Unsettling News From the Distant Past

[jamesq]

From CBC News:

The paroled murderer of a five-year-old Calgary girl has been refused more lenient conditions of his release.

Harold David Smeltzer served 27 years of his life sentence for the abduction and murder of Kimberley Thompson in 1980.

The National Parole Board said Wednesday it turned down Smeltzer's request for overnight leave from a Regina halfway house.

The board said Smeltzer has been assessed as having a high to medium risk of reoffending.

Smeltzer was granted day parole in November 2008 under the conditions that he couldn't have contact with anyone under 18, had to stay away from places where children congregate and had to continue programs and counselling he started while incarcerated.

Thompson was snatched off the street in the southwest Calgary neighbourhood of Altadore on her way to kindergarten.

Smeltzer drowned her in his parents' bathtub and dumped her body in a garbage can.

He was also convicted of several other sexual assaults and has admitted to attacking 40 young girls.

The parole board previously said Smeltzer had been diagnosed as a pedophile with an anti-social personality disorder.

Source.

This is interesting from a personal perspective - I knew the victim (though not well). Her family lived across the alley from mine and I occasionally played with her older brother when we were kids.

I can't say I'm too happy with him being released at all. Sexual predators are exactly the sort of people for whom the dangerous offender laws were written.

(The above is crossposted to calgarians)

Anyway, I wrote about the effect this had on my neighborhood here. Thanks to bow_bitch for pointing the article out to me.