BURST
What Raymond Hoogland saw when he entered his in-laws’ home the morning after Mother’s Day four years ago left him “broken beyond repair” — but worse was still to come.
In a victim impact statement delivered to a packed courtroom Thursday in Abbotsford, Hoogland said he was asked to check on Arnold and Joanne De Jong by his wife, who was worried when she couldn’t reach her parents on the phone on May 9, 2022.
He said he had a feeling something was wrong when he pulled up in front of their house. Inside, he found Joanne dead in her bed. Later, police would also find Arnold.
“What I knew at that very moment was going to destroy my wife, Heather,” Hoogland said in a strong voice. “It was going to destroy her sisters and so many other family members and friends. Making that phone call was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.”
Equally painful, he said, was listening to his wife tell their two young sons that “Grandpa Arnie and Grandma Jo were dead.”
In a series of 21 wrenching victim impact statements, members of the De Jong family, including the murdered couple’s three daughters and their husbands and their young granddaughter, spoke about their loss.
The family had expected to hear Supreme Court Justice Brenda Brown sentence the three men who were found guilty of first-degree murder earlier this month, but a constitutional challenge by one of the defence lawyers related to the faint-hope clause must be heard first.
First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of full parole for 25 years. Last year, in response to a constitutional challenge, a Nanaimo judge restored the faint-hope clause for those convicted of first-degree murder, giving them the right to apply for a review of parole eligibility after 15 years. Those convicted of multiple murders remain ineligible.
It has been more than four years since Arnold and Joanne De Jong were found murdered in their beds. Arnold, 77, died of asphyxiation after his head was wrapped in duct tape. Joanne, 76, died of sharp and blunt force trauma after she was beaten with a bat and her throat was likely slashed with a screwdriver.
Earlier this month, Abhijeet Singh, Khushveer Toor and Gurkaran Singh were found guilty of first-degree murder. The three young men lived together; Gurharan Singh was an international student from India, and Abhijeet Singh owned a Surrey cleaning company that had recently cleaned the roof and gutters at the couple’s home.
In her victim impact statement, Heather Hoogland said she still has several voicemail messages from her parents.
“I refuse to upgrade my phone as I fear losing those messages and never hearing their voices ever again,” she said. “To never hear my mom’s voice or laughter … or my dad’s voice requesting tech support at 11pm at night.”
She said her sons don’t know the details surrounding the deaths of her parents “or the evil way that these cowards came into my parents’ home and decided to take their lives.”
“I always told my boys that there are no monsters in their closets, but the reality of what has happened to my parents has shown quite the opposite, and, in fact, they are closer than we think.”
Daughter Sandra Barthel also wrestled with how to tell her daughter what had happened.
“How do you make such inexplicable evil understandable to a child?” she asked.
Barthel said she is a teacher and works hard to teach her students about goodness, faith and light. But when she sees kids coming in from recess carrying a softball bat, or a project held together with duct tape, she struggles to maintain her composure.
“The murder of my parents permanently altered my understanding of safety, trust, and vulnerability. It shaped not only how I move through the world, but how I allow my child to move through it,” she said.
Daughter Kimberley Coleman said she was sleeping after a night shift as a nurse when she got the call that would forever change her life.
She rushed to her parents’ home to find it behind police tape. For two days, family and friends stood in the driveway while police collected evidence. When the bodies were finally removed, they joined hands to make an honour line.
“Thank you to all those who have stood with us, either at the honour line at the scene or through this trial process to bring justice and honour to our parents. Despite the evil shown to our parents, we’ve also been shown love,” she said.
The family talked about the “torture” of waiting four years for the case to come to trial. They were not told the details of their parents’ deaths until it came out in court on the first day of trial.
Other family members and friends spoke about the impact on the broader Abbotsford community, where some now look fearfully at strange cars or people coming door to door to offer services.
During the eight-week trial, court heard that a day before the killing, Abhijeet Singh purchased rope, a screwdriver and a softball bat from a hardware store. Later that night, he, along with Toor and Singh, left their shared rental unit, bringing the items with them, “prepared to deliver violence.”
Prosecutors laid out evidence showing that a shoe print found on a bloody bedsheet in Joanne’s room could have been made by a shoe worn by Khushveer Toor. Fingerprints on a glass patio door were linked to Gurkaran Singh’s left hand. And Google searches by Abhijeet Singh, after an article about the killings appeared in the local newspaper, included queries about the punishment for murderers in Canada and jail sentences for international students.
Defence lawyers for the three men had argued the deaths were part of a robbery gone wrong. Each said there was no strong evidence to place their specific client in the De Jong’s bedrooms.
But Justice Brown ultimately rejected those arguments.
“In my view, three persons were needed to participate in the home invasion and murders for them to be carried out in the way that they were,” she said, calling the murders “intimate and prolonged.”
After the murders, the men tried to pay off debts and send money to family and friends using the De Jong’s Visa cards and cheques they stole from the couple’s home.
The day before they were murdered, Arnold and Joanne spent a sunny Mother’s Day with their daughters, their husbands and several grandchildren at their home in rural Abbotsford. Joanne, who loved being a grandmother, played hide-and-seek with her grandkids, while Arnold talked to his daughters and their husbands during the happy family gathering.
After the verdict, daughter Sandra Barthel said Barthel said that day was a “time of love.”
“I think the saddest thing for all of us is that we didn’t realize that that would be goodbye.”