Jesse Norman Imeson was sentenced to life in prison Monday after pleading guilty to three counts of second-degree murder

Jesse Norman Imeson was sentenced to life in prison Monday after pleading guilty to three counts of second-degree murder: One for strangling Carlos Rivera of Windsor, Ont., to death and two for the shooting deaths of Bill and Helene Regier in their Mount Carmel, Ont., farmhouse. Imeson, 23, will not be eligible to apply for parole for 25 years.Crown Attorney Bob Morris said the sentence was the maximum punishment allowable under Canadian law.Jesse Imeson's lawyer, Don Crawford of London, Ont., said earlier this month that Imeson was prepared to plead guilty to lesser charges.
I don't think there will ever be satisfaction, but at least there will be some closure," Morris said.In handing down his sentence at the Huron County Courthouse in Goderich, Justice Roland Haines described Imeson's crimes as "savage" and expressed condolences to the families of Imeson's three victims.Imeson was originally charged with first-degree murder for all three deaths. The second-degree murder charges were part of a plea bargain jointly submitted by the Crown and Imeson's lawyer.Haines noted that despite-second degree murder being a lesser charge, the penalty Imeson has received would have been the same if he were convicted of first-degree murder.
The conviction and sentencing closes a bloody saga that began in July of 2007 when Imeson became the subject of an intense police manhunt.The court heard that Imeson used a canvas belt with metal rings to strangle 25-year-old Rivera to death in Imeson's Windsor rooming house on July 18, 2007. Imeson committed the murder after waking to discover Rivera performing oral sex on him. DNA evidence showed Imeson's semen in Rivera's mouth and on his shirt.As Windsor assistant Crown Attorney Jennifer Holmes recited the final statements on Rivera's murder, Imeson shifted in his seat, smirked occasionally, and at one point nodded and said softly "That's right."Many of Rivera's family - including his father, mother and two of his brothers - were in court. They were originally expected to read victim impact statements, but Holmes said they were too overcome with emotion to speak before the court.Reading from a statement written by Rivera's mother, Maria Elena Balcazar, Holmes said: "Since my son's life was stolen, I have felt dead inside.Balcazar wore sunglasses in the courtroom. As she heard the proceedings through an interpreter, she dabbed at her eyes.The court also heard that on the night of July 22, 2007, Imeson broke into the house of Bill Regier, 72, and his wife Helene, 73 - a well-respected couple who had spent their entire lives in the small farming community of Mount Carmel near Grand Bend, about 185 kilometres north of Windsor. Using a .22 rifle he had stolen from another farm, Imeson forced the couple into the basement of their home, and bound them both with telephone cord, extension cord and clothesline. He then shot each of them multiple times.Helene Regier suffered bullet wounds to her right shoulder, neck, chest, and under her chin. Bill Regier was shot twice in the chest, and once in the right temple.Leaving the bodies bound, Imeson raided the Regiers' home for money, food and clothing, then stole their truck.Imeson was eventually captured on July 31 in heavily wooded cottage country on the Quebec side of the Ottawa River.Carole Denomy, one of the Regiers' six children, said the family has been shattered by the murders, and that the deaths still bring "indescribable pain."As Denomy read a statement in court, members of the Regier family cried in the stands."We are consumed by their absence," Denomy said.
Outside the courthouse, Denomy said the family had come to the hearing neither for sympathy nor an apology, "but rather to see that justice was served.""No sentence will ever be adequate for the lives that have been taken."

Posted in: Windsor