Stricken with cancer, killer released to die outside prison

A man who was once considered to be one of the most dangerous criminals in Canada has been granted full parole so he can spend his final days outside a penitentiary before he dies of cancer.

Serge Robin, 63, killed at least three people, including a man he shot as a killer for hire in B.C. At different points while serving his current sentence, he was placed in a super-maximum security penitentiary, where the worst of Canada's criminals are incarcerated.

He was granted full parole on Thursday with a condition that he reside at an undisclosed location.

The Montrealer killed two of his victims in British Columbia in 1992 while he was out on day parole and while he was still serving a sentence for armed robbery and for the death of a 17-year-old girl he killed in 1976 by beating her repeatedly with a crowbar. He was also a suspect in at least two other homicides.

On Oct. 6, 1992, he fatally shot a man named Roger Daggitt in a hotel in Surrey. Two days later, he killed a fellow Montrealer, Robert Pelletier, in front of a pub in Vancouver. Three men who witnessed the second shooting tackled Robin and turned him over to police. It took little time for homicide investigators to link the two murders to Robin.

He was first tried, in 1994, in the Pelletier case. The Crown alleged that Robin shot Pelletier because Pelletier was trying to move in on his drug-trafficking turf in Vancouver.

The written summary of a decision made by the Parole Board of Canada details how Robin is so badly stricken with cancer he no longer poses a threat to anyone.

Robin had been eligible for full parole since 2017. He asked to be released so his sister and nephew could visit him outside of a penitentiary before he dies.