Nanaimo's Prison

The Brannen Lake Correctional Institute on Biggs Road is Vancouver Island's minimum-security prison (commonly referred to as Camp Cuddles by its former guests; some say this because of the leniency of the facility compared to other provincial or federal prisons in Canada, while others say it's a nickname left that lingers from the building's original usage as a reform school. Up to 200 men are incarcerated here at a time, mandated to participate in classroom and work programs.

The RCMP's "Person of Interest" has a short yet complicated record of involvement with British Columbia Provincial Courts. The information is deemed public and is simple to obtain online. Seemingly coming from a family of corporate lawyers and high-end realtors, the man was likely represented by a family member. Some of his charges have "unusual" or inexplicable conclusions, possibly indicative of a skilled legal team taking using "creative" defence strategies.

The identity of the RCMP's "Person of Interest" has been excluded from this site (even though legally speaking, there's no reason we couldn't. It's public information, available with a few clicks. Most area residents already know about the (initially-mysterious) Jaguar driver anyway.

In March 2002 (mid-way through the jail term) he had a one-day hearing for the crime of "Unauthorized use of credit card data" which occurred in Edmonton in 2000 — oddly, the charge was transferred to Nanaimo Provincial Court (possibly appearing from the prison, via video). The hearing was completed in one day with a conviction and an order to pay a $500 fine. Then, upon the day of his release in April 2002, he was immediately taken back to the Kamloops Courthouse, where he was sentenced to another month of jail, for the assault that occurred in the courtroom a week before his incarceration began. He was returned to the Kamloops prison, and released just a few weeks before the night he met Lisa.

While the RCMP's "Person of Interest" has never been charged with a crime by the Nanaimo RCMP (and never lived in Nanaimo), he was incarcerated at the same point in time when the RCMP say they received the tip that eventually led them to search the Biggs Road area. This, and other factors, have led some to theorize that the POI was acting as a police informant. His sentences became more lenient as time went on despite his persistent recidivism, an example being when Nanaimo Provincial Court sentenced him to just 1 day of jail, for assaulting a Saskatchewan RCMP officer while in breach of a previous court order. Prior to that, he had about 15 court appearances (between Oct 2001 to Oct 2002), despite receiving jail sentences totalling around 11 months during the same period.