MOYES PLEADS GUILTY, GETS LIFE SENTENCE

Robert Bruce Moyes' fear of dying in prison may come true.

The 46-year-old career criminal was sentenced in Chilliwack Supreme Court
Thursday to life in prison without parole for 25 years after pleading
guilty to the drug-related murders of five people in Abbotsford and two
people in Burnaby in the mid-1990s.

He was on day parole from Sumas Centre at the time of the homicides,
returning to the halfway house after both brutal murders.

His plea in Supreme court Thursday came as a surprise to some, although
Moyes had been planning to come clean ever since his arrest in August.

"His instructions had always been to plead guilty," said defence lawyer
Peter Benning.

Moyes' arrest was the first of three arrests in the two murders, which had
for years remained unsolved.

On Sept. 11, 1996, Abbotsford Police made a grisly discovery that has
become the worst mass murder in Abbotsford history. They arrived at 32857
Harris Rd. after reports the residents hadn't been seen and a dozen cows
remained unfed.

Inside a five car garage, officers found the bodies of a man and a woman -
Daryl and Teresa Klassen, 30. A little while later, the bodies of three
more people were found inside the aging white and blue house on the
property. Those victims in the execution-style hit were identified as
Raymond Graves, 70, Sonto Graves, 56, and David Sangha, 37. All three had
ties to the international cocaine trade.

Nine months earlier, on Dec. 21, 1995, Moyes strangled Eugene Uyeyama, 35,
and his wife, Michele, 30 , and then set their Burnaby home on fire.

It is believed Eugene had become a police informant after being caught in a
drug bust a few months earlier.

Moyes, originally from Victoria, has spent most of adult life in prison,
with 36 criminal convictions in the past 28 years. He has a history of
escape and drug abuse, and by 1986, had earned himself a life sentence for
robbery.

He is one of two men charged in the Abbotsford murders. Mark Therrien, 38,
currently faces five counts of first degree murder.

He also has a lengthy criminal record and was on statutory release at the
time of the massacre. A national parole board investigation into the
supervision and release of the pair is underway, with a report expected in
February, 2003.

A third person, Sal Ciancio, is facing murder charges for the Burnaby slaying.