Child killer's location unknown with Kingston Pen closure
TORONTO - Anybody know the whereabouts of sex-killer David Wayne Snowdon?
The mother of the little girl he sexually assaulted and murdered would like to know.
“With Kingston Pen closing last month I have lost track of him,” said Keri-Lee Deon. “And nobody will tell me where he is.”
Snowdon was convicted of first-degree murder in the July 10, 1991, sex slaying of three-year-old Kayla Klaudusz, who he nabbed in a Parkdale playground while a babysitter was distracted.
Kayla’s lifeless body was discovered almost two months later in Lake Ontario.
Thanks to tireless and innovative investigative work by then Det. Rick Gauthier, Kathryn Martin, Jeff McGuire and many others, Snowdon — who was a janitor at the building — was tracked down and eventually convicted.
“When he killed her, he killed me,” said a crying Keri-Lee.
This woman is really struggling with this.
Canadian Victim Foundation founder Joe Wamback has told me countless times just what a horrible mess is left behind for the kin of the slain.
Keri-Lee and her ex husband, Steve Klaudusz, have been through torture.
“You don’t even know what this has done to me. Words could never even explain it,” Keri-Lee said from her Oshawa home. “Her birthday is Saturday, Oct. 19. She would have been 26. On her birthday all I do is suffer.”
The days in between each birthday are not filled with joy either.
It was already hard while Snowdon, sentenced to automatic life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, was in the Kingston Penitentiary. But the ambiguity of details on the current location of Kayla’s killer is making matters worse.
If there is one comfort in the past 22 years of hell, Keri-Lee said, it was the knowledge of knowing this child murderer was locked up and no longer a danger to anybody else.
Strangely it helped her cope. Now there’s an even stranger void.
“I have no idea where he is,” she said. “I have phoned everybody I can think of and nobody has called me back. I have phoned every number I have.” So where is he?
Is he in Quebec with Russell Williams or at Millhaven with Paul Bernardo, a halfway house somewhere, or could he be at the Keele Centre in Toronto?
The mother of his victim said she has been told it’s not information she can be provided with.
“It’s so upsetting,” she said. “I should be notified. I don’t get why I have not been.”
Calls to Correctional Service of Canada have not offered much insight.
“It’s a privacy issue,” spokesman Melissa Hart explained.
How nice for Snowdon.
Amazing that the guy in a public institution for stealing a little girl from her family has more rights than her parents.
But, says Corrections Canada, there is a National Victim Services Program a victim’s family member can apply to and if “they qualify” they can perhaps gain such information.
“The program seeks to provide victims of federal offenders with timely information about the offender who harmed them,” states an e-mail sent by Hart. “Our dedicated Victim Services Officers are responsible for registering victims, providing victim notification, receiving victim statements, providing referrals and answering questions about CSC” including if a person is in custody and at what penitentiary.
Keri-Lee is not interested in applying for a program. She wants a phone call that requires no red tape.
On Snowdon’s location, she wants to know now. She wants to sleep tonight.
Bureaucracy is not always warm and fuzzy for those in agony. Sometimes, I gently suggest, some out-of-the-box thinking needs to be deployed.
Victims don’t see themselves as numbers, and their needs — or fears — trump any killer in any era.
As I said to Hart. Someone needs to reach out to Kayla’s mom.
Kingston Pen was in place for 178 years so there wasn’t a need to keep people like Keri-Lee in the loop.
Families knew where their child’s killer was.
But when the government closes a prison, as it did Sept. 30 with Kingston, it should have taken into consideration that rules, regulations and hoops don’t mean a thing to people who are just trying to cope.
“I have another daughter and I worry,” she said. “I like to keep tabs on him.”
It seems though David Wayne Snowdon is entitled to his privacy.
What are the parents of a child slain thanks to him entitled to?
More suffering it seems.
She may not know where the man who killed her daughter is but Keri-Lee knows the location of Kayla.
She’s in the cemetery.
Child killer's location unknown with Kingston Pen closure | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun
I can't fathom what the problem of providing the place of incarceration to the victim would be. His privacy? In prison? It's not as though you're giving out someone's home address and phone number. Nobody can get to him, he's behind bars. So what's the problem with letting someone know which set of bars he's actually behind? I would imagine I'd want to know if I were in her place.
If they can release to the media the new location of Paul Bernardo and Russell Williams, why can't they tell this woman where the man who murdered her child is?
