Killer of Langford teen Kimberly Proctor denied parole once again

Content warning: Some details of the following article may be offensive/triggering.

Kruse Wellwood, one of the two people convicted of the murder of Langford teen Kimberly Proctor, has been denied day parole once again. 

In March of 2010, 16-year-old Wellwood and his accomplice, Cameron Moffat developed a plan to rape and murder Proctor, who was only 18-years-old at the time of her death. 

Wellwood and Moffat then contacted Proctor and arranged a time and place to meet under the pretence that the two boys wanted to apologize for being unkind. 

Proctor was lured to Wellwood’s Langford home on March 18th, where she was sexually assaulted and brutalized for a period of several hours. 

It has been determined that Proctor was then strangled and suffocated until she died. 

Wellwood and Moffat then stored her body in a freezer before transferring her to a duffle bag, which they reportedly brought with them on a bus to dispose of. 

Her burned body was found the next day beneath a bridge, just off the Galloping Goose in Colwood.

Now, Wellwood is 31-years-old and serving a life sentence for first degree murder and indignity to a dead body. 

Though he was only 16-years-old at the time of the murder, he was sentenced as an adult with eligibility for parole beginning in 2020. 

Wellwood’s father was largely absent in his upbringing and was incarcerated for second degree murder in 2001. He had a tumultuous relationship with his mother and was out on bail for assaulting her when he murdered Proctor. 

The Parole Board of Canada has determined that Wellwood’s risk to reoffend is too high to allow for his day parole application to be approved. 

During his sentence, he has had to be involuntary moved to a maximum security prison due to his aggressive behaviour towards others, engaging in self harm and making suicidal statements.

The PBC also noted that an important risk factor has been a deviant pattern of arousal to sadistic themes.

“Evidence of the ongoing nature of this problem was discovered in June of 2023 in the form of approximately 100 sexually deviant drawings found in [Wellwood’s] cell,” wrote the PBC in their parole denial. 

“These drawings portrayed women and children being tortured with words and story lines containing profanity, degradation and sadism.”

The PBC added that more recently Wellwood has been fixated on gaining access to the risky drawings, acknowledged the sexual nature of them; but not agreeing that that the drawings are related to his sexual deviancy.

In his attempt to gain day parole, 15 years after Proctor’s murder, the PBC noted several letters addressed to the board, members of the case management team and one letter written to an unknown audience. 

In these letters, Wellwood defends his lewd artwork, claims to have Asperger’s syndrome or high-functioning autism that has gone undiagnosed, asserts that a recent psychological assessment was wrong in his diagnosis, but ultimately argues that his release on day parole would be beneficial. 

The PBC says he has a high degree of certainty that his risk is manageable in the community, attributing many of the issues with his behaviour to have been caused by isolation, forced inactivity and trauma responses from being imprisoned. 

Additionally they noted in Wellwood’s letters, he declared that he is “profoundly sorry” and rejects everything he falsely believed and the justifications he used to commit the murder. 

Part of why his day parole was denied is due to the number of victim statements on file which the PBC say compellingly describe the trauma, grief and anger felt by the Proctor’s family members. 

The statements are vehemently opposed to any type of release for Wellwood as Proctor’s family believes he continues to pose a risk to the community.

“The most recent statement details the difficulties the family member continues to experience grasping the actuality of what [he] did to the victim,” wrote the PBC. 

“She wonders what life for her and the others in her family would have brought if [Wellwood] had not committed the murder. She expresses strong opposition to your release.”

Earlier this year, in June, Wellwood’s accomplice Moffat was also denied day parole due to similar themes of emotional and behavioural instability.