‘Demon’ sentenced to life in prison for killing spree

GODERICH, Ont.—Sobs resounded in a packed courtroom yesterday as families of three murder victims described the devastating impact a “demon” had visited on their lives by killing their loved ones, including a married couple of 51 years that Jesse Imeson tied up and shot in their basement.
The statements came after Imeson, 23, of Windsor, Ont., pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree murder in the killings that sowed terror in several communities in July, 2007.

“Our lives were shattered,” said Carol Denomy, daughter of victims Helene Regier, 73, and Bill Regier, 72, who left behind six children, 16 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren.
“It was sudden, violent, undeserved, and defenceless.”
Imeson had been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of the Regiers. Instead, he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
He similarly pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for killing student Carlos Rivera, 25, in Windsor a few days before he shot the Regiers.
Imeson was sentenced to life without parole eligibility for 15 years on that count.
“Carlos, in a way, helped take a demon out of society,” the victim’s brother, Hugo Rivera, said in a statement read to the court as Imeson sneered from the prisoner’s box.
Hands shackled at the waist, the clean-shaven Imeson, wearing a black dress shirt, blue jeans, and black running shoes, showed no signs of remorse. At times, he smirked or glared at family members and the media in the packed courtroom, but mostly he looked straight ahead impassively.
According to an agreed statement of facts, Imeson strangled Rivera with a belt after waking up and finding the architecture student performing a sex act on him.
The two had spent much of the night drinking after they struck up a conversation at The Tap on July 17, 2007—a gay strip club in Windsor where Rivera worked part-time as a bartender and Imeson had gone looking for work as an exotic dancer.
“The gay guy—if I had to do it again, I would do it,” Imeson later would tell an undercover cop.
After killing Rivera, Imeson fled north to Grand Bend, Ont., along the Lake Huron shoreline.
Imeson ditched Rivera’s car when he realized police were looking for it, and he broke into a dry shed where he found a .22-calibre semi-automatic rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition.
On July 22, he smashed his way into the Regiers’ farmhouse in Mount Carmel, Ont.—where Bill Regier was born and raised—and ordered the couple at gunpoint into the basement.
Imeson cut the telephone line, using the cord to tie Helene Regier’s hands in front of her. He used a cord cut from a clothes line to bind her husband—hands outstretched on either side of him—to joists and pipes.
Imeson then shot Helene Regier four times in the chin, shoulder, neck, and chest. Her husband was shot three times—twice in the chest and once in the temple. She was left bleeding to death on the ground while her dying husband remained in a half-standing position, held up by his bound hands.
“What’s to know?” Imeson later told a detective. “Shots were fired. People died.”
Imeson fled in the Regiers’ truck, sparking an intense manhunt.
He was captured July 31 outside Portage-du-Fort, Que., near the Ontario border, after triggering a remote-control camera set by a bear hunter in thick bush where he had tried to hide the stolen truck.