TORONTO - Anybody know the whereabouts of sex-killer David Wayne Snowdon?
The mother of the little girl he sexually assaulted and murdered would like to know.
“With Kingston Pen closing last month I have lost track of him,” said Keri-Lee Deon. “And nobody will tell me where he is.”
Snowdon was convicted of first-degree murder in the July 10, 1991, sex slaying of three-year-old Kayla Klaudusz, who he nabbed in a Parkdale playground while a babysitter was distracted.
Kayla’s lifeless body was discovered almost two months later in Lake Ontario.
Thanks to tireless and innovative investigative work by then Det. Rick Gauthier, Kathryn Martin, Jeff McGuire and many others, Snowdon — who was a janitor at the building — was tracked down and eventually convicted.
“When he killed her, he killed me,” said a crying Keri-Lee.
This woman is really struggling with this.
Canadian Victim Foundation founder Joe Wamback has told me countless times just what a horrible mess is left behind for the kin of the slain.
Keri-Lee and her ex husband, Steve Klaudusz, have been through torture.
“You don’t even know what this has done to me. Words could never even explain it,” Keri-Lee said from her Oshawa home. “Her birthday is Saturday, Oct. 19. She would have been 26. On her birthday all I do is suffer.”
The days in between each birthday are not filled with joy either.
It was already hard while Snowdon, sentenced to automatic life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years, was in the Kingston Penitentiary. But the ambiguity of details on the current location of Kayla’s killer is making matters worse.
If there is one comfort in the past 22 years of hell, Keri-Lee said, it was the knowledge of knowing this child murderer was locked up and no longer a danger to anybody else.
Strangely it helped her cope. Now there’s an even stranger void.
“I have no idea where he is,” she said. “I have phoned everybody I can think of and nobody has called me back. I have phoned every number I have.” So where is he?
Is he in Quebec with Russell Williams or at Millhaven with Paul Bernardo, a halfway house somewhere, or could he be at the Keele Centre in Toronto?
The mother of his victim said she has been told it’s not information she can be provided with.
“It’s so upsetting,” she said. “I should be notified. I don’t get why I have not been.”
Calls to Correctional Service of Canada have not offered much insight.
“It’s a privacy issue,” spokesman Melissa Hart explained.
How nice for Snowdon.
Amazing that the guy in a public institution for stealing a little girl from her family has more rights than her parents.
But, says Corrections Canada, there is a National Victim Services Program a victim’s family member can apply to and if “they qualify” they can perhaps gain such information.
“The program seeks to provide victims of federal offenders with timely information about the offender who harmed them,” states an e-mail sent by Hart. “Our dedicated Victim Services Officers are responsible for registering victims, providing victim notification, receiving victim statements, providing referrals and answering questions about CSC” including if a person is in custody and at what penitentiary.
Keri-Lee is not interested in applying for a program. She wants a phone call that requires no red tape.
On Snowdon’s location, she wants to know now. She wants to sleep tonight.
Bureaucracy is not always warm and fuzzy for those in agony. Sometimes, I gently suggest, some out-of-the-box thinking needs to be deployed.
Victims don’t see themselves as numbers, and their needs — or fears — trump any killer in any era.
As I said to Hart. Someone needs to reach out to Kayla’s mom.
Kingston Pen was in place for 178 years so there wasn’t a need to keep people like Keri-Lee in the loop.
Families knew where their child’s killer was.
But when the government closes a prison, as it did Sept. 30 with Kingston, it should have taken into consideration that rules, regulations and hoops don’t mean a thing to people who are just trying to cope.
“I have another daughter and I worry,” she said. “I like to keep tabs on him.”
It seems though David Wayne Snowdon is entitled to his privacy.
What are the parents of a child slain thanks to him entitled to?
More suffering it seems.
She may not know where the man who killed her daughter is but Keri-Lee knows the location of Kayla.
She’s in the cemetery.
Child killer's location unknown with Kingston Pen closure | Toronto & GTA | News | Toronto Sun
I can't fathom what the problem of providing the place of incarceration to the victim would be. His privacy? In prison? It's not as though you're giving out someone's home address and phone number. Nobody can get to him, he's behind bars. So what's the problem with letting someone know which set of bars he's actually behind? I would imagine I'd want to know if I were in her place.
If they can release to the media the new location of Paul Bernardo and Russell Williams, why can't they tell this woman where the man who murdered her child is?
