‘A prolonged psychotic mindset’: Chilliwack man who stabbed wife to death found not-criminally responsible due to mental disorder
BC Supreme Court justice accepts two psychiatrists' conclusion the 68-year-old was in a psychotic state in January 2024 when he attacked
“You know what’s coming,” 68-year-old J.B. said more than once to his son B. with whom he lived along with his wife, S. in the early days of January 2024.
Sometimes he would say the opposite: “You don't know what's coming.”
B. did not know what was coming, nor did J.B.'s wife, S., nor did J.B.'s family doctor nor Chilliwack RCMP officers nor a psychiatric nurse visited. On more than one occasion it was determined J.B. did not meet the criteria for detention under the Mental Health Act.
None of the family can be named due to a publication ban on information that could identify S., and identifying J.B. would identify S.
Clearly something was very wrong, but in hindsight it’s all too easy to claim someone should have seen signs of an imminent tragedy.
In the months leading up to January 2024, J.B. began to eat less. He would put his nose close to food and smell it. He would sit on his bed with his eyes closed and his head down. Sometimes, he would stare at his wife with a blank expression Frequently he would sit on the stairs overlooking the front door window. Sometimes he would stay up all night, peeking through the curtains.
He told his son that the neighbours were operatives for the police.
On Jan. 8, when J.B. came to B.'s room at 1 a.m. requesting to see his wallet, B. called the police for mental health assistance, but it was determined he did not meet the criteria for apprehension under the Mental Health Act.
On Jan. 11, B. took J.B. to the family doctor accompanied by the daughter M. who lived elsewhere.
“You know you've been a really good daughter but I don't want you involved in this,” J.B. told M., with tears in his eyes that day. “I want you to carry on your life. You have your family."
The statements were part of an increasing pattern of unusual behaviour, sometimes paranoid, seemingly irrational and, in hindsight, likely psychotic.
At the doctor visit, J.B. was quiet and offered up little information. He was prescribed a low dose of an antipsychotic medication (generic name quetiapine) to help him sleep. A day later, B. called 911 because his father’s behaviour grew increasingly bizarre and because he was not taking the medication, one time putting a pill in his mouth but then spitting it out.
RCMP attended that day, Jan. 12, with a registered psychiatric nurse. B. said he did not have safety concerns and because there seemed to be no indication that J.B. was a threat to himself or others, it was determined yet again that he did not qualify for apprhension due to mental health.
J.B. spent the next five days sitting and ruminating. He would look out the windows frequently as if awaiting something or someone.
The murder
Just before 1 p.m. on Jan. 17, 2024, J.B. got a knife and started to attack his wife. She screamed at him to stop and yelled for help. B. heard the screams, came running and pulled his father to the floor, took away the knife and told him to "stay down," while S. called 911.
"Get off of me. Let go of the knife," S. told her husband as she bled on the floor. “[J.] snap out of it right now."
He did not snap out of it.
Instead, he got away, went to the kitchen and got a larger, sharper knife and continued his attack on S. His son continued to try to save his mother by blocking the knife blows with his hands, but J.B. slashed her neck.
"He slashed my fucking throat," she told the 911 call taker.
While vainly trying to save his mother, B. was stabbed in the hands repeatedly. Eventually, J.B. stabbed S. through the throat. She died shortly after, prior to police arriving. B. saw his mother's eyes close after she was stabbed.
"I killed her," J.B. said, the only words he spoke from the start of the attack up until that point, according to 37-year-old B.’s account.
When police arrived at 1:09 p.m., Chilliwack RCMP members located S., J.B., and B. lying in a pool of blood under the dining room table. S. was face down with her legs intertwined with J.B.'s legs. J.B. was not co-operative as police tried to arrest him nor did he fight or speak. Officers said he seemed catatonic, absent.
At approximately 1:12 p.m., police told him he was under arrest for murder, stood him up, and walked him across the room. He did not say a word but was compliant enough. He did not answer questions or respond regarding whether or not he understood his rights.
Police report that he said nothing until after 2 p.m. when he was read the arrest script, including his right to speak to a lawyer of his choice.
“I just want to be alone with my thoughts,” J.B. murmured quietly.
When interviewed later that day and the next, J.B. did not provide a version of the events but he did say the killing wasn't planned.
"In my mind, I think I was thinking that somebody was going to take them, take her, and hurt them. That's all. I just wanted – just stop them from taking them."
