A Tsawwassen family is heading to Alberta this week in a bid to ensure the man convicted of murdering six members of their family stays behind bars.
Shelley Boden and her husband Larry, along with many other members of the family, are travelling to Bowden, Alberta, which is just south of Red Deer, for the parole hearing of David Shearing.
Shearing, who now uses his mother's maiden name, Ennis, has been behind bars since the early 1980s after admitting to killing six members of one family on a camping trip in Wells Gary Park in B.C.'s interior in August 1982.
Almost two years later he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without a chance of parole for 25 years.
Shearing stalked the family before shooting Boden's aunt and uncle, Bob and Jackie Johnson, and Jackie Johnson's parents, George and Edith Bentley. He kept the Johnsons' two daughters, Janet, 13, and Karen, 11, alive for several days and sexually assaulted them before killing them too.
This is Shearing's second bid at parole. He was denied full parole in October 2008.
Boden said the family is making the trek to Alberta for the Sept. 18 hearing to make sure Shearing stays behind bars.
"We go to make sure that he doesn't get out," she said, adding the hearings force the family to relive the nightmare of the murders.
"He's never going to be a productive member of society, so just keep him," said Larry Boden.
The couple, along with the rest of the family, has been circulating a petition, as well as collecting letters, demanding that Shearing be kept in prison for the rest of his life.
Boden and her brother will also read victim impact statements at the hearing.
