The children are relieved that father Donald Campbell has been denied parole, after killing their mother

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More than a quarter-century of incarceration hasn’t changed murderer husband Donald Campbell.

Published on Jul 20, 2023 5 minutes reading

Brent Campbell, Alicia Guthrie and Joel Campbell, the children of Fenny Campbell, hold a picture of their mother, who was killed by their father Donald Campbell in 1997. (Photo by Lynette Brown) Handout Article content

More than a quarter-century of incarceration hasn’t changed murderer husband Donald Campbell.

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He is the same person he has always been. He’s still in complete denial of responsibility, absolutely no remorse, no sympathy, said his oldest estranged son, Joel Campbell, 43, shortly after the 70-year-old former Lambton County social services executive denied his latest request for day parole and an unescorted day pass from prison.

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We are once again happy that the Parole Board of Canada has delivered justice, he said.

Donald Campbell, 70, the former executive director of the Lambton County Association for the Mentally Handicapped, is serving a life sentence for first-degree murder with no chance of parole for 25 years for killing his wife, Fenny, 44, on Jan. 14, 1998 in the garage of their Wyoming home.

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But even after an epic 10-week jury trial in Sarnia in 1999, an unsuccessful appeal of his conviction and a failed application to apply under the dim hope clause in 2018, Donald Campbell has yet to admit guilt or remorse or accept any responsibility for killing his wife.

While the two-member parole board panel will release its reasons for rejecting his application at a later date, they will certainly be connected to Donald Campbell’s comments on Thursday in which he questioned the evidence presented at his trial, gave a different version of what led to his wife’s death, blamed him as the aggressor and denied killing her.

A lot of things don’t add up, he said of the trial evidence. I did not kill my wife. Everyone thinks I did and they judge me for it, but I didn’t kill my wife.

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It’s the second time in 14 months that he’s had a chance at day parole and unescorted temporary absences from prison. In August 2022, he was denied similar requests at a parole hearing, but the decision was successfully appealed after it was determined that the panel did not provide specific reasons for each request as to why Campbell was a danger to the community.

The appeal means Fenny Campbell’s family, and specifically her three children Brent, 44, Joel, 43, and Alicia Guthrie, 35, will have to resubmit their victim impact statements reiterating their deep opposition to their father being paroled and his request to move to a half-way house in the Windsor area, where he has a brother.

The children said Windsor is too close to where they live and they often go to the area for work, recreation and sports activities with their children and to visit friends and family.

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The moon is not far enough away, Guthrie said in his statement.

They said their father was a narcissist and manipulator who had no remorse or empathy for what happened to their mother or them.

As far as Im concerned, I have no father, said Brent Campbell in his statement.

2018: No early parole for Wyoming wife killer Donald Campbell 2022: Children fight to keep father who killed their mother behind bars

The three children made it clear that they were speaking on behalf of their mother, who no longer had a voice. They call January 14 as their orphan’s day when their mother, a devout Christian and beloved family member, was killed by their father.

They described growing up without parents and not having their mother at her grandchildren’s graduations, weddings and births, while intercepting birthday cards and letters signed by Donald Campbell as grandfather.

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And the three of them struggle with what to tell their children. Guthrie, in her emotional victim impact statement, said she does not have a picture of Fenny Campbell on display in her home because she is not yet ready to explain who she is to her children.

That conversation, unimaginable, he said in an interview after the parole hearing. I can’t go there because I was a kid myself and I will do everything I can to keep my kids innocence alive for as long as I can.

Fenny Campbell died of severe head and brain stem injuries caused by a blow to the head from a ceramic pestle, a kitchen utensil shaped like a baseball bat for grinding spices that fractured her skull from ear to ear the same day she told her husband she was seeing a divorce attorney.

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The couple’s marriage crumbled. Donald Campbell was regularly verbally and psychologically abusive to his wife, engaged in an extra-marital affair with a co-worker and took out a $75,000 life insurance policy on his wife.

On the night of her death, Fenny Campbell had just returned from volunteering at the Friendship Club, a Bible study she led with mentally challenged adults, when she was ambushed by her husband when she got out of the car in the garage and was hit with a small club. Two of their three children are at home.

The trial jury heard that Donald Campbell pushed his wife’s body into the drivers seat, then drove the car from the passenger seat out of the driveway, down snow-covered roads and into the small community where it crashed into the back of a transport truck parked on the main drag. A crash re-constructionist concluded that it was a low-impact collision and would not have caused fatal injuries to Fenny Campbell.

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The parole board heard that since May, Donald Campbell has been granted 32 escort passes to work at a home goods store. He told the parole board that he believes he is ready for the next step toward reintegration into society.

He denied being physically abusive but admitted his abusive and angry outbursts, blaming them on being overworked at his job and his part time tax services while trying to support his family. He found he still needed to share and ask for help. I used to be the one people came to for answers.

He claimed he did have empathy for his children’s experiences he didn’t mention their mothers murder but their pain was new to me because no one had shared that with me before.

The children, while shocked by their father’s lack of understanding, say they are grateful to remain in prison for now.

Frankly, it’s a relief, says Brent Campbell. We don’t have to think about it for a while and we can just concentrate on living.

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