A man serving a life sentence for second-degree murder has died in a B.C. prison.
The Correctional Service of Canada confirmed Tuesday that Gary Donald Johnston died in custody at the medium-security Mountain Institution in Agassiz on Sunday.
The CSC did not provide details of Johnston’s manner of death, but said it will review the circumstances, as it does in the case any time an inmate dies.
Johnston was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 17 years in 2011, for the brutal killing of Vic Fraser.
At trial, the court heard Fraser had surprised an intruder in his sister’s north Surrey home in March 1998.
Johnston stabbed Fraser nine times in the neck, then fled to Saskatchewan.
Within months, he fatally stabbed another man in Regina, and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter in that crime.
Following his release in 2009, he confessed to an undercover RCMP officer posing as a crime boss in a so-called “Mr. Big” sting that he had killed Fraser, prompting murder charges in that case.
Johnston appealed the conviction twice.
Months after the B.C. Court of Appeal rejected his first appeal, the Supreme Court of Canada critiqued the “Mr. Big” model of police investigation in the R. vs. Hart case.
B.C.’s top court then heard a second appeal of Johnston’s case challenging the confession to the undercover officer, only to reject it a second time.
The CSC said that police and the BC Coroners Service had also been notified of his death.
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