Angel Fehr was 27 years old and pregnant when Trent Larsen killed her in 2000, but her body wasn't found for 19 years. He was granted parole last month.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED / RCMP
October 24, 2024 - 7:00 AM
A man jailed for killing his girlfriend 24 years ago has provided more details at his parole hearing about the lead-up to the night he strangled the 27-year-old pregnant woman in their Kamloops home.
Trent Alan Larsen, now in his late 50s, admitted to killing Angel Lyn Fehr and was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison, two decades after her death.
Three years after he was convicted, Larsen has been granted day parole.
A Kamloops courtroom heard in September 2021 that Larsen awoke to Fehr atop his chest brandishing a butcher knife. She believed Larsen wasn't listening to her about her grief over the accidental death of her daughter, then-Crown prosecutor Neil Wiberg said while reading from an agreed statement of facts. He hit her with a lamp in an effort to disarm her, then strangled her over five minutes as she struggled and stabbed him several times, the court heard.
Not heard in court was that Larsen was involved with a cannabis grow operation at the time of the killing. According to a September 2024 Parole Board of Canada hearing, Fehr threatened to tell police about the grow op.
The parole decision doesn't make clear whether Fehr made the threat on the night he killed her, but beyond mentioning a struggle in which Fehr had a knife and Larsen a lamp, it also doesn't include any details about claims that Larsen wasn't helping her grieve.
The parole board found Larsen demonstrates some regret, but noted that he maintains that he strangled Fehr out of self defense and that he considered himself the victim, the decision said.
In 2021, the court heard Larsen tried and failed to revive Fehr, but he hid her body in a barrel when he realized she was dead. The body wasn't found for 19 years.
Police long suspected he was not truthful about Fehr's disappearance and in 2019 got a confession during an undercover operation. He told an uncover officer, pretending to be a crime boss, that he killed her, filled a barrel with her body and concrete, then had it buried in the 100 Mile House area.
Attempting to give himself an alibi, Larsen turned himself into the Kamloops courthouse after hiding her body, where he was held for seven days due to outstanding warrants. Upon his release, he told Fehr's aunt that she ran away while he was gone. The aunt reported her missing and Larsen moved to Chilliwack just days later.
He would return to the marijuana business for some time and avoided jail for 20 years, but he didn't avoid suspicion. He lied to police about any involvement in her disappearance in 2002 and gave investigators a theory of what might have happened.
Fehr's body was uncovered, shortly after his 2019 confession during the undercover operation, encased in concrete. Her identity was confirmed during an autopsy and the five-month-old fetus, of whom Larsen would have been the father, was found. Her cause of death, however, couldn't be determined. The court heard that her hyoid, a bone in the throat that when broken could indicate strangulation, was still intact.
Larsen was initially charged with second-degree murder and was held in custody before his guilty plea in 2021. A jury trial was initially planned, which the Crown prosecutor said would have taken months. Larsen would instead plead guilty to the lesser manslaughter charge and a joint submission between Crown and defence proposed a sentence of 11 years and six months, reduced by three years due to time he had already spent in custody.
Fehr last saw friends and family at an Easter dinner in Abbotsford just weeks before her death, a dinner Larsen also attended. She left behind a nine-year-old daughter at the time, who spent years wondering why her mother left, according to the parole decision. She said Larsen's actions destroyed many people.
Larsen now plans to get to work while on six-month day parole, but it won't be in the cannabis industry. While he downplayed the seriousness of the drug and his involvement, noting that he was not involved with gangs, he told the parole board that the financial gains are too low to venture into.
Instead he plans to look for work as a commercial truck driver or heavy equipment operator, but his parole officer will be monitoring because of his past tendency to sell cannabis in order to buy harder drugs.
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