Ruminations

Psychopathic Master Manipulator

"I can't even talk about this baby without crying. It's been very therapeutic so far, very calming ..."
"It's very motivating for me. It's the best therapy for me."
"What happened [to her 'partner', another convicted criminal] was very disappointing to me. I don't have the level of confidence I once had."
"I had lit the lighter by her face [teenager Reena Virk, whom Ellard was convicted of killing]. She didn't look the way she did when she was walking away. Her hair was stuck to her face. It was something [blood in the girl's eyes] you don't forget."
Kelly Ellard, 33, convicted murderer, British Columbia

Kelly Ellard was convicted of second-degree murder in the drowning death of Victoria teenager Reena Virk nearly two decades ago. She appeared at a parole hearing in Abbotsford, B.C. (CBC)

This is a woman who knows all the right things to say to elicit concern and sympathy for herself. This is a human being who shed no tears for anyone but herself. This is a woman whose merciless beating and drowning of a young girl who wanted only to be accepted, to be one of the gang, identified her for what she was and is; a troublingly malevolent psychopath. And true to her genetic predisposition she is cunning and dispassionate about everything but her own prospects in life.

She was convicted in the 1997 murder of a high school student when she was herself a student of the same high school. In that world of girls at high school, competition for attention, admiration and a following guarantees popularity and the attraction of male students. Reena Virk wanted to be part of that world, but as a girl of East Indian ancestry and the fact that she was socially clumsy, not white and beautiful, just young, was enough for others to keep her at arms' length. She wasn't wanted in their circles.

But she yearned to be, and she showed up, hoping against hope that her presence would be tolerated and the others would eventually recognize her to be someone just like them. Only that never happened. She was destined to be an outsider, and she was destined for rejection and destiny ordered that a girl who had it all, all the popularity and acceptance that Reena Virk wanted for herself too, would become so hostile to her persistence that she would lead a vicious attack on the girl that dark night when the teens met in a secluded wooded area.

While she was being beaten, Reena Virk realized, all too late that she was in the wrong place with the wrong people at the wrong time, but she was unable to escape, try as she might. As she ran desperately from those threatening and beating her she couldn't run fast enough, hampered by the injuries she had already suffered. So Kelly Ellard and a young man who became her co-accused in the murder, Warren Glowatski, caught up to the fleeing girl and she was murdered.

The young man, seeing the condition the beaten girl was in became alarmed and wanted to call for help, but Kelly Ellard refused. And she held Reena Virk's head underwater under a bridge, and drowned her. She has appeared before a parole board asking to be given some freedom. Two board members admitted that Ellard had not taken full responsibility in the murder, but felt her risk in the community could be manageable, if she were to be given "escorted temporary absences".

Several years earlier she had struck up a relationship with another convicted felon in the same prison. And amazingly, they were given conjugal visit entitlements. Out of which came a pregnancy and the eventual birth of a little boy. Her 'partner' was given parole, was told to avoid the drug scene, but he evidently reneged on his parole conditions and was taken back to prison, and they haven't had a close association since that time. He had obviously served her purpose well enough to that point.

Ellard was quick to reassure the board that her pregnancy was not planned for any underhanded purposes, to use motherhood as a measure whereby she could elicit concern for the baby and by extension herself. She has evidently convinced the board that escorted absences from prison would be of benefit for the baby so she will be permitted to leave the B.C. penal institution in the company of jail guards or other escorts four times monthly.

Permitted to take her baby to medical appointments, and to 'socialize' her son through other activities. This woman who was herself not emotionally socialized to empathize with others is now recognized as having the capacity to care for someone vulnerable, to invest nurturing in a child when she is incapable of emotional attachments. Her baby, she informed the parole board has altered her outlook on life completely, giving her confidence, hope for the future. She described the baby boy as "her child", when she wasn't referring to him as "it".

As for that fateful night back in 1997 when she took the life of an innocent, trusting girl who wanted only to be like Ellard, she explains: "I had kind of gone on autopilot at that point", 'that point' being when she had been the first to punch Reena Virk, and the last to see her alive, as she rolled the bloodied and unconscious girl into the water under the Craigflower Bridge and drowned her.