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Canada’s top court won’t hear an appeal from Matthew de Grood, the Calgarian who fatally stabbed five post-secondary students at a house party in Brentwood while in a state of psychosis nearly 10 years ago.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed an application for leave from de Grood’s lawyers, which requested the body to consider overturning a 2023 verdict of the Alberta Court of Appeal.
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De Grood has been under psychiatric care since the killings on April 15, 2014, which he committed while in a severe psychotic state, believing he was attacking werewolves or vampires.
The victims included Katie Perras, Lawrence Hong, Josh Hunter, Zackariah Rathwell and Jordan Segura. All five were attending post-secondary studies in Calgary.
He was found not guilty on account of a mental disorder at his trial in 2016. While he has been allowed certain freedoms and unsupervised outings since then, he has for the most part remained under professional supervision, first in Calgary and then in Edmonton, ever since.
At his 2022 mandatory disposition review, de Grood’s lawyers requested an absolute or conditional discharge for their client. The Alberta Review Board denied the request for increased freedoms, ruling that de Grood must remain detained as he was still considered “a significant risk to public safety.”
Last June, the Alberta Court of Appeal also dismissed an appeal from de Grood, ruling there were no reviewable errors in the review board’s decision.
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