Publication bans
After an investigation by the Lower Mainland’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT), J.B. was charged with the second-degree murder of his 66-year-old wife.
J.B. remained in custody throughout 2024 into 2025. On March 28, 2025, he appeared on a monitor in video streamed into BC Supreme Court room 202 at the Chilliwack Law Courts. When asked if he understood the proceedings, he said only one word.
“Yes.”
That day in court his lawyer Ondine Snowden and Crown counsel Aaron Burns attended, the latter telling the judge there would be an agreed statement of facts in the case, and they had ordered a forensic assessment in an advance of a finding of not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder, usually referred to as NCR.
J.B. actually was involuntarily admitted to Chilliwack General Hospital’s psychiatric ward more than two decades prior on Dec. 23, 2002, where he remained under the Mental Health Act until Jan. 23, 2003.
The doctor who saw J.B. during admission said the then 46-year-old believed that his house was being foreclosed and that people, incuding his family doctor, were following him and people were getting information about him.
After returning home he went back to work living a somewhat normal life up until 2023.
After killing his wife on Jan. 17, 2024, J.B. was charged with murder, which requires that an accused intended to kill their victim or, at a minimum, intended to cause bodily harm and was reckless as to whether death occurred.
Crown and defence agreed in their statement of facts that J.B. caused S.’s death and that he intended to do so. Absent a finding of NCR, an accused would be convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for between 10 and 25 years. NCR, however, under section 16 of the criminal code states that a person is not criminally responsible for an act “made while suffering from a mental disorder that rendered the person incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act or omission or of knowing that it was wrong.”
All persons charged with crimes are presumed to be criminally responsible. The burden of proof for NCR lies with the party that raises the issue.
Mental disorder is defined in section 2 of the criminal code, and the case law of R. v. Cooper from 1980 defines it for the purposes of NCR as: “…any illness, disorder, or abnormal condition which impairs the human mind and its functioning, excluding . . . self-induced states . . . [for example drugs or alcohol or] transitory mental states such as . . . a concussion.”
Once it is determined there is a mental disorder, a second aspect of the analysis requires an assessment of the accused's capacity to appreciate what was done was wrong. And not just legally wrong but morally wrong, a distinction relied upon in case law from 1990 in R. V. Chaulk.
Two assessments find psychopathy
Two different psychiatrists provided assessments of J.B. for the court leading up to, during, and after the offence.
Dr. Shabehram Lohrasbe determined that J.B. was suffering from a psychosis due to mental disorder and he was acutely and severely psychotic on the date of the offence.
“[J.B.] was in a prolonged psychotic mindset at and around the time he killed his wife, S.,” according to Dr. Lohrasbe’s conclusion. “Within that mindset, he thought that he was saving her from a fate worse than death. Within his psychosis, it is unlikely that he was capable of knowing that his actions were morally wrong in the real world.”
Dr. Mandeep Saini also interviewed J.B. about the man's state of mind in the lead-up to the index offence. Why would someone kill their wife to save them?
“I did not want her to be tortured, and I thougth she was being tortured,” J.B. told Dr. Saini. “It was all that day, January the 17. I think it was that day I put it all together.”
Dr. Saini concludeed that J.B. “had a major depressive disorder with mood-incongruent psychotic features that predated the charge,” and that while J.B. might have the intellectual ability to know right from wrong, his depressive disorder and delusions compromised his ability to understand moral wrongfulness.
BC Supreme Court Justice Richard Fowler concluded in a July 11, 2025 decision that J.B. was not criminally responsible on account of mental disorder for the murder of his wife.
J.B. was in custody since arrest, detained by the court up until this decision, and Justice Fowler maintained the detention order pending a decision by the BC Review Board, the independent tribunal in British Columbia that oversees the legal process for people unfit to stand trial or found to be NCR. Every province has a board of this kind established by the Criminal Code of Canada under section 672.38 (1).
This means that while J.B. was found to not be criminally responsible, he remains detained under the Mental Health Act. He will be forced to live in a mental health facility and undergo tratment until such time ast he BC Review Board (BCRB) believes he can safely be released.
“The Review Board must take into account the safety of the public, which is the paramount consideration, the mental condition of the accused, the reintegration of the accused into society, and the other needs of the accused,” according to the BCRB’s website.
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Paul J. Henderson
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