Axe murderer Francis Clancy threw “temper tantrums” and was resistant to a drug treatment program in the community, but the National Parole Board has decided to extend his parole (doc after the jump) anyway. He’s now living at a halfway house on Victoria Island, in British Columbia, far from Ottawa, Ontario, where he savagely murdered 29-year-old Iain Irvine in 1983. The board says Clancy is “highly motivated” to succeed on release, although when he’s been confronted about the murder that put him in prison for life, he can’t really explain why he did it.
Clancy has repeatedly fouled up on parole and he even escaped in 1991 from a minimum-security prison where he was serving his life sentence for murder. He was declared unlawfully at large again in 2002. But he keeps getting out. A psychological report done just five years ago, said he is a high risk for violent reoffending.
He was released on day parole in January this year in B.C., but his parole was suspended because of his screwup in a community based residential substance abuse treatment program. According to the parole records acquired by Cancrime, Clancy exhibited “general resistance and ‘temper tantrums.’ Staff said he was “self-directed and too distracted to concentrate in therapy.” Clancy fouled up on day parole three years ago. Released in May 2007, he was thrown back behind bars seven months later because he was caught using drugs.
It’s hard to imagine Clancy is now prepared to go straight. He’s a career criminal who began breaking the law in 1969 and has, according to parole records, lived his life “in a manner consistent with entrenched criminal values” and has engaged in a “parasitical life of crime.” In prison, he’s been active in the underground, illicit drug trade.
When he’s been grilled about the 1983 murder that earned him a life sentence, Clancy hasn’t been able to explain it. “You said quite forthrightly that you really did not know why you killed the victim,” a January parole record notes. Clancy offered some sort of explanation about having low self-esteem and self worth at the time. He said back then, he was “materialistic and self-centred” and had repressed anger. It’s not likely that any of that means much to Molly Irvine, the Ottawa woman whose son was horribly ripped out of her life in 1983. Irvine’s grief is detailed here in this previous post on Clancy’s case.
Here’s the latest parole record in Clancy’s case, dated August 16, 2010:
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