Schadenfreude or sympathy? A killer writes about injustice he faced after a vicious beating behind bars
Few tears will be shed when readers find out what got him to prison in the first place
*Warning: There is a description of a homicide in this story that many readers will find disturbing and difficult to read. I'd be worried if anyone was not upset by reading it. Skip the seventh paragraph to avoid. - PJH, May 18, 2025
I received a three-page letter in the mail a few years ago from a man who was assaulted so badly that he suffered a dozen facial fractures requiring reconstructive surgery.
The letter came via Canada Post from Agassiz. The sender's name was Ivan Plewes who explained that a brutal assault left him bloodied and unconscious. He was forced to heal without surgery because of pandemic postponements.
Then Plewes experienced what so many victims of crime do, flaws in a criminal justice system focused primarily on the accused, on criminals. Victims of crime often fall through the cracks or, at least, they are left to feel that way.
Plewes complained to me that his victim impact statement was never read to the court at the sentencing of his attacker, Joseph Junior Vienneau, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five months jail.
If you didn't read the headline or the deck to this story, and maybe even if you did, so far you might feel sympathy: A man seriously injured in a violent assault, traumatized by the incident and by his experience with the court system.
But Plewes is not your average victim. His letter came to me from Agassiz where Mountain Institution located, and where Plewes was 24 years into a life sentence for second-degree murder.
In October of 1996, Plewes was in 100 Mile House. His 18-year-old girlfriend Laura Seymour wanted to break up with him. He didn't take it well. The 21-year-old Plewes strangled Seymour to death before violently sexually assaulting the girl's body. Then he walked into the bedroom and smothered Seymour's 21-month-old son Antoni to death.
Plewes reported the deaths to police who found him soon after in the woods nearby. He was charged and later convicted of two counts of first-degree murder.
In the year 2000, Plewes’ first-degree murder conviction was overturned on appeal and a new trial was ordered, after which he was convicted of second-degree murder, a conviction for which he is still behind bars.
Having read this far regarding what Plewes did in 1996 and what happened to him behind bars in 2020, I’d like to point out that “schadenfreude” was the seventh most looked up dictionary word in 2020, according to Merriam-Webster. For those unfamiliar with schadenfreude, the German word means to derive pleasure or satisfaction from the misfortunes of others.
Now be honest: Did you experience any schadenfreude reading the above?
A quote attributed to Russian philosopher Fyodor Dostoevsky, paraphrased many times over the decades: “A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals.”
Even if incarcerated for terrible acts, those serving time are meant to be protected while behind bars. As those who work for Correctional Service Canada know all too well, it’s a challenge to protect individuals who commit crimes against children. According to a lawyer in a criminal case I wrote about in March, informants, pedophiles, and corrections officers smuggling contraband into prisons are the top three inmates most likely to be shanked.
On that note, I remember being in court covering the first trial of David Kuntz-Angel charged with sexual assault of an underage girl. On the witness stand he complained to the judge that he had his teeth knocked out at Surrey Pretrial Centre because of “things Mr. Henderson printed in the paper.”
Those who are convicted of crimes in Canada, even the most heinous kinds such as those by Ivan Plewes, are treated pretty well compared to most of the rest of the world and history. Plewes asked in his letter that I reprint it as a complaint against the justice system. I didn't. But the fact that he was allowed to write it at all, and that he is able to complain to a newspaper reporter about a flawed justice system, proves exactly the above.
I’ll leave it to the reader to decide the level of sympathy or justice that should have been meted out in this case, with the final words of Plewes in his letter to me.
“Having just started my 25th year of incarceration, it is all too easy to view myself as a social discard. Yet even given how completely the rights granted to me as a victim of crime were dismissed, I would like to believe that most Canadians believe in fairness and equality and that the rights granted to each of us as citizens of Canada are for all of us… aren’t they?”
-30-
Paul J. Henderson
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