BURST
Notorious gangster Jamie Bacon, the mastermind behind the deadly 2007 Surrey Six slayings, has been released from prison, less than six years after he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to kill.
Bacon, now 40, completed the full five-year, seven month sentence handed to him in B.C. Supreme Court in September 2020. At the time, a first-degree murder charge was dropped.
Bacon currently lives outside B.C., where he was once a feared leader of the violent Red Scorpions gang.
Sgt. Sarbjit Sangha of the anti-gang Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit said Bacon will be monitored by police and Correctional Service Canada.
“We will be keeping in close contact with his probation officer. He has conditions and a curfew he has to abide by,” she said.
The news of Bacon’s release was disturbing, but not surprising, for Eileen Mohan, who lost her only son Christopher in the Oct. 19, 2007, Surrey Six killings.
The Mohan family lived across the hall from a condo that they did not know was used as a drug stash house by Bacon rival Corey Lal. Christopher was on his way to his basketball game when the killers dragged him into Lal’s suite on Oct. 19, 2007 and shot him, as well as fireplace repairman Ed Schellenberg, Lal, his brother Michael, and associates Ryan Bartolomeo and Eddie Narong.
It remains B.C.’s deadliest gangland slaying.
Mohan said she was informed that Bacon had finished his sentence.
“For Bacon to be out and breathing the air of freedom does not sit well with me because this is the person who should be in prison the longest and not out in the free world like us,” Mohan said Tuesday.
She noted that Bacon sent Red Scorpion killers Matthew Johnston, Cody Haevischer and Person X, whose identity is covered by a publication ban, to Surrey’s Balmoral Tower to kill Lal.
“He was the mastermind behind it, and these three individuals followed his instructions to kill them and leave no witness behind,” Mohan said. “This is the very person who planned everything, who sent these people, then gets a sweetheart deal, and so I’m not happy, but what can I do?”
She’s also frustrated that court proceedings have dragged on for 19 years. Haevischer, who was convicted with Johnston of first-degree murder in 2014, applied to have his conviction overturned on the basis of police misconduct during the investigation. The hearing into his application began in November 2024 and resumes in B.C. Supreme Court next month. Johnston was part of the application before he died of cancer in prison in 2022.
Mohan said she can’t sit in on the hearing because she’s working. But she is following all of the developments, as she has done for years.
“I’m still kind of sitting on pins and needles about whether this person who killed alongside with Johnston and Person X will be given a sweetheart deal also,” Mohan said.
While Haevischer and Johnston were convicted, Bacon was set to be tried separately until a B.C. Supreme Court judge stayed the charges he was facing in December 2017. That decision was overturned on appeal in May 2020. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in July 2020.
In 2024, Bacon was denied statutory release after serving two-thirds of his sentence. The parole board said his continued detention was necessary, both because of the brutal murder plot he set in motion and because he had continued to engage in violence during his time in prison, which began with his arrest in the Surrey Six case in April 2009.
That detention order was upheld by the parole board in a January 2026 decision, obtained by Postmedia News.
In January, parole board members cited a Nov. 24, 2025, psychological risk assessment that said Bacon remained “a high risk for violence.”
The recent ruling also said correctional officers reported Bacon was “heavily involved in the institutional subculture” and that he continued “to display criminal behaviour with security threat group (STG) affiliation,” which is the correction service term used to describe gangs and criminal organizations.
“They believe that you (Bacon) are likely to commit an offence causing death or serious harm prior to the expiration of your sentence,” the board members said.
Bluesky: @kimbolan.bsky.social