"Gone To Neverland", "Forever Young"

"[The review board's decision is] wrong. This man needs to be locked away."

"He should not be getting any kind of discharge, conditional or otherwise."

"After what he did, the public has every right to expect that he remains under the strictest supervision for the rest of his life." 

"The Review Board has once again shown that under this NDP government, dangerous people can gradually work their way toward more freedom, even after committing the most unthinkable crimes against children."

Former B.C. Conservative leader John Rustad

 

"I am outraged by the British Columbia Review Board's slippery slope normalization of someone who killed their children."

"A conditional discharge is not a minor administrative step. It is part of a process that moves him closer to greater freedom." 

Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West

A mourner holds a program showing the pictures of Max, Kaitlynne and Cordon Schoenborn during a public memorial in Merritt, B.C., on April 27, 2008. (Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press)

 

It took ten days for police to discover where Allan Schoenborn was hiding, in 2008 after his children were found dead by their mother, Darcie Clark, when she arrived home in Merritt, British Columbia. Her estranged husband, Allan, had moved to  the Lower Mainland after they had separated, although he often returned to Merritt to visit with their three children, Cordon 5, Max 8, and Kaitlynne 10. When she found the children, they were all posed as though they were peacefully sleeping. The boys were lying together on a couch, and their sister was in her bed.

 

Their father explained afterward that he had separated them, not wanting the children to witness him smothering one another to death and trying to escape, making things awkward for him. After he killed his children he wrote a message on the living room wall with soy sauce: "Forever young". He repeated the phrase on one of Kaitlynne's pillow cases in blood.On the other pillowcase the bloody message read: "Gone to Neverland".

 

Allan Schoenborn had convinced himself that he was saving the children from a future where they would become addicted to drugs. He believed they were being sexually abused. By killing them he reasoned he  was saving them from a sordid, unhappy life of sex and drugs. At his trial in 2010 he claimed not to have been responsible for their murder, that he was afflicted with a mental illness and was thus not guilty for the carnage he had wrought. 

 

The B.C. Supreme Court judge reasoned that the man before him had plotted precisely what he set out to do, and was therefore guilty of capital murder as proven by the Crown, but he still accepted that due to mental illness Schoenborn was not 'responsible'.

 

Allan Schoenborn is shown in this sketch attending a British Columbia Review Board in Coquitlam, B.C., on Thursday March 12, 2020. (Felicity Don/The Canadian Press)

 

Now, sixteen years after his conviction and incarceration,  Allan Schoenborn has been granted a conditional discharge by the British Columbia Review Board. Found not criminally responsible given his mental disorder, for the first-degree murders of his children, he is now on track for a pathway to release. He had requested a 12-month conditional discharge when he appeared before the board for his annual hearing. Schoenborn is to attend a psychiatric clinic for treatment, live in a supervised place and stay at the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in Coquitlam under the board's ruling, taking effect June 2nd.

 

Allan Schoenborn

Other conditions ordered were to report any intimate relationships, remain on good behaviour, and not have in his possession, nor use, any weapons or drugs. Schoenborn had legally changed his name to Ken John Johnson in May of 2021. That led the British Columbia government to pass legislation in prevention of those convicted of serious crimes from hanging their names. The Name Amendment Act requires all applicants for a legal name change in the province, aged12 years and older be background-checked for any possible criminal record.

 

The obvious intention is to prevent convicted criminals from evading accountability and the due consequences of their criminal actions, through a name change. 

"In my opinion, [Schoenborn] is more evil than he is ill. He's interested in getting out, he's not interested in getting better."

"The conditional discharge is a] waiting room for the absolute discharge. It's very rare that people on a conditional discharge do not advance forward." 

"Should he ever get an absolute discharge, I promise you we will be hearing about him on the news after he's created more tragedy."

Spokesperson for the victims' family, Dave Teixeira