Serial killer of Winnipeg homeless men sees sentence reduced

Manitoba's highest court has unanimously agreed to overturn a Winnipeg serial killer's sentence, one which would have kept him behind bars for 75 years without a chance at parole.

In a three-page decision issued Thursday, the Manitoba Court of Appeal approved a joint request from provincial prosecutors and John Paul Ostamas's defence lawyer to strike down the consecutive life sentences handed to the now-45-year-old in 2016.

Ostamas pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Miles Monias, Stony Stanley Bushie and Donald Collins, who were homeless, in April 2015. His minimum 75-year-sentence without parole was the longest ever handed down in Manitoba. 

The legal landscape shifted in May, when the Supreme Court of Canada struck down a Criminal Code section permitting so-called "parole stacking" in cases involving multiple first- or second-degree murder charges. 

Section 745.51 was enacted by the then-Conservative federal government and permitted sentencing judges to combine parole eligibility in such cases.

It was expected the Manitoba high court would agree to alter Ostamas' sentence in light of the SCC's ruling, in which parole stacking was deemed to breach section 12 of the Canadian Charter protecting people from cruel and unusual punishment. 

Ostamas will now be eligible to apply for parole by the year 2040 instead of 2090.

When news of his appeal broke in June, Ostamas's defence lawyer, Ryan Amy, cautioned that his client would simply get a chance to ask for — not necessarily receive — release from prison if the appeal was successful.

In conforming to the new law of the land, the Manitoba court simply substituted Ostamas's consecutive life sentences without parole for 25 years for concurrent ones. Nothing else about them changes, by order of Chief Justice Richard Chartier. 

Murdered men were 'unfortunate innocents,' judge said

Bushie, Monias and Collins were each unsheltered, intoxicated and couldn't defend themselves from Ostamas's attacks, court heard at his sentencing.

Monias, 37, was beaten in a bus shelter at Portage Avenue and Main Street and later died in hospital. Bushie, 48, and Collins, 65, were lured from Hargrave Street and Ellice Avenue and later beaten to death two hours apart. Collins was stabbed and strangled, and Bushie had 71 different injuries, a senior Crown prosecutor said.

The motive for the killings remains unclear. Ostamas has said he was seeking retribution for a sexual assault on his pregnant girlfriend by four men, but police found no evidence of this, Court of Queen's Bench Justice Vic Toews said in 2016.

"It would have been four, but I only found three," Ostamas, who has diagnosed schizophrenia, told a spiritual counsellor in jail after his arrest.

In handing Ostamas the consecutive life terms at the time, Toews called the men's murders "three cold-blooded killings accomplished by savage brutality." Ostamas's victims, he said, were "unfortunate innocents."