UPDATE: ‘I grabbed the knife and I lost it’: Kelowna murderer Jay Thomson

KELOWNA – When family members tried to explain to a judge today how the murder of Theresa Neville impacted their lives, they made it clear: This wasn’t the first time they grieved for her.

Carol Neville, Theresa’s mother, described 18 years of fear, loss and worry ever since her 15-year-old daughter somehow connected with 45-year-old Jay Thomson, a man with a wife and four daughters in 2001.

Since that day, she said her family has been on a ‘nightmare road-trip’ as Theresa got pregnant at 16 and again at 18. For long periods of time, up to four years, she had no idea where her daughter and grand-children were.

“As parents we did the best we could to surround our daughter with love and protection but we knew deep down this man was evil and would ruin our daughter’s life,” she said.

They had to follow Thomson surreptitiously to discover where their daughter was. Once back in contact, they started to see hope. Theresa appeared to be reaching back out to her family and was starting to see how Thomson was controlling her, Carol said. They thought she might finally leave him.

"Jay also recognized these changes and could not accept this loss of control that he had over her and he took her life,” she said.

Neville read her emotional victim impact statement to Supreme Court Justice Michael Brundrett today, Jan. 24, before Thomson was sentenced to life imprisonment with no hope for parole for ten years.

For the first time today, Thomson, now 62, made his first real admissions beyond entering a guilty plea earlier this month. In June 2013, Neville was stabbed more than 35 times with a knife in her own home while their two children slept downstairs.

"It was an ordinary night as (my daughter) had said when interviewed. A friend of mine had cancelled my doubles evening tennis match I set up. He said his back was sore. So Theresa and I decided to have a family pizza night with (the kids). Why the girls kept that from people for so long (I don’t know) but I did get the pizza and Theresa cooked them up. I had mine on the love seat, she had hers and an argument did ensue.

“It was like Carol (Neville, Theresa’s mother) said, she was growing up, maturing and going to leave me. And, um, I… I never knew that I could be obsessed with somebody like that and I said look I gave up my wife and everything and I thought we were going to have a life together. We have got the kids… I didn’t know where it was coming from or anything and I just fell down on my knees and I thought it's over, you know? And, um, I looked and she is still screaming at me… and I just, I lost it. I grabbed a knife and I lost it. I apologize to everyone for that I can’t take it back.”

“It took me five-and-a-half years to come to a conclusion with the Good Lord — I wasn’t wrestling with demons, I was wrestling with the Lord and he said: ‘You’re guilty.’ So that’s it, I am guilty,” he said.

He also told the court he was beaten nearly to death in prison.

“I want people to know, it’s not pleasant where I am going.”

Minutes earlier, his daughter was so overcome with emotion she couldn’t continue reading her statement. Both Carol and his daughter (who cannot be identified by law) might have said as much with the looks they gave him 25 feet away as in their words.

She spoke of nightmares, sleeping pills, trouble making friends, moving — and being forced to raise it all again, like with school assignments to write autobiographies or make family trees.

Thomson was taken away from the court to prison in red prison sweat pants and sweat shirt for, as Brundrett pointed out, perhaps the rest of his life.

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