'Violence should lead to urgency': Why is double-murderer Robert Freeman allowed to delay, live happily with no consequences?

83-year-old charged with killing neighbours in the Chilliwack River Valley over a dog dispute might have mental health issues, lives freely downtown

Simon Buck is a high-profile Lower Mainland lawyer who the most murderous gangsters hire.

It doesn't get much worse than Cody Haevischer who, execution-style, murdered six people in the first degree at an apartment building in the infamous Surrey Six slaughter in 2007. Four of the victims were fellow gangsters, but two were actual innocent victims, a tradesman Ed Schellenberg and 22-year-old Christopher Mohan who were shot in the head.

What does this have to do with a double-murder by a then 83-year-old man in the Chilliwack River Valley in September 2023?

It's Simon Buck. While Buck helps Haevischer manipulate the criminal justice system by filing appeals and Charter challenges and using every trick in the book to drag out the proceedings.

Buck then took on the case of Robert Amede Freeman who shot and killed two innocent people. How would big-wig Simon Buck have time to take on a double-murder case in Chilliwack while dealing with the worst gang murder in B.C.'s history? He didn't. Perfect. Freeman hired him, Buck accepted the case, and now Freeman at his next appearance he can fire Buck who is too busy to make court dates, further delay the trial, torment his victims' family, all while Freeman lives happy and worry-free in the community.

There have been 35 court appearances over two-and-a-half years for a violent double homicide while Robert Amede Freeman lives in the community, coming and going as he pleases in his green pickup truck, smirk on his face, living in a townhouse complex near Little Mountain, unapologetic, even smug and rude to people in the courtroom.

“If everyone in the system knows this doesn't work – judges, Crown, politicians – then who is actually responsible for fixing it?" victims' son Travis Finnigan said on Friday (Feb. 27, 2026) after yet another court appearance where nothing happened.

"Right now, families like ours are paying the price for inaction."

Joy Watson-Finnigan says this level of murderous violence should lead to consequences, something that shouldn't need saying. Why is there no urgency? Why does the court allow delay after delay after delay and a murderer's release from custody despite allegations of mental illness in a man who walked out of a mobile home with a rifle literally ready to kill?

“You start asking questions you never thought you’d have to ask — are we safe in our community?” Watson-Finnigan says.

“Violent cases should move faster, and there need to be limits on delay. If other families are going through similar delays, we hope they’ll reach out. One voice is easy to ignore — many voices aren’t.”

Endless, useless, court appearances

Freeman was in BC Supreme courtroom 201 on Jan. 30, 2026, for a case management conference with his lawyer Simon Buck, Crown counsel Susan Gill, and Justice Andrea Ormiston, but he said nothing.

The 85-year-old sat in the prisoner’s box during the brief court appearance, somewhat ironically, because Freeman is not in custody despite the killing in the Baker Trails Trailer Park in the Chilliwack River Valley on Sept. 13, 2023, allegedly over the couple’s teacup Yorkie, Suzie.

Another case management conference was held on Friday (Feb. 27, 2026), where once again, nothing of substance happened for victims, victims and supporters who stood on the courthouse steps with signs decrying Freeman's ability to keep delaying the case.

Some of the signs: "Justice delayed = prolonged trauma" and "Violent case, accused free in the community."

After the murders, Freeman was quickly charged with two counts of second-degree murder, but also quickly released on bail to live with his son, Something Worth Reading learned, in a townhouse complex near downtown Chilliwack.

The longer the case lingers, the harder it is for the family of Kavaloff and Smith.

"My parents were completely innocent, loving people – cherished grandparents – whose lives were tragically cut short by a mentally unstable [neighbour], all because of a grudge over their beloved Yorkie,” Finnigan said late last year.

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Paul J. Henderson
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