Feels Remorse: Canadian Child Rapist-Murderer to be Paroled?

Will sex killer be paroled?

By MICHAEL PLATT The Calgary Sun

He apparently sobs in his cell, filled with remorse for gunning down four adults and sexually torturing two young girls, before he ended their misery days later with the same rifle.

"I know my husband, and I've watched him cry like you'd never believe -- nobody wishes the past could be changed more than him."

Heather Ennis doesn't expect you to feel sorry for David William Shearing, or to believe his anguish over the grisly murders of six people at a B.C. campsite more than 25 years ago.

Ennis is pragmatic about how the outside world views the man she married 15 years ago, and the feelings of revulsion and dismay when people discover she is the wife of a convicted killer, one seeking parole after a quarter century in jail.

"They think, 'how the hell did you marry him,'" said Ennis.

"I can say, he's not the same human being as he was then, and it's 'talk about naive' -- they can be really vicious about it, but I can understand their point of view."

Shearing -- who also goes by Ennis, his mother's maiden name -- was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder in 1984, for the slaughter of three generations of B.C. family members in Wells Gray park two years before.

In what was originally thought to be a robbery gone awry, Shearing confessed to shooting Bob and Jackie Johnson, their two daughters, Janet, 13, and Karen, 11, and Jackie's parents, George and Edith Bentley in a campground near Clearwater, B.C.

It was only later, his 25-year sentence started, when Shearing told police his real motive -- killing the parents and grandparents so he could rape the girls.