Matthew Foerster

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VERNON - Matthew Foerster will be 43 years old before he can even try to apply for parole.

Foerster, 32, was sentenced today in Vernon Supreme Court to life with no eligibility for parole for 17 years. The Cherryville man pleaded guilty earlier this year to second degree murder in the 2011 killing of Armstrong teen Taylor Van Diest.

Second degree murder can carry a sentence of life with no parole for 25 years, however Justice Brenda Brown accepted a joint submission from Crown and defence lawyers calling for 17 years before Foerster can apply for release. The 17 years is measured from Foerster's arrest date in April of 2012, meaning he can apply in April 2029. Because he pleaded guilty and supported the joint submission for 17 years, Foerster cannot ever appeal. 

Foerster was 25 years old when he brutally attacked 18-year-old Van Diest and left her for dead on the railway tracks that run through the small community of Armstrong. He fled the province and was apprehended roughly five months later in Ontario.

Foerster admitted in a taped police interview that he went to Armstrong looking for sex and followed Van Diest, who was walking to meet friends for Halloween, onto the railway tracks. He confessed to hitting her multiple times with a Maglite flashlight and using a shoelace and his hands to strangle her. 

Taylor Van Diest, 18, was killed Halloween night 2011 while walking to meet her friends.

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Foerster’s defence lawyer, Ken Beatch, said his client was in a drug and alcohol fuelled state the day of the murder and deeply regrets his actions.

In handing down her decision, Justice Brown said she agreed with the Crown that this was a horrific murder by a man who tried to avoid responsibility by fleeing and hiding out for months before police found and arrested him. She also accepted submissions from the defence that Foerster was intoxicated the day of the murder, something she said was not an excuse for the crime, but a factor that reduced his moral blameworthiness. She accepted that Foerster is truly remorseful and taking steps to rehabilitate himself.

Outside of court, Marie Van Diest said she disagrees with the judge that Foerster is remorseful, noting that in the apology he made in court, he never once mentioned Taylor by name.

“In my eyes, I just saw that as him still not accepting responsibility,” Marie said.

She said the family is emotionally exhausted by the past several years spent in court, and while they believe Foerster is guilty of murder in the first degree, they do feel some relief that he cannot ever appeal his second degree conviction. They’ll try to find some peace over the next few years until Foerster is up for parole, she said.

Despite being eligible for parole 11 years from now, it will still be up to the parole board to determine whether or not he is released. With Canada’s “faint hope clause”, a statutory provision that allows prisoners sentenced to life with no parole eligibility of greater than 15 years, Foerster can apply for early parole in 2027.

“That’s not very long for taking a life, particularly as brutal as he had taken Taylor’s life,” Marie said.

Second degree murder can lead to sentences of 25 years without parole eligibility, but Crown counsel Christopher McPherson said that’s quite rare in Canada and almost always involves cases where there are multiple killings. First degree murder convictions, on the other hand, carry an automatic life sentence with no parole for 25 years, but McPherson said in his view there was not enough evidence to convict Foerster of murder in the first degree. A jury previously found Foerster guilty of first degree murder, but the verdict was overturned on appeal due to errors made by the trial judge.

“For first degree you either have to show that it was planned and deliberate, and there was never any evidence of that here of any kind, and/or that it was during the actual course of an attempted sexual assault… and based on what the Court of Appeal had to say and the facts, the evidence in my view was not sufficient to prove that beyond a reasonable doubt,” McPherson said.

Foerster pleaded guilty in 2014 to two earlier assaults against women, one in 2004 and one in 2005. In the first case, he wore a mask and broke into a 19-year-old Cherryville woman’s home and slammed her head against the bedroom wall. A few months later, he held a knife to a Kelowna escort’s throat and demanded she perform fellatio and then penetrated her anally, leaving lacerations later found by a doctor. Foerster left her there with her hands bound behind her with duct tape. He was ordered to serve a jail sentence of six years for those crimes, served concurrently — or at the same time — as his life sentence for killing Van Diest.

Foerster was transported from the courthouse shortly after the hearing, surrounded by sheriffs. Media were not permitted to get anywhere near Foerster as he exited the courthouse. His father, Stephen Roy Foerster, declined a request for comment by iNFOnews.ca. He was convicted of accessory to murder after the fact and sentenced to three years in 2014. At that time, he was given credit for time served, leaving him with just over two years left in jail. 

— This story was updated at 1 p.m. June 5, 2018 to include full details of the sentence hearing and reactions from family. 

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