 1]
Five years ago, the last parole review, Schering informed the board that if he were granted day parole, he had already researched and selected a halfway house in Calgary, Alberta to live. The idea of a man with this clinical profile quietly moving into a residential neighborhood in Calgary, where the case also isn't as well known either, obviously, predictably caused outrage. The reality is no community wants this man.

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But interestingly, there is a person that does. While in prison, he meets Heather Aspen through the exchanging of letters. She visits him. They get married in 2008, and she has been publicly defending him all these years, calling him a changed man and claiming that his heart is in the right place.

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It's hard to wrap your head around. I'm staring at this dynamic and wondering how a convicted mass murderer gets to enjoy a level of domesticity that he violently permanently stole from his victims.

[00:16:08] - [Speaker 0]
Yeah. Domestic life is right. They get conjugal visits where they get to live like a family in this house that is on the prison site. So they get two, three day visits a month. Six days a month where they can live together, cook meals, share the same bed.

[00:16:26] - [Speaker 0]
If you ask me, that sounds like freedom enough. And this just seems so wild to us. Right? But you and I also did some learning on this because it's actually a phenomenon that many will recognize. It's called Hybristophilia.

[00:16:43] - [Speaker 0]
You'll often hear it referred to as Bonnie and Clyde syndrome, which is an intense attraction to individuals who commit violent crimes. What exactly drives a person to seek out someone who has done something so objectively monstrous? Is it a delusion? Do they actually believe that they can fix them? Or is it just about proximity to danger?

[00:17:06] - [Speaker 0]
Well, it's often a mix of factors. But the point here is that shearing, well, society views him as a monster. He's doing his time, and we want him to stay there. He may have someone in his corner, but generally, most find that baffling.

[00:17:24] - [Speaker 1]
Actually, Cass, you know someone who wasn't in his corner? Sharing his brother was a police officer. Can you believe that? Though he wasn't an officer in the Clearwater area. And he actually missold him after he was caught.

[00:17:38] - [Speaker 1]
And speaking of his family, we should also note here that if you did get to sign the petition or you've googled this case, you'll note that David Shearing now goes by a different name, David Ennis. He changed it to his mother's maiden name to presumably not be as recognized. We made the decision to keep his original name in our retelling because we don't think he should get to try to hide behind a name change. So let's take a breath and look at the trajectory we've mapped out over the this two part story. We started with the anxiety of a family vanishing in the BC wilderness in 1982.

[00:18:17] - [Speaker 1]
We went through the massive and widespread investigation, the eventual capture of David Shearing, and the truth of what happened to the family as we can only know it through Shearing's retellings.

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We dove into the psychological mechanics that led to such violence and how he still gets to maintain a marriage while in prison today. And we've discussed where this case is now with a parole review coming up very, very soon.

[00:18:43] - [Speaker 1]
Which leaves us with the final lingering thought for you to ponder long after this deep dive ends. Where exactly is the line between the concept of rehabilitation and the necessity of containment when someone is this violent? Think back to that idyllic campsite in Wells Gray Park in 1982 when a darkness was hiding in the wilderness. Shouldn't society ensure it is never let out again? The Johnsons and Bentleys never made it to Jasper.

[00:19:15] - [Speaker 1]
Youth and George's dreams of many camping adventures in their new truck and camper would never be realized. The girls never got to grow up, and Bob and Jackie never got to watch

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them grow up. The impacts of this case were felt far and wide. They shocked the nation. They certainly rattled outdoor enthusiasts who presumed camping and innocent activity. In fact, Wells Grey Provincial Park and the Clearwater Adventure and Tourism Industries were shaken by this until the killer was caught.

[00:19:47] - [Speaker 0]
Before shearing was caught on the Canada Daylong Weekend in 1983, British Columbians were doing what they do best, getting outside. And while all other provincial campgrounds were full across the province, Wells Grey had only 18 out of a 105 sites occupied. People worried about a monster lurking in the bushes. A dark cloud sat over this area. The town's anger towards shearing lingered.

[00:20:16] - [Speaker 0]
In 1987, the shearing house burnt down. It was abandoned by then, and there was no power to it. So how would it have caught fire? The rumors that it was intentionally set ablaze. I doubt anyone in the town was too bothered by that.

[00:20:34] - [Speaker 1]
Today, the Johnson Bentley Memorial Aquatic Center in West Kelowna stands in their honor as a reminder of of this wonderful, loving family. Every year, the owner of Gorman Lumber, Rob Gorman, or Bob Work gives a donation to the center. If you visited this summer or Wells Gray Provincial Park, please think of Edith, George, Jackie, Bob, and Karen. They are remembered and loved by so many. If you are a family member or friend and would like to share more about them or come on the show, please reach out to us at info@mishapsandmysteries.ca.

[00:21:11] - [Speaker 0]
We try to leave you with a safety lesson at the end of each episode. In this case, it's tough because the family members did nothing wrong. This must be according to sharing. That's the only way. But in our reading, we did see multiple times references to some of the family members stopping when they thought they noticed rustling in the bushes, but they shrugged it off and carried on.

[00:21:37] - [Speaker 0]
Remember to always listen to your intuition. If something doesn't feel right, honor that feeling.

[00:21:44] - [Speaker 1]
And remember that when leaving for your outdoor adventures, you make sure you have a clear itinerary and return date and time. Ensure that with family and friends who will act if you don't return as expected. Cass and I always do this for each other when we're off on separate adventures.

[00:22:00] - [Speaker 0]
Tune in next episode for the story of a decades old plane crash that still leaves us with questions. Thanks for joining us for this episode. You can reach out to us at infomishapsandmysteries. Ca. If you enjoyed this episode please subscribe and leave us a rating and a review.

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It really helps new people find us. Be safe and never stop exploring.