Bonus: The Watcher: The Wells Gray Provincial Park Family Murders
Listen to episode here:
In August 1982, three generations of a single family disappeared from a camping trip in British Columbia. Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) began an investigation but diverted resources to chase down a phantom theory of the crime. When a burnt-out vehicle was found in the wilderness, they realised that the true perpetrator had been hiding in plain sight all along. This is the story of the Bentley and Johnson family murders.
The Setting
Wells Gray Park is a 5000km² provincial park, located in Interior British Columbia. There are a total of 39 different waterfalls contained within the park, which is also home to dramatic mountain peaks, wildflower meadows and more than 200 km of hiking trails. In winter, the park is popular with skiers, and in summer, crowds of locals and tourists alike descend on the park for hiking, fishing, canoeing, whitewater rafting and camping.
There are three separate entrances to the park, Murtle Lake to the west, Mahood Lake and Clearwater. Clearwater to the south is where the roads end. Here, campers can park and continue deeper into the park on foot or continue with their vehicle and travel off-road. Although, much of the park is inaccessible to vehicles, and there are limitations as to how park visitors can get before the rugged terrain forces them to abandon their vehicle. The Clearwater entrance is located approximately 317km from Jasper, and 477km from Vancouver.
The Excursion
On Monday the 2nd of August 1982, the Johnson and Bentey families set out from their respective homes for an extended two-week camping trip in Clearwater Valley, just outside Wells Gray Park. Survivor’s single, ‘Eye of the Tiger’ topped the Canadian billboard charts. (No. 1 Singles) Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) was the highest grossing film across North America that year. (1982 Film)
The party comprised of George, 66 and Edith Bentley, 59, their daughter Jackie, 41 and her husband, Bob Johnson, 44, and their children, Janet, 13 and Karen, aged 11. George and Edith lived in Port Coquitlam, a city in Metro Vancouver, and the Johnson’s in Kelowna, in Interior BC. Although they never made it inside of the park, Wells Gray Provincial Park would forever be synonymous with the Johnson and Bentley families in ways that they could never have predicted.
The Watcher in the Woods
The group of six travelled in two vehicles. The Bentley’s in a distinctive 1981 Ford Camper Special with a 10 foot or 3 metre aluminium boat fixed to the roof, and the Johnson’s in their family car. George and Edith had already set up camp at Bear Creek prison site near Fage Creek, north of Clearwater. This was previously the location of a minimum-security correctional facility that opened in 1957. The corrections camp was relocated in 1978, leaving a series of abandoned cabins and outhouses scattered throughout the secluded woods. Bob and Jackie arrived soon after with the children and pitched their tents.
Not much is known about their activities during their camping trip, but it’s believed that they hiked, fished, explored, and generally took in the pristine wilderness. Some reports suggest that the sisters, Janet and Karen liked to pick wildflowers in the meadows that interspersed the surrounding forest. On Friday the 6th of August, Edith called and spoke to her younger daughter. This would be the last confirmed contact that the Bentley and Johnson families would have with anyone. Fellow campers and tourists had seen and acknowledged the group throughout the week, but the site they had chosen to camp at was isolated. They were the only campers there. Little did they know that they were not alone. They had a watcher observing their every move. Taking measure of the group, and planning something truly awful.
The Disappearance
The Bentley-Johnson family trip was due to last for two weeks, with both families expected to return to the normal rhythm of work and school life by the 16th of August. That Monday morning, Bob Johnson was scheduled to return to work at Gorman Brother’s Lumber in Westbank. He didn’t turn up, which raised some alarm bells with his boss and colleagues.
Bob was extremely conscientious and had never been a no-show for work in all the time he had worked for the company. They waited, hoping that Bob had simply been delayed, or that an unavoidable family emergency had waylaid him. This was 1982, so it wasn’t as easy to trace and track locations, nor was it an expectation. By the following Monday, Bob’s colleagues knew that something must be wrong, and reported him missing to the police.
