One of three people charged with the March 2009 slaying of two Langley residents has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 20 years.
The jail term for Roy Michael Thielen was set at the close of a two-day B.C. Supreme Court hearing in New Westminster on Thursday, Nov. 3.
Thielen had pleaded guilty in October to two counts of second-degree murder.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Robert Crawford opened his sentencing hearing by granting a prosecution request for a ban on the publication of evidence presented during the hearing.
The ban will remain in effect until the trial of two other people charged with the slaying of 36-year-old Laura Lynne Lamoureux on March 14, 2009, and the related murder of 33-year-old Marc Bontkes on March 19, 2009.
Thielen, a rugged-looking, clean-shaven man with a close-cropped haircut, arrived for his hearing in an untucked light blue-striped dress shirt and slacks.
At one point, he turned and nodded to someone he recognized in the visitor’s gallery.
More than 20 people sat in the gallery of the high-security courtroom that features a divider of bullet-proof glass between the trial chamber and where observers are seated.
As the details of the case against Thielen were presented, one person gasped and burst into tears.
Thielen was 30 when he was arrested and charged in July of last year with the killings.
Lamoureux, said to be a well-known street-level drug dealer with a history of violence, was found shot to death on the road at 50 Avenue near 202 Street in Langley City.
Bontkes, a Langley home builder, was found fatally shot in a mini-van parked in the 19500 block of Colebrook Road five days later.
Following a 16-month investigation by the regional Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT), Thielen was arrested and charged along with 26-year-old Robert David Bradshaw and a 19-year-old woman who cannot be named because she was an underage 17-year-old at the time of the crime.
