TODAY’S WEATHER
NO END IN SIGHT TO STRIKE
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Delving into just what it is the folks in red do downtown
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KAMLOOPS THIS WEEK THURSDAY
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AUGUST 6, 2015 | Volume 28 No. 94
OH, DEER, WHAT A HURDLE!
Westsyde Road is a favourite route for deer visiting and leaving The Dunes at Kamloops Golf Club.This youngster jumped a fence with ease and headed for the hills on the other side of the busy road. Drivers — keep an eye out for these neighbours as they don’t tend to use crosswalks. GORDON GORE PHOTO
ELECTION2015 #elxn42 #kamloops
Join the coverage Kamloops This Week begins its federal-election coverage this week — and we want you to be part of the debate. While we will continue to cover the campaign as it evolves, we also want to know what issues are on your mind. To that end, we are inviting KTW readers to send us questions they have for the four candidates — Green Matt Greenwood, Conservative Cathy McLeod, Liberal Steve Powrie and New Democrat Bill Sundhu. We will feature a reader’s question, and candidates’ answers, each week. Send your campaign queries to editor@ kamloopsthisweek.com. • KTW is also rolling out a weekly Campaign Issues feature, in which we quiz the quartet of would-be MPs on specific issue each week. See tomorrow’s edition of KTW for the first instalment of Campaign Issues.
Killer claims his ex-girlfriend was ‘demonic’ CAM FORTEMS
STAFF REPORTER
cam@kamloopsthisweek.com
A 41-year-old man who pleaded guilty to seconddegree murder alternated in B.C. Supreme Court between accepting responsibility for killing his former girlfriend to blaming it on what he claimed was her demonic possession. The first day of what was intended to be a three-day sentence hearing ended before noon yesterday after the Crown presented facts in the death last year of 26-year-old Deanne Wheeler. Butler has maintained his
guilt from his first interaction with police to his most recent court appearance. He also refused legal assistance and has represented himself in court. “In under nine minutes, Mr. Butler strangled Ms. Wheeler with a wire and then a fan cord, hit her in the head with a rock at least four times then stabbed her seven times,” said prosecutor Alex Janse, who also read text messages into court portraying Butler as a jealous ex-boyfriend bent on control. Butler coaxed his former girlfriend to his Cherry Avenue apartment in North Kamloops on Dec. 30, 2014.
This came after weeks of jealous and sometimes threatening texts. Janse said he coaxed her to meet him on the pretext they should remain friends. Butler called 911 immediately after Wheeler died. He told police he strangled Wheeler, describing her as a demon and stating: “When it entered my apartment, I set down the coffee it had bought. “We went forward into the living room. It turned around and said, ‘You will no longer call me Satan’ and its eyes went huge and black . . . I feared for my life and said, ‘Die, demon, die.’” Butler complained in
DEANNE WHEELER: 26-year-old was slain by her former boyfriend.
court there was no way to test Wheeler for possession by evil spirits, comparing it to the ability of medical staff to determine rabies in a dog by killing it and then testing for the virus.
Butler told an undercover police operator placed in jail immediately after his arrest that he knew before Wheeler arrived at his apartment that he would kill her. “He also commented that demons breathe the same air that we do and that you have to cut off the air supply,” Janse said. Despite those statements to police, Butler told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Keith Bracken he understands his crime. “I did kill Deanna Wheeler. That’s why I’m here to take responsibility,” he said at end of the Crown’s statement of facts. See JUDGE, A11
MIDNIGHT SUN 2015 ART & FILM FESTIVAL • AUG 7–9
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