|
Slow-witted and hyperactive, Canadian Wesley Evans missed long months of schooling due to erratic behavior which made attendance impossible. Hit by a truck at age nine, he suffered severe head injuries that left him comatose for eight days, with temporary paralysis of his left side upon regaining consciousness.
Released from the hospital after four months of therapy, Evans thereafter walked with a pronounced limp, communicating in slurred speech. Eighteen months later, he was burned over twenty percent of his body while playing with a cigarette lighter. He grew up obsessed with the notion that girls -- and later, women -- were laughing at his scars. In time, his hidden rage would reach a lethal boiling point.
On November 24, 1984, Lavonne Willems, age 27, of Vancouver, was found dead in a home she was watching for friends, then on vacation overseas. She had been murdered in the bedroom, stabbed a total of twenty-five times, her pants unbuckled and open at the waist. Detectives theorized a sexual motive, but they had no suspect in the case.
On March 31, 1985, realtor Beverly Seto, 39, hosted an open house for potential customers in Matsqui, British Columbia, a Vancouver suburb. When she failed to come home for supper, her husband dropped by the empty house and found her car outside, the door ajar. A light was burning in the kitchen, though the guests had long departed. Moving through the silent rooms, he found his wife in the bedroom, her throat slashed, skirt bunched up around her waist. The coroner reported Seto had been raped, then stabbed a minimum of twenty times.
In late July, police received a tip which named a young man from the Matsqui neighborhood as Seto's killer. He was held for questioning in early August 1985, but officers found nothing to connect him with the murder. Seeking further information on their suspect, they detained a friend, 21-year-old Wesley Evans, on marijuana charges, hoping they could pressure him for details of the suspect's movements. What they got instead, was a surprise confession to the crime.
In custody, their prisoner admitted killing Seto, and went on to offer details of the Willems murder. Homicide investigators checked their street maps, startled to discover Evans lived a short four blocks from the location of the Seto slaying, barely eight blocks from the house where Willems died.
The opening remarks of Wesley's trial were heard on January 16, 1986; convicted two weeks later, he was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment, required to serve a minimum of twenty-five years before he would be eligible for parole.
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial
Killers
|
