One of the three men accused of murdering Arnold and Joanne De Jong owned a company that had cleaned the roofs and gutters of the couple’s Abbotsford home a month before they were killed.
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The family of an Abbotsford couple found murdered in their beds four years ago said they felt relief and gratitude after the three men accused of planning and carrying out the violent killings were found guilty of first-degree murder.
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Abhijeet Singh, Khushveer Toor and Gurkaran Singh, an international student from India, were charged with killing Arnold De Jong and his wife, Joanne, in May 2022.
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Justice Brenda Brown called the murders “intimate and prolonged” and rejected a defence argument that they were part of a botched robbery.
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“The murders speak of calculation and determination,” she told court Friday afternoon.
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Outside court, the couple’s daughter Sandra Barthel said she had trouble sleeping this week.
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“We went in knowing, no matter what, we’re the ones with the life sentence,” she said. “And we had to tell ourselves that a verdict isn’t going to make us whole again, but it would feel a lot better if it was a first-degree murder conviction.”
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Arnold, 77, was found dead in his bed with duct tape wrapped around his nose and mouth. It would later be determined he died of asphyxiation due to smothering. Joanne, 76, was found in her bed surrounded by blood. She died of sharp and blunt force trauma.
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During an eight-week trial earlier this year, court heard that a day before the killing, Abhijeet Singh — the owner of a Surrey company that had previously cleaned the roof of the couple’s home — purchased rope, a screwdriver and a softball bat from a hardware store. Later that night, the three men left their shared rental unit, bringing the items with them, “prepared to deliver violence,” said prosecutors.
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Police would later find the bat in the trunk of a car associated with the three men. A swab taken from it would reveal Joanne’s DNA.
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Prosecutors also laid out evidence showing a shoe print found on a bloody bedsheet in Joanne’s room could have been made by a shoe worn by Khushveer Toor. Fingerprints on a glass patio door were linked to Gurkaran Singh’s left hand. And Google searches by Abhijeet Singh, after an article about the killings appeared in the local newspaper, included queries about the punishment for murderers in Canada and jail sentences for international students.
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Defence lawyers for the three men had argued the deaths were part of a robbery gone wrong. Each said there was no strong evidence to place their specific client in the De Jong’s bedrooms.
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But the judge ultimately rejected those arguments.
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“In my view, three persons were needed to participate in the home invasion and murders for them to be carried out in the way that they were,” said Brown.
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After the murders, the men tried to pay off debts and send money to family and friends using the De Jong’s Visa cards and cheques they stole from the couple’s home.
