Nagging questions remain unanswered as three men were finally sentenced this year for the murder of Fribjon Bjornson, the Vanderhoof man who appeared to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time when he showed up at their door on the Na'kazdli reserve in January 2012.
Why James Charlie, Wesley Duncan and Jesse Bird launched an apparently unprovoked attack on the father of two remained a mystery; no clear answer was ever given beyond the suggestion of drug-and-alcohol fueled impulse.
Apparently believing they were on friendly terms - the deceased had delivered a load of wood to their home only a couple weeks before - Bjornson, evidently flush with cash earned at a logging site the day before, had shown up to buy drugs.
That they would beat to death a man who was a customer only made the incident more puzzling.
What's more, why Bjornson's head was cut off in the process of disposing of his body and left in an abandoned home on the reserve at the southern entrance to Fort St. James, was never answered. The closest the ringleader, Charlie, ever came was to tell police he simply did not know.
Regardless, that move proved to be the trio's undoing. Acting on a tip, police found Bjornson's severed head about three weeks later and what had been a missing person case became a homicide investigation.
It was an ironic twist on a sad and gruesome case.
The three - and Bird in particular - became the targets of a months-long Mr. Big sting, where undercover police pose as high-level criminals.
In exchange for telling them what happened, the officers purport to help cover up the crime.
At one point in a video shown to the jury of the conversations with the accused, one of the officers says they would have gotten away with it. As it stood, the only other remains of Bjornson that were recovered were a few bits of clothing and two leg bones and only after one of the accused led police to the log jam on the Necoslie River where the body had been dumped.
In June, Duncan and Bird were sentenced to life in prison without eligibility for parole for 15 years. In October, a jury found Charlie guilty of first-degree murder which automatically carries a sentence of life in prison without eligibility for parole for 25 years.
Charlie's sister, Theresa, who had been in custody for 3 1/2 years, was sentenced to time served on a count of indignity to a dead body in the summer.
Bragged online about assaulting ex-girlfriend
If not for the lack of deadly consequences, Tristan Pierre Heiney would be at least as infamous. In October, he was sentenced to a further 4 1/2 years in prison for savagely beating up his ex-girlfriend and then bragging about it on social media
The decision came about a year after the attack in a local motel room, where Heiney left her badly injured. Shortly afterwards, he posted on Facebook that he had taught her a lesson.
"She knew I'd find out if she cheated," he continued. "One thing you don't do is double cross me. I'm not someone's second choice."
In a subsequent posting, he wrote "ha, ha, ha, hope she ain't dead," then added he was joking and missed her.
In sentencing Heiney, provincial court judge Susan Mengering branded his act a 'cowardly and unprovoked attack on a vulnerable former partner."
P.G. man guilty in Victoria slaying
Further afield, a penchant for lying and a me-first attitude caught up with a former Prince George man when Joshua Bredo was sentenced to nine years for manslaughter for the August 2011 death of Daniel Levesque in a Victoria apartment.
Born and raised in Prince George, Bredo had developed a shady reputation over the years. After becoming a centre of controversy here and then Calgary and Cranbrook, the pattern continued when he re-emerged in Victoria - only this time the fallout was much more serious.
Bredo had become infatuated with Levesque, a street musician, and hired him on the spot to work at a convenience store he had been managing. Bredo lied about his sexuality while promising Levesque a raise, a job and a trip to Cuba.
On the afternoon of Aug. 3, 2011, Levesque came to Bredo's apartment for what he believed would be an orientation session for a new job. When Levesque realized Bredo had been lying to him, he tried to leave the apartment. But Bredo attacked Levesque with a hammer and knocked him out - he would die a few hours later in hospital.
A panicked Bredo, who had been using cocaine and had slept very little for three days, used a knife on himself to make it look like he was the victim and called 911.
After a six-year court process bogged down by a mistrial, pretrial applications and adjournments, Bredo pleaded guilty to manslaughter. By the time Bredo was sentenced, he had served the equivalent of a seven-year sentence, and was given an additional two years less a day, followed by three years probation.
Drug killing
The drug world and its consequences were played out at the Prince George courthouse where a jury found three men guilty of carrying out a plot to kill a man for allegedly stealing drugs and money.
Dustin Allen Lindgren and Lyle William Baker were found guilty of first degree murder, which carries an automatic sentence of life in prison without eligibility to apply for parole for 25 years. Kevin Roy Zaporoski was sentenced to life without eligibility for parole for 13 years on a count of second-degree murder.
In June 2012, the body of their victim, Jordan Christian Reno, 22, was found in a box in the back of Baker's 4100-block Knight Crescent property.
Gun accident turns deadly
A more domestic but just as deadly incident grabbed headlines when Kayne Sabbe Penner was sentenced to four years in prison for the December 2012 shooting death of his fiance April Johnson, 18.
He was handling a .22-calibre semiautomatic rifle within the confines of his cousin's Vanderhoof-area mobile home when it went off. A jury subsequently found Penner guilty of manslaughter with a firearm.
