David Ennis was just denied day and full parole at a hearing held at the Bowden Institution outside Calgary.
Friend of the slain Johnson Bentley families Tammy Arishenkoff is at the hearing, and will be updating the community on what happened in the next hour.
Sept. 18, 6 a.m.
After 30 years, Tammy Arishenkoff will face the man who killed her childhood friends and cast a pall over the small community she grew up in.
Arishenkoff, along with a small group from West Kelowna, will arrive at Bowden Institution outside of Calgary, Alta., today where David Ennis—previously David Shearing—has been held since his arrest for the slaying of members of the Johnson Bentley murders.
It’s a regularly scheduled hearing for Ennis, bu t the first time Arishenkoff has had to delve into the dark memories of that time.
Facing Ennis is daunting, but Arishenkoff said felt compelled to take on the task for a number of reasons.
For one, she feels like it’s her responsibility to speak for her murdered childhood friends Janet and Karen Johnson, even if it means facing down the man who killed them.
She also wants to support their surviving family members, who have been forced to face down Ennis and relive their pain whenever a parole hearing is held.
“Or maybe it’s because I just remember the devastation of 1982,” she said, in a previous interview.
“It’s a moment frozen in time that none of us connected will ever forget. This man is evil and I want my friend and her family to have some peace. We can’t forget.”
At 53, Ennis has been in jail for more than half his life, yet, according to his parole records, said Arishenkoff, he hasn’t taken any meaningful efforts to facilitate his rehabilitation in nearly 20 years.
Knowing that he’s young enough to kill again, said Arishenkoff, is ample cause to face the discomfort at hand read her victim impact statement.
The Johnson-Bentley families went on vacation Aug. 2, 1982, when Ennis spotted
George and Edith Bentley and their daughter Jackie, 41, her husband Bob Johnson, 44, and their daughters Janet, 13, and Karen, 11.
Ennis shot the four adults immediately and then kept the girls alive a few days to sexually assault them before killing them, too.
