’Bunch of idiots’: Victim relatives query psychiatric releases, lawyers urge caution

Rebecca Mayrhofer said she felt “100 per cent frustrated” when she heard about a triple stabbing in Vancouver’s Chinatown on the weekend, that police allege was committed by a man on day release from psychiatric detention.

Blair Evan Donnelly, 64, had previously been found not criminally responsible for stabbing his teenage daughter to death in 2006 and was sent to B.C.’s Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in Coquitlam.

“These are things that should not be happening … None of these. Not with this person on the weekend. Not with Ken. They are preventable,” Mayrhofer said.

“Ken” is Kenneth Barter, who killed Mayrhofer’s brother Nathan Mayrhofer with a hammer in 2010 during a psychotic episode in Vernon. He then dismembered his friend, double bagged the remains and put them in his refrigerator.

Like Donnelly, Barter was found not criminally responsible for the killing, and was confined to the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital, before decisions by the B.C. Review Board allowed both men to return to the community unescorted.