Scarred family watches as killer seeks parole

George Lovie killed two people and held a young woman at knifepoint in Glanbrook in 1991

It is as though killer and alleged rapist George Lovie likes himself just the way he is.

For almost 25 years now, prison psychologists and psychiatrists, case workers, parole officers and the Parole Board of Canada have listed off the Correctional Services of Canada programs he needs to take to address his issues — of which there are many.

He needs treatment for being a sex offender. And an alcoholic. And for committing domestic violence.

But Lovie, convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder, seems unwilling to fix what is broken. Or even to admit he needs fixing. Instead, it is always someone else’s fault that he became what he is.

That shifting of blame was a theme throughout his latest Parole Board of Canada hearing Wednesday morning at Beaver Creek Institution, a minimum-security prison in Gravenhurst.

First and foremost his prison predicament is the fault, he says, of Michele Edwards, his former girlfriend. He disgustingly claims she lied when she reported to police that he held her hostage at knifepoint in her own home in Glanbrook for five hours and raped her in February 1991.

“If she slept with me because she was in fear, I agree that would be sexual assault,” he told the two board members in a tiny room packed with 16 members of the Edwards family. “But that’s not what happened … I still deny what she said occurred.”

What Michele said occurred is a nightmare. Lovie, now 58, took all the light bulbs out of their sockets and unplugged the phones from their jacks. He told her he had a gun in his car and showed her the bullets in his pocket.

“He told me how he would cut me up with his double-edged knife,” Michele told the parole board, her voice piped in from another room so Lovie couldn’t get a look at her. She was 26 in 1991.

“He told me he would take me to a shack and blow off my arms and legs.”

Michele pauses to control her sobs.

“If he couldn’t have me, no one would.”

Lovie, who is partially deaf, leans into the speaker to listen to her voice, her anguish. His hands remain clasped on the desk in front of him, his face is stone.

On March 21, 1991, Lovie hid under Michele’s front porch. When she came out in the morning, he emerged with his rifle.

“He shot at me as I ran to my parents’ home,” she says. Donna and Arnold Edwards lived across the street.

Lovie shot Donna through her front door as she tried to barricade it. Then, when his gun jammed, he stabbed Arnold five times in the kitchen while Michele tried to make him stop. The whole ordeal was recorded on a 911 call.

Michele ran. Lovie shot her car, ransacked her home as he hunted her.

He admits he would have killed her if he’d caught her.

When it all came to trial, the Crown stayed the sexual assault charges, believing it would spare Michele the ordeal of testifying when Lovie was getting a life sentence anyway.

But Lovie seems to have taken the stay as a confirmation he is not guilty of rape. He says it was Michele’s “lie” about the rape that drove him to his murderous rampage.

Generations of Edwards have been forever changed by Lovie. The patriarch and matriarch gone. Their children (including former NHL goalie Don Edwards) and their spouses living with PTSD. Grandchildren deprived of doting grandparents and fearing Lovie will fulfil a long-ago threat he made to kill them as well.

Yet, as afraid and scarred as they are, the Edwards are strong. They sit inches away from Lovie. They will always be watching him.

Beside Lovie is his parole officer, a young woman who reveals the offender once joked about stabbing her. They argue a lot, she says, and he doesn’t usually do what she advises.

Yet, he is here requesting three escorted temporary absences (ETAs) out into the community with a chaperone. He wants one so he can visit his 89-year-old blind father in Peterborough; another so he can go to a woodworking shop; a third so he can check out a halfway house in Sudbury. He is also seeking six unescorted temporary absences (UTAs) to take a test run of that halfway house.

In the end, it takes the board only moments to render a decision. He is granted the visit to his father in Peterborough, but nothing else. Members of the Edwards family tremble. Some own properties in the Peterborough area.

Lovie tells the board he knows he must change before he will be given more freedom. But he seems to be in no hurry to start the process.

It is a chilling reminder of the words he shouted as he stabbed Arnold over and over.

“How do you like me now?” Lovie yelled. “How do you like me now?”

He told me how he would cut me up with his double-edged knife. MICHELE EDWARDS