Saskatchewan woman recounts conversation with killer

REGINA After John Strang shot and killed his wife in their Saskatchewan home, he drove his Jeep — packed with guns, ammunition, handcuffs and duct tape — to the home of a female friend for a chilling conversation.

He told Lynn Larsen that she haunted him and he fantasized about raping her.

He said he thought about killing a lot of people and that he had killed his wife earlier that day.

“It was just out of the blue,” Larsen told The Canadian Press. “I just shot up a quick prayer in my head, not that he saw, to help me through.

“I felt that I couldn’t show fear — that would have been a big mistake.”

The conversation between Strang and Larsen lasted nearly two hours on the night of Aug. 1, 2015, at her ranch home near Rockford, east of Saskatoon.

Her grandchildren were staying with her and had gone to bed.

Her husband, Roland, was out at a singing competition, but she told Strang he was expected home at 11 p.m.

A few minutes before 11 p.m., Strang headed for the door.

“You are lucky your grandkids were here, because I would never hurt a child,” he told her.

After Strang left, Larsen called police.

Officers found Lisa Strang dead on a basement sofa in the couple’s home in McLean, east of Regina. She had been shot in the back and in the head.

Strang was arrested two days later near North Battleford.

Details of the case emerged in a Regina courtroom earlier this month when Strang pleaded guilty to seconddegree murder in the death of his 47-year-old wife and to uttering a death threat against Larsen, now 58.

Strang, 50, is to receive an automatic life sentence this Wednesday. Crown and defence lawyers have jointly recommended he not be eligible for parole for 17 years.

“I hope that he never gets out,” said Lisa Strang’s aunt, Pat Torgrimson of Swift Current, Sask.

She describes John Strang as a controlling figure who didn’t want his wife to have much contact with her family.

“I never liked him from Day 1,” said Torgrimson. “He kept her under his thumb.”

Court heard the couple met at the University of Regina and married in 1991.