A convicted killer has died in B.C.’s only maximum security federal prison, less than a year after his sentence began.
John Wendell Keyler died in custody Thursday, according to a news release from the Correctional Service of Canada. The 40-year-old was an inmate at Kent Institution in Agassiz at the time of his death.
Authorities did not specify the cause of Keyler’s death, which is typical in instances when an inmate dies in custody. However, when an in-custody death is believed to be of “natural causes,” the CSC usually specifies as much.
At the time of his death, Keyler was serving a sentence of four years, 10 months and 29 days that began less than a year ago, on Dec. 12, 2024.
While the CSC did not specify the crime that led to his sentence in its release, CTV News has previously reported on his case.
Keyler was convicted of manslaughter and indignity to human remains in January 2023. He had been charged with murdering his girlfriend Sarah Foord, but B.C. Supreme Court Justice James W. Williams found that the Crown had not proven the murder charge beyond a reasonable doubt.
The killing occurred on July 7, 2020. At the time, Keyler and Foord had been in a relationship for roughly 16 months, and were living together in Foord’s mobile home in Taylor, B.C., south of Fort St. John.
The homicide occurred in the bathroom, where Keyler stabbed Foord with a “multitool,” Williams wrote in his decision. After she died, Keyler drove to “a gas well-site” near Buick Creek, north of Fort St. John, buried her body, and threw the multitool into a nearby body of water.
Foord’s family reported her missing on July 10, 2020, and the B.C. RCMP’s North District Major Crime Unit soon became involved in the case.
In an interview with Mounties on July 21 of that year, Keyler confessed to stabbing Foord and directed police to the location where her body was buried, according to the decision.
