British ColumbiaCorrectional Service Canada says 40-year old John Wendell Keyler has died in a correctional facility located in Agassiz, where he had been serving an 11-year sentence for the stabbing death of his girlfriend. 40-year-old John Wendell Keyler had been serving an 11-year sentence for the death of 38-year-old Sarah FoordCBC News · Posted: Oct 24, 2025 4:56 PM EDT | Last Updated: 5 hours agoListen to this articleEstimated 2 minutesJohn Wendell Keyler, a Fort St. John, B.C., man convicted of manslaughter, has died in custody, Correctional Service Canada says. (Rafferty Baker/CBC)Correctional Service Canada says a Fort St. John, B.C., man convicted of manslaughter has died in a correctional facility located in Agassiz.John Wendell Keyler, 40, had been serving an 11-year sentence at the prison, minus 2,130 days served, for the stabbing death of 38-year-old Sarah Foord. Foord was Keyler’s girlfriend. He stabbed her about 50 times with the blade of a Leatherman in the early hours of July 7, 2020, at their home in Taylor, B.C., according to a 2023 judgement released by the B.C. Supreme Court. Keyler was sentenced in December 2024.Originally faced with second-degree murder, his charge was reduced to manslaughter during the judgement. B.C. Supreme Court Justice James William said the evidence didn’t definitively show Keyler intended to kill Foord, which is necessary for a murder conviction.”Ultimately, I cannot discount the reasonable possibility that the defendant was experiencing effects akin to psychosis arising from his state of cocaine and alcohol intoxication. I therefore have a doubt that he understood the true circumstances as they existed at the time he stabbed Ms. Foord,” Williams wrote in his oral reasons.Keyler testified that he was in a substance-induced psychosis from months of drug and alcohol abuse, and believed he was in danger from “people crawling in the walls” when he stabbed Foord. Keyler was also found guilty of causing indignity to human remains, and was sentenced to two years in prison to be served concurrently with the manslaughter conviction. Keyler admitted that he buried Foord in a gas well site near Buick Creek, roughly 84 kilometres north of Fort St. John, before fleeing to Surrey. Two weeks later, he returned to northeast B.C., confessing the killing to Fort St. John police. Correctional Service Canada says Keyler’s next of kin have been notified, and that they will review the circumstances of his death, in addition to notifying police and the coroner. No information has been released on how Keyler died. With files from Bethany Lindsay
Fort St. John man convicted of killing girlfriend dies in B.C. prison
