Father of Kelly Ellard’s son denied parole — board says risk to society unmanageable

Risk to society unmanageable, board finds

Darwin Duane Dorozan, Kelly Ellard’s boyfriend and the father of her son, remains in prison after the Parole Board of Canada found his risk to society unmanageable.

At a hearing on Sept. 25, the board revoked Dorozan’s statutory release. All federal offenders serving fixed-length sentences are entitled to statutory release after serving two-thirds of their sentence, unless they are deemed likely to commit a serious offence before the end of their sentence.

The board found Dorozan had tampered with his electronic monitoring device and breached his release conditions by associating with offenders under supervision in the community, downloading an encrypted communications app to delete messages on his cellphone and manually deleting messages on his cellphone.

Dorozan, 44, has a lengthy criminal history that includes robbery and kidnapping a drug dealer who was tortured, shot and killed by his accomplice. He is serving a six-year, nine-month sentence for a string of violent break and enters in 2010 and 2011. Some of the homes were occupied. During one break-in, Dorozan sprayed the homeowner in the face with bear spray.

Ellard, who has changed her name to Kerry Marie Sim, was convicted of the second-degree murder of 14-year-old Reena Virk in November 1997. Ellard, now 35, was 15 at the time.

She was allowed conjugal visits with Dorozan, who was on day parole, in the spring of 2016.

She became pregnant and gave birth to a son in November 2016. Ellard was granted day parole in November 2017.

Dorozan was granted full parole in August 2016, but that was suspended when police identified him as a person of interest in the suspicious disappearance of a low-level drug dealer in May 2016. His parole was revoked in October 2016. The case remains open, according to the parole board decision, which was released this week.

In November 2017, the board granted Dorozan day parole. He appeared to be following his conditions, had negative urinalysis tests and was working. His statutory release began in May 2018.

On June 14, 2018, the National Monitoring Centre detected a tamper alert on Dorozan’s electronic monitoring device. The centre tried to contact him without success. His parole officer did get in touch with Dorozan and told him to come to the office. When he arrived, Dorozan appeared “nervous and anxious,” says the decision.

The parole officer, who is an electronic-monitoring specialist, found a part was missing. He was “highly confident” the device had been deliberately tampered with.

The parole officer went through Dorozan’s cellphone and found emails and text messages to other supervised offenders, some with serious criminal histories. One offender had visited Dorozan at home on June 9. Text messages revealed he had set up a meeting with two other supervised offenders and he was trying to meet in person with other offenders.

Emails revealed several irregular electronic money transfers that Dorozan was unable to explain. The parole officer also found an encrypted communications app on the phone, which Dorozan used to send private messages, photos, videos, voice calls and video calls. The app deletes each transmission after three seconds.

Dorozan admitted he had manually deleted messages and set up the app to delete all communications between him and five other people, including Ellard.

Dorozan’s statutory release was suspended that day.

In a followup interview, Dorozan blamed his parole officer for being too thorough. His case management team recommended his release be revoked because of the breaches. “Additionally, you are not willing to fully accept responsibility for your behaviour and have minimized the significance of your negative choices,” says the decision.

Dorozan told the board that he focused on his career path and on his relationship with his girlfriend and his son during his release.

Board members said it appears Dorozan is trying to do things to change his life for the better, but clearly still struggles with making choices about his associates. The board concluded he had altered his electronic monitoring device on purpose.

“Your willingness to do so, coupled with other concerning behaviours, indicates that you are unwilling or unable to manage your risk to reoffend and to release you would pose an undue risk to the public.”