A memoir of murder, robbery and redemption lost : Cancrime

Stephen John Sinclair, now 61, has spent nearly his entire adult life behind bars. When he was 17 and involved with a violent gang in Toronto in 1966, he stabbed his former landlady to death. The 50-year-old woman was stabbed five times. Sinclair got life in prison after he was convicted of non-capital murder (the equivalent of today's crime of second-degree murder). Just five years later, in 1971, Sinclair was free from prison on a short-term pass when he bolted and committed a violent robbery in which he tied a woman to a chair and slashed her hands with a butcher knife. So begins the Book of John, a diary of violence, failure and apparently limitless second chances.

Sinclair was tossed back in prison with a stiff 16-year sentence for the 1971 knife attack, the first of his many freedom failures. Below, you'll find a startling 40-page, 14-year true-crime tale of sorts documenting Sinclair's blighted life – a memoir of murder, robbery, and redemption lost.

This isn't really a book, of course. It is a compilation of 10 National Parole Board decisions in Sinclair's case from 1993 to 2007. They are all of the publicly accessible parole records (parole decisions before 1992 are secret, under the Corrections and Conditional Release Act, the law that governs Canadian parole and prisons). I've collected the 10 decisions in one document, for simplicity, beginning with the decision of March 5, 1993, in which Sinclair was granted day parole. (the documents are the basis of my story, published in the Kingston Whig-Standard).

The records paint a remarkable story of a system bent on steering a boy back from the brink, but ultimately failing. In one decision, the parole board describes his record of conditional releases as "horrendous." Some key dates in the tale:

1966: Convicted of non-capital murder at age 17, after stabbing former Toronto landlady to death in a killing with “sexual overtones”
1971: Commits armed robbery while on a temporary absence; he tied his female victim to a chair and slashed her hands with a butcher knife; sentenced to 16 years in prison
1980: parole revoked after stealing a car
1983: released on full parole
1984: Charged with sexual assault, but charge later dropped
1988: parole revoked after stealing a car while unlawfully at large
1995: Commits assault and theft while free on parole
2001: transferred to minimum-security
2004: granted day parole despite failed community releases in 1988 and 1995
2005: Engages in bizarre behaviour “bordering on stalking” of girls
2006: Parole revoked
June 25, 2009: Escapes from Pittsburgh Institution; recaptured that day

Despite the best efforts of Corrections and parole authorities to monitor and guide Sinclair with strict conditions; to encourage his re-socialization and to accept his occasional failures, he seems irredeemable. He drove the point home this week, with his escape from Pittsburgh Institution, a minimum-security prison in Kingston, Ontario. Placement there was a privilege and a stepping stone to future release. There is no indication why he bolted.

The parole history below is presented in book format (to change viewing format, choose the More dropdown and select View mode). A circled number in the top right corner marks the start of each of the 10 separate parole decisions.