Elwin Wheeler holds a photograph of his daughter, Deanne Wheeler, who was 26 when she was murdered on Dec. 30, 2014, by her ex-boyfriend, Christopher Butler.
A 41-year-old man who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder alternated in B.C. Supreme Court between accepting responsibility for killing his former girlfriend to blaming it on what her claimed was her demonic possession.
The first day of what was intended to be a three-day sentence hearing ended before noon on Wednesday after the Crown presented facts in the death last year of 26-year-old Deanne Wheeler.
Christopher Butler has maintained his guilt from his first interaction with police to his most recent court appearance.
He also refused legal assistance and has represented himself in court.
“In under nine minutes, Mr. Butler strangled Ms. Wheeler with a wire and then a fan cord, hit her in the head with a rock at least four times then stabbed her seven times,” said prosecutor Alex Janse, who also read text messages into court portraying Butler as a jealous ex-boyfriend bent on control.
Butler coaxed his former girlfriend to his Cherry Avenue apartment in North Kamloops on Dec. 30, 2014.
This came after weeks of jealous and sometimes threatening texts.
Janse said he coaxed her to meet him on the pretext they should remain friends.
Butler called 911 immediately after Wheeler died.
He told police he strangled Wheeler, describing her as a demon and stating: “When it entered my apartment, I set down the coffee it had bought. We went forward into the living room. It turned around and said, ‘You will no longer call me Satan’ and its eyes went huge and black . . . I feared for my life and said, ‘Die, demon, die.’”
A FATHER’S ANGUISH
Butler complained in court there was no way to test Wheeler for possession by evil spirits, comparing it to the ability of medical staff to determine rabies in a dog by killing it and then testing for the virus.
Butler told an undercover police operator placed in the jail immediately after his arrest that he knew before Wheeler arrived at his apartment that he would kill her.
“He also commented that demons breathe the same air that we do and that you have to cut off the air supply,” Janse said.
Despite those statements to police, Butler told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Keith Bracken he understands his crime.
“I did kill Deanna Wheeler. That’s why I’m here to take responsibility,” he said at the end of the Crown’s statement of facts.
“Deanna was a good person. She was a human being. I don’t understand,” Butler said.
“At the same time, I’m a victim in this.”
Janse said the victim’s friends and family noticed Butler increasingly jealous and stalking Wheeler before her murder.
On three occasions, he went to her home in the middle of the night where she lived with her parents. He was turned away one time by Wheeler’s father.
At another time, he wrote, “I love you” all over a truck in front of her house. He also left notes and phoned her repeatedly.
Bracken will decide on Thursday morning between three options: send Butler for a psychiatric assessment to help determine whether he is not criminally responsible by reason of a mental disorder; reject Butler’s guilty plea and order a trial; or sentence him for second-degree murder.
The Crown did not suggest a range of sentencing. The mandatory minimum before parole on the life sentence for second-degree murder is 10 years in jail.
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