The man who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of 16-year-old Makayla Chang in 2017 has now been sentenced.
Steven Bacon was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 20 years in B.C. Supreme Court on Friday afternoon.
His sentencing comes six years after the Nanaimo girl’s remains were found.
Chang’s family was in attendance in the courtroom on Friday, and broke out in cheers as Bacon was led away by sheriffs after his sentence was handed down.
Reading a tearful victim impact statement, her father Kerry Chang called Bacon a “cold-hearted bastard,” and described him as a “monster” and a “pedophile.”
Chang disappeared in Nanaimo on March 17, 2017, and two months later, police upgraded her disappearance to a homicide investigation when her remains were found.
Bacon was arrested in New Brunswick in September 2019 on unrelated charges after Nanaimo RCMP issued a national appeal for information on his whereabouts.
He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in August 2022, after the charge of first-degree homicide was downgraded.
Addressing the court Friday, Bacon admitted his actions were “horrible.”
“I have destroyed so much. There’s nothing I can do to make it better,” he said.
Crown prosecutor Nick Barber told the court Friday that Chang was living with her grandmother when she met Bacon at a Tim Horton’s in the summer of 2016.
The pair developed a father-daughter-like relationship, the court heard, with Bacon even speaking with the Ministry of Children and Family Development about adopting her, Barber told the court.
In March of 2017, the pair had an argument, with Chang saying she no longer wanted Bacon to adopt her. On March 17, a friend dropped her off at Bacon’s home — the last time anyone would ever see her alive, the court heard.
In reference to the killing, Bacon’s landlord later asked him, “Is it true?” to which he replied, “Yes, I have lost my soul, it’s being fixed,” Barber told the court.
Between March 17 and 18, Bacon engaged a taxi worker to help him dispose of Chang’s body, which the pair transported in a cab to a rural area where she was buried in a shallow grave.
Bacon then posed as Chang to send several text messages from her phone. On March 22, he reported her missing to Nanaimo RCMP, and the following day he fled Nanaimo by ferry and travelled across the country by bus, altering his appearance, Barber told the court.
In 2019, Bacon told police in New Brunswick, where he was arrested, that he had pushed Chang, and that she fell and struck her head.
Bacon revealed that he had put her on a couch, and strangled her 15 minutes later, Barber told the court.
Crown said Bacon admitted to having sexual intercourse with Chang on the day of her death, which he claimed was consensual — a claim that drew an angry curse from one of her family members in court.
Police had previously referred to Bacon as a “person of interest” in the case, and said Chang may have travelled with him to Metro Vancouver.
Bacon has a criminal record dating back to 1981 in Ontario, including a 1992 conviction for sexual assault in Thunder Bay, along with charges for fraud, violence and firearms.
With files from Kristen Robinson
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