Warning: This story contains disturbing details; discretion is advised.
Shelley Boden was in her high school class in August of 1982 when she heard her name on the speaker telling her to come to the office. Her classmates all looked at her. She hadn’t done anything wrong, she thought, and went out apprehensively.
Waiting for her at the office was a phone call that conveyed a horror that would never fade: six of her family members had been murdered by a man named David Shearing, now David Ennis. Grandparents George and Edith Bentley and parents Bob and Jackie Johnson had been shot by Ennis while camping at one of their favourite spots near Wells Gray Provincial Park in Clearwater.
Ennis then abducted the family’s daughters, 13-year-old Janet and 11-year-old Karen. He held the girls captive for a week, sexually assaulting and torturing them before killing them. He then put all six bodies in the family car and set it on fire.
Forty-three years later, the gut-wrench felt by Boden, whose mother is Bob’s twin sister, is as fresh as if that phone call had come her way yesterday.
Now, Boden and her family are pushing the Parole Board of Canada once again to keep Ennis behind bars.
Ennis was arrested and went on to plead guilty to six counts of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life with no chance of parole for 25 years in 1984.
His last parole hearing was in 2021, when the Parole Board denied him release for a fourth time, citing ongoing fantasies about stalking and preying on children, said Jessica Lehman, Boden’s daughter. The Parole Board also noted a lack of rehabilitation and housing support in Ennis’ case.
Ennis is up for parole again in August 2026.
Boden, Lehman and the family aren’t leaving things to chance. They’re circulating an online change.org petition calling on the Parole Board to keep Ennis behind bars.
“The last time we were fighting to keep him in jail, we got over 100,000 signatures,” Lehman told the Clearwater Times, adding the Parole Board said it was likely the largest number of signatures they’d ever received.
“It made a huge impact to them,” she said.
Lehman said keeping Ennis locked up amounts to an essential safety measure for the public.
“He should not be put out into the world or even have the opportunity to glimpse what it would be like out and about,” she said.
Boden agrees, saying she thinks Ennis will re-offend if he’s let out.
Ennis should have been convicted of first-degree murder, said Boden, adding the only reason he wasn’t is because he knew to keep quiet during the trial.
“So you know what? (Ennis) can keep quiet. We cannot,” she said. “We’re going to speak out loud.”
It’s taxing to have to relive the horrors of that summer in 1982 every time Ennis comes up for parole, which recently has been every five years. But Boden and her family continue to work tirelessly to prevent his release.
Lehman said if the Parole Board were to grant Ennis a release, it would possibly be to a halfway house in North Calgary.
She said that would be a danger to that community, adding Ennis has no support network as his wife has renounced him.
Feb. 1, 2026 is the deadline to get the signatures into the Parole Board for consideration, and the family is hoping to garner as many signatures as possible.
The family has also created a form letter that people can send to their local MLA, asking for their advocacy in denying Ennis parole.
Lehman was born after the murders. She doesn’t know what it was like for her mother to have to walk home from school alone, because her mom and dad were away, after learning her family had been slain. But she does know that generational trauma has permeated her family ever since.
“I don’t know these people but I would have loved them, I do love them,” she said of her late family members. “I have a good cry about it all the time, and there’s really nothing I could say to (her mom) to ease the pain, because she was the one that lived it alone.”