‘NO IDEA WHERE HE IS’
Ex-NHL goalie fights for parents’ killer to be sent back to prison.
It was the call former NHLer Don Edwards had been fighting to avoid for 24 years.
George Harding Lovie had brutally murdered his parents, stalked and raped his sister, and had a standing threat to murder any other member of the Edwards family he could find, including Don’s children.
And then, with almost no warning, this month Corrections Canada informed the Edwards family that they had decided to start letting Lovie out on unsupervised work releases.
“We have no idea what he’s doing or where he is, all we know is that he’s in the Gravenhurst area,” said Edwards, who is now campaigning hard to get Lovie back behind bars.
He’s contacting local media, sending out appeals to Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney and Prime Minister Stephen Harper and, at the very least, warning residents of Gravenhurst that there’s now a killer in their midst.
“We’re fighting like hell to keep this guy incarcerated,” he said. “We honestly feel that our family’s lives are in danger; we also feel that other Canadian citizens’ lives are in danger.”
In 1990, Edwards’ sister Michele broke off a six-month relationship with Lovie after she found him becoming overly possessive.
But Lovie continued to stalk Michele for months, and on Feb. 18, 1991, he broke into her home with a borrowed knife and gun and forcibly confined her for six hours, alternately raping her and threatening to kill her and her family if she told authorities.
She reported the crime to Hamilton Wentworth Regional Police, who arrested Lovie but released him after two days.
Four weeks after that, he followed through on his threat.
Armed with a newly purchased rifle, he surprised Michele near her parents home, and shot at her as she ran inside for protection. He shot Michele’s mother, Donna, as she attempted to barricade the doors. Arnold, Michele’s father, rushed forward to confront the intruder, and was stabbed multiple times.
A 911 call captured Lovie repeating “how do you like me now?” with each thrust of the knife.
In the years since, Edwards has struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder at seeing his parents’ home splattered with blood, and has based his entire life around security.
His number is unlisted, he is careful to keep almost no web presence and his family’s exact address — and even country of residence — is a closely guarded secret.
As Edwards’ wife, Tannis, told the National Post in 2011, “very few people know exactly where we are, only our children know and some of our immediate family.”
Edwards was a member of Team Canada in 1981, and said in a 2011 victim impact statement “at one time, I was a very proud Canadian.”
In the years since, he said, his family “has lost complete faith in the Canadian justice system.”
“Reading this statement, standing before you, fighting for the victims of violence rights, it is as if our family committed the heinous crime,” he said.
Edwards also became an early campaigner for a law to end the practice of concurrent sentences for multiple murderers. Lovie killed two people, but under the practice of the day, he was given the same sentence as if he had killed one. As Edwards has said in the past, the murder of his father was a “freebie.”
Although sentencing discounts were ended by the Tories in 2011, the practice was originally championed by Liberal MP Albina Guarnieri.
“His case was one of the drivers to my efforts to change the law so this doesn’t happen again,” Guarnieri told the National Post in 2011.
At the time of their first meeting, Edwards was living in the United States in a bid to protect his family from Lovie.
Said Guarnieri, it was “one of the saddest commentaries I ever heard regarding our justice system.”
Edwards said he’s spent more than 20 years dealing with a “master manipulator.” Lovie convinced Hamilton police to free him in 1991; he refused to take the stand during crossexamination at his own trial; and he’s brought the entire Edwards family to parole hearings to read victim-impact statements, only to refuse to attend the hearing.
Now, said Edwards, he’s had 24 years to manipulate psychologists, his caseworker and the warden of Beaver Creek Institution into letting him out on work release.
“I can’t even tell you the anguish we’re going through to keep him in prison. It’s ongoing, it’s never going to stop,” he said.