The Investigation
Police began investigating the disappearance immediately. They spoke to locals in the Clearwater Valley who may have seen the families during their stay, and questioned locals for any potential leads. One potential witness said that they had seen two scruffy French-Canadian men in the area at the same time as the missing families. While authorities could not trace or identify the men, this did not prevent them from releasing this information to the public and following this lead for several months.
The Discovery of the Bodies
On the 13th of September 1982, exactly six weeks after the Bentley and Johnson families had set out on their trip, a mushroom picker found a burnt-out vehicle near Battle Mountain Road. Authorities descended on the area and discovered the charred remains of four deceased adults inside the vehicle. A forensic examination of the scene uncovered the bodies of two female children in the boot or trunk of the car. Autopsies revealed that the four adults had each been shot in the head, execution style, with a .22 caliber weapon. All six bodies were identified as the missing Bentley-Johnson families.
Ongoing Investigation
In April 1983, a television reenactment of the working theory of the crime was aired across Canada. In May, police obtained a replica of the missing 1981 camper van and drove it as far as Ontario and Quebec, in the hopes that it would trigger the memory of potential witnesses. A CAD$7,500 reward was offered for the return of the truck, as it was hoped that vital evidence could be garnered from the vehicle. Despite over 1300 tips from the public, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) were unable to progress the case.
On the 18th of October 1983, approximately 14 months after the Bentley-Johnson families had disappeared from Clearwater Valley, two forestry workers came across the Bentley’s burnt-out camper van. The vehicle was discovered on Trophy Mountain, only a few kilometres away from where the car containing the bodies had been discovered. It was theorised that the killer could not have been an outsider, as only a local would be able to traverse the complicated maze of logging roads in the area.
Door-to-door inquiries led authorities to 24-year-old Clearwater local David William Shearing. This was the second time that he had been questioned about the case. The first during the initial investigation, when, shockingly, both the murder weapon and some of the Bentley-Johnson’s belongings were on full display in front of police.
During questioning, a witness stated that the previous year, Shearing had asked them how to re-register a Ford camper truck, and also how to repair a hole in the door of the vehicle. Forensic examination of the recovered vehicle had discovered a bullet hole in one of the doors. This information was not released to the public. The fact that Shearing was aware of this piece of evidence a full year before the vehicle was even found, led authorities to suspect him. He was arrested and charged with six counts of second-degree murder.
David Shearing’s Background
David William Shearing was born in 1959 in British Columbia. His father had been a prison guard, and his brother was a local sheriff. He had a criminal record for petty crimes, and at the time of his arrest in November 1983, was due to appear in court on a possession of stolen property charge for an unrelated crime.
It emerged that the Bentley-Johnson murders were not the first time Shearing had killed. Childhood friend, Ross Coburn, confirmed to authorities that he was a passenger in a vehicle driven by Shearing in 1980, when he ran over an apparently drunken man, who had been lying in the middle of the road. Neither Shearing, nor Coburn reported the accident at the time.
At first, Shearing denied that he had sexually abused the girls. He claimed that he had planned to rob the group, and shot the adults and children, before burning the evidence. He said that he had planned to keep the camper van for his own personal use, but realised that he would have difficulty re-registering it, so eventually decided to burn and abandon it.
Sentencing
Shearing pleaded guilty to six counts of second-degree murder. In April 1984, Shearing was sentenced to six concurrent life terms, with the opportunity for parole after 25 years. This case marked the very first time in Canadian history that a defendant found guilty of second-degree murder was given a maximum 25-year sentence before being eligible for parole. It was also the most expensive investigation in Canadian history.
Supreme Court Justice Harry McKay, who oversaw the case, referred to the crimes as the ‘cold-blooded and senseless execution of six defenceless and innocent people … What a tragedy? What a waste? And for what?’.
The Confession
Throughout the investigation, Shearing refused to tell authorities what had really happened. Instead, he clung to the fallacy of the robbery excuse. After his sentencing, Detective Staff Sergeant Mike Eastham, who had investigated the case, encouraged Shearing to confess. He told him that he now had nothing to lose, and that the families deserved to have closure. This is when David Shearing finally confessed.
