A SHORT LIFE, A QUICK DEATH, BUT NO JUSTICE

When the letter from Correctional Service Canada arrived in her
mailbox, Shannon Desjarlais didn't think much of it.

"I just thought they'd be telling me which prisons they were in," she
says.

But as she read the letters, a wave of nausea swept over the
57-year-old. One of the two men who killed her daughter in a
drug-fuelled rampage in 2004 is already out of jail, released on
parole Sept. 18. The other will be paroled no later than 2010.

"I felt ill, but then I got angry," Desjarlais says. "The justice
system is so screwed up. I feel like I have to do something, but I
have no idea where to begin."

She pauses, then adds, "I keep thinking I could have saved her. I'm
still haunted by that."

Jocylyn Wood's body was found Sept. 18, 2004 by a farmer in bushes 10
km north of Bonnyville. She came to the town northeast of Edmonton to
get away from drugs and gangs. Jocylyn was pregnant and wanted family
help cleaning up and getting ready for the baby.

Jocylyn got hooked on crystal meth at 13 while living in Edmonton, and
as her life spun out of control, she got mixed up with the West Side
Boys gang.

By 15, she left home and moved out to B.C. A year later she drifted
east to Ontario, all the while feeding a ravenous drug habit. At 18,
she showed up pregnant on her family's doorstep in Bonnyville.

"I thought she was cleaning up, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt
and let her move in," Desjarlais says.

Five years of drug addiction isn't that easy to break, however, and
Jocylyn soon found where to get her hands on ecstasy, cocaine and meth
in town.

She miscarried and spiralled out of control again. It wasn't long
before she was working for the town's drug dealers.

In 2002, Jocylyn was pregnant again, but this time she carried her son
to term and gave him up for adoption.

Her life as a petty drug dealer and heavy addict resumed. By this
time, Jocylyn's family only occasionally saw her around town.

In late March 2004, Desjarlais was leaving a store and bumped into a
man she knew only as one of Jocylyn's "friends."

"When I collided with him, it was awful," she says. "I just had this
feeling that this guy would somehow be connected to Jocylyn's death."

Driven by this unexplainable sense of dread, Desjarlais went to one of
the well-known drug houses that Jocylyn was known to hang out at, and
tried to convince her to come home, where they'd help her find a detox
and rehab program.

"I told her that if she didn't quit what she was doing, she'd be dead
within six months and the people right here would be responsible," she
recalls.

Then the man she had bumped into, who she'd later learn was
Christopher Desilet, came in.

When Jocylyn told him what her mother had just said, Desilet and
another man chased her from the house. Six months later, Jocylyn's
body was found.

Desilet and Charles Sabean were arrested. They pleaded guilty to
manslaughter and, in September 2006, were sentenced to six years.

Desilet is already on parole and living in Red Deer.

"It's a farce," Desjarlais says bitterly. "It feels like they got away
with it. He's out of jail and I'm still imprisoned."