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By Canadian Press

B.C. man who feared he’d harm again if freed from prison pleads guilty to murder

Sep 14, 2017 | 3:15 PM

NEW WESTMINSTER, B.C. — A man who told his parole board hearing that he feared harming someone if he was released from prison has now pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of a British Columbia teenager. 

Raymond Caissie, 43, entered the plea Thursday before Justice Gregory Bowden in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster. 

Caissie served his entire 22-year sentence for a violent sexual assault and kidnapping in Abbotsford, and had been out of prison for just 18 months in September 2014 when he was charged with the slaying of 17-year-old Serena Vermeersch. 

The teen’s body was found along railway tracks in Surrey, one day after she was reported missing.

Staff Sgt. Dale Carr with the Surrey RCMP said the community was outraged by Vermeersch’s death.

“This was a tragic and senseless act that devastated a family,” Carr said in a statement.

The detachment had issued a warning about Caissie when he was released from prison in 2013, calling him a “high-risk sexual and violent offender.”

Eight years of parole board documents made public after Vermeersch’s death revealed Caissie had refused to participate in treatment programs, repeatedly said he feared being released and thought he would reoffend.

A 2010 board decision said he spoke openly about his anxiety of returning to society and how he was more comfortable within a highly structured prison environment.

“You spoke of how you do not have the skills to live on your own, which you have never done, and how you cannot even shop for the basic necessities of life. You stated you were afraid of being returned to prison, if released, because you could not cope with the stress of living in society,” the board said in its written decision. 

Caissie later denied making those statements to a psychologist and, when he was released in March 2013 after serving his time for the Abbotsford attack, the board noted he had spent most of his adult life behind bars. 

Caissie is scheduled to be sentenced for the second-degree murder conviction on Sept. 21. (The Canadian Press, CKNW)

The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press