According to Shearing, he spotted the Bentley-Johnson group several days before he decided to act. From his vantage point in the woods, he stalked the group for days, becoming particularly interested in Jackie and Bob’s oldest daughter, Janet. He watched the group interact and began to hatch a plan to maximise the opportunity that was now presenting itself.
An Act of Barbarity
On Tuesday the 10th of August 1982, David Shearing waited until dusk before approaching the campsite. A shadow from the darkness of the treeline. The adults were sitting around the campfire, deep in conversation. The children were inside one of the tents, preparing to settle in for the night and sleep. They had no idea that they were now in grave and mortal danger.
Shearing approached the campfire, armed but out of sight. No one saw him creep up on them, but the first gunshot alerted the group to the danger they were now in. The first shot was fatal. Bob fell to the ground. Next, Shearing shot Jackie, then turned the .22 calibre pump action rifle on her parents, Edith and then George. All four of them were shot fatally in the head.
Although his primary interest was in Janet, Shearing used the opportunity to abduct both girls. He approached the tent that housed the girls and told them that a dangerous biker gang had infiltrated the forest. He told them to stay where they were, and that their parents had run to get help. Temporarily obscured from view, Shearing dragged the bodies of Bob, Jackie, Edith, and George to the Johnson’s car to conceal them. He placed them in the back seat and covered them with a blanket.
When he was sure that the adults were neutralised, he secured the girls and forced them further into the woods. He kept them alive for almost a week, moving them from place to place, including to a fishing cabin his family owned on Clearwater River. He raped and sexually abused both girls repeatedly for the duration of their captivity.
A Close Call
Towards the end of the week, after a close call, Shearing moved the girls to what would become their final destination. A prison officer supervising a group of prisoners fishing on the river had knocked on the cabin door, almost discovering Shearing’s secret. This spooked the mass murderer, and he abandoned the cabin for the relative security of his rural family farm.
On the 16th of August, Shearing decided that he had to get rid of both girls. He separated the sisters and walked Karen out into the woods, where he shot her in the back of the head, as he had already done to her parents and grandparents. He kept Janet alive for another 24 hours, abusing her repeatedly during that time.
The following day, he repeated his modus operandi and murdered Janet in the woods by gunshot to the head. He hid the children’s bodies in the boot or trunk of their parent’s car and drove it to a secluded logging road. Here, on Battle Mountain Road, he set the vehicle on fire, confident that the crimes would never be traced back to him.
The Appeals Process & Parole
Shearing, now going by his mother Rose’s maiden name, Ennis, became eligible for parole in September 2008. His bid for parole was refused. He applied for parole again in 2012 and was denied. In 2014, he applied for parole but withdrew his application a month before his parole hearing. This was possibly due to a media campaign that collected more than 15,000 signatures protesting his potential release. In 2021, his most recent appeal for parole was denied. At the time of this episode’s release, David William Shearing remains in prison.
Sources:
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Canadian Press, ‘B.C. mass murderer denied parole’, CTV News, 18th September 2012.
https://bc.ctvnews.ca/b-c-mass-murderer-denied-parole-1.960859
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https://murderpedia.org/male.S/s/shearing-david.htm
‘Information Wells Gray’
Kerr, Jessica, ‘Tsawwassen family trying to keep killer in prison’, Delta Optimist, 6th June 2014.
https://www.delta-optimist.com/local-news/tsawwassen-family-trying-to-keep-killer-in-prison-2979620
‘List of number-one singles of 1982 (Canada), Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_number-one_singles_of_1982_(Canada)
Mulgrew, Ian, ‘Wells Gray murders won’t soon be forgotten: Mulgrew’, Vancouver Sun, Archived, 19th September 2012.
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https://www.strangeoutdoors.com/true-crime-in-the-outdoors/wells-gray-park-camping-murders
‘The Wells Gray Gunman’, The Detectives (10th January 2018), CBC, Dir. John L’Ecuyer & Petro Duszara.
https://www.cbc.ca/television/thedetectives/season-1-episode-1-the-wells-gray-gunman-1.5333845
‘The Wells Gray Gunman’, The Detectives (10th January 2018), CBC, Dir. John L’Ecuyer & Petro Duszara.
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