Tara Jeffrey
Every time a letter arrives, Stephanie Nethery feels the pain in her stomach all over again.
“I know exactly what the letters look like,” she said of the mail sent regularly from the Parole Board of Canada, detailing when her sister’s killer has changed jobs, or relocated.
“They have to keep the victim’s family informed of where he is… so we’ll have that for the rest of our lives.”
But the most recent letter was one she’d hoped would never come; her family’s worst fear — Jeremy Molitor has applied for full parole.
“How do I explain this to my children?” asked the local mother, and younger sister to Jessica Nethery, who would have turned 38 this Christmas.
Instead, all that’s left are photos of the bubbly, blonde-haired girl whose life was cut short at age 21. Molitor, a once-hailed boxing champion, stabbed her to death, leaving her body in a parked car in downtown Sarnia 16 years ago.
“They’re older now,” Nethery said of her children, ages 7 and 9. “They want to know why Aunt Jess is in heaven, and how she got there. I have to tell them that a bad man killed her. I don’t tell my kids that he’s not in jail because that would terrify them.
“How can somebody brutally murder another human being and be let out of prison after 15 years?” she continued. “How do you explain that to a child?”
Molitor was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 14 years. He was granted day parole in 2015, despite Nethery’s best efforts to keep him behind bars — she attended painstaking parole hearings to give victim impact statements, launched a petition signed by thousands, and encouraged many others to send personal submissions for consideration by the parole board.
Molitor won an appeal after the board initially rejected his application. That meant he was able to work, and move to a halfway house. He currently lives in British Columbia and cannot travel to Ontario without special permission.
“That was our request,” she said.
Though Molitor was eligible to apply for full parole more than a year ago, this is his first application, said Linda Nethery, Jessica’s mother.
“It’s a closed-door hearing,” she said of the decision, set to take place later this month. “They say we can mail in any letters that we want them to read on our behalf, but that’s about it.
“We don’t get to voice our opinion in front of him.”
Full parole allows offenders to serve the remainder of their sentence in the community. They must abide by conditions and are under the supervision of a parole officer, said Lisa Saether, Regional Manager Community Relations and Training Parole Board of Canada; Pacific Region.
"Offenders on full parole may reside in their own homes, work full-time or go back to school,” she said, noting an offender on full parole who breaches a condition may be returned to prison.
According to the Canadian Women’s Foundation, one woman in Canada is killed by her intimate partner every six days, and the proportion of intimate partner homicides committed by a common-law, dating or other intimate partner is on the rise. This Sunday (Nov. 25) marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
“I do plan on writing one more letter,” said Nethery. “Will it make a difference? Probably not. But if this is the last chance for me to write something that he is going to read — whether it affects him or not — he needs to know that it’s not OK. That he is not forgiven, and what he did has an affect on many people, especially Jessica’s family, for the rest of our lives.”
And as time goes on, it doesn’t get easier.
“It never goes away,” said Linda Nethery. “That person missing at Christmas time, every family function.
“But there’s always reminders, when you least expect it. You find something, or something just rocks you, and you think — yup, that was Jess.”