Killer of 2 Indigenous women out on release now back in prison

WINNIPEG — A Winnipeg man convicted of killing two First Nations women more than a decade ago — with charges stayed in a third slaying — has been sent back to prison less than a year after he left under conditions.

Parole Board of Canada officials revoked 67-year-old Shawn Lamb’s statutory release after a hearing last week.

“Your actions are not beyond your control, yet you continue to wilfully make poor decisions that place the public at risk,” board member Arun Kundu-Thomsen wrote in a decision released this week.

Lamb gained statutory release — a legislated conditional release most federal inmates automatically qualify for after serving two-thirds of their sentence — in November last year and lived in several Ontario facilities for federal offenders.

The killer was charged with three counts of second-degree murder in 2012, but in a plea deal, admitted to manslaughter in the deaths of Lorna Blacksmith, 18, and Carolyn Sinclair, 25. He was sentenced to 20 years.

Lamb denied killing Tanya Nepinak, who was 31 when she disappeared in 2011. The charge against him in Nepinak’s death was stayed after the Crown cited a lack of evidence.

Concerns were raised about Lamb’s conduct in the community just months after he left prison.

In mid-March his behaviour began to deteriorate after his case-management team recommended he remain in a community facility for another year, the parole board’s written decision said.

He yelled at members of the team and expressed frustration at being ordered to stay in a halfway house or similar facility.

Lamb said he wanted to volunteer with homeless people in encampments, but no agency would support the work.

He then went to a hospital, seeking to volunteer, but when he found out he was not eligible to do so, began “volunteering” on his own, pushing people around the hospital in their wheelchairs.

He was told to immediately stop doing so.

In May, police observed Lamb — who had signed out of his facility to go to Walmart and a pharmacy — go to an apartment, before taking a bus back to the area of the facility, where he was spotted talking with people and hugging a woman outside.

That same day, Lamb signed out of the halfway house to volunteer at a church, but before he arrived, police watched him walking around the unspecified Ontario community’s downtown engaging in “hand-to-hand transactions,” giving people small plastic bags with white substances in exchange for cash, the decision said.

Staff at his halfway house noted several people, including women, had stopped by in the days and weeks before and asked for him.

He was arrested on a warrant and found with $500 cash. His release was suspended.

Despite strong police evidence Lamb was trafficking substances, including images of transactions, officials aren’t pursuing charges, because he wasn’t found with drugs on him.

In Lamb’s room at the facility, officials found an extra cell phone with a message on the screen from someone named “woman” that said “hey baby,’ Tylenol 3 pills, a bag with about $350 in receipts from March for a motel, condoms, $4,000 in receipts for storage-unit rentals and an envelope with pictures of nude women.

Lamb later told parole officials that he may “have been walking around for a little while handing out cigarettes, money and gift cards to the homeless population downtown,” the decision said. He denied trafficking drugs.

He admitted he had two phones and used both for messaging, but claimed that he had no relationships with women.

He claimed the nude photos had been sent to him and he printed them off, but did not take them himself.

Lamb, when asked about the motel receipts, said he didn’t want to talk about it, then later said “hypothetically” someone who had been long behind prison bars might get a hotel room to have sex, the decision said.

Lamb, asked whether he would have met the person downtown, said that’s how he would have “hypothetically” done it.

As for the storage-unit receipts, he said that he had one unit for a motorcycle, while the rest of the money was to replace a garage door he broke.

Lamb claimed he was not sure where the Tylenol 3 pills came from.

His departure from prison last year sparked outrage and fear from the families of his victims, who rallied in downtown Winnipeg on the day of his release.

Premier Wab Kinew said in November last year Lamb’s release was “not justice.”

» Winnipeg Free Press