Elderly man convicted of murder has bail revoked by B.C. appeal court

The B.C. Court of Appeal has revoked the bail granted to an elderly convicted killer, reasoning that his release would undermine public confidence in the administration of justice.

The province’s highest court said given the weak merits of his appeal, the seriousness of the offence, and the appellant’s moral culpability, there is a strong public interest in seeing the sentence imposed without delay. It set aside the bail order and had the convicted man returned to custody.

Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon recounted the history of the case in her Dec. 16 decision.

In December 2024, a jury convicted Adrianus Johannes Rosbergen, 82, of the second degree murder of Allen Skedden. The jury heard that Rosbergen and Skedden had been in a court dispute over a tenancy claim. Rosbergen had been ordered to pay Skedden $1,080 but failed to do so.

The night before a court enforcement hearing scheduled in February 2017, Rosbergen and a friend, Richard Anderson, went to Skedden’s home in Delta, B.C. (Anderson testified at trial for the Crown, saying that he and Rosbergen told Skedden they were going to take him to a bank to get the money he was owed. Anderson went on to testify that Rosbergen dropped him off before carrying on with Skedden.

“That was the last time Mr. Skedden was seen alive,” wrote Justice Fenlon.

Anderson testified that Rosbergen later asked him to help clean a trailer box stored on Rosbergen’s rental property. As Anderson cleaned out the trailer, the water turned red. Rosbergen told him, “Don’t worry about it. He’s gone.” Later, Rosbergen told Anderson: “I tied him up with a rope and I threw him in the drink.”

There was a compelling body of circumstantial evidence linking Rosbergen to the murder, wrote Justice Fenlon. Skedden’s blood was found inside Rosbergen’s truck. Skedden’s jacket with blood on it, his baseball cap and other items linked to him were located at Rosbergen’s rental property. A piece of duct tape matching tape found near Skedden’s body was also located at the property.

Fenlon went on to recount that the trial judge found that Rosbergen had beaten Skedden until his bones were broken, then suffocated him before “callously disposing of his body by the side of the river where it was (seized upon) by animals.”

Rosbergen was 74 years old at the time and 82 when convicted. The only mitigating factor in his favour was the absence of a prior criminal record. While accepting that Rosbergen was elderly and had some health issues, the sentencing judge did not find that his circumstances rose to the level of “excessive hardship.” A sentence of life imprisonment with no eligibility for parole for 12 years was meted out.

Rosbergen subsequently filed a notice of appeal from his conviction and sentence in April 2025. In August, he applied for bail pending his appeal. “He argued that the strength of his appeal, his age, his deteriorating health while in custody for the previous eight months, and the need to liquidate his real estate assets to fund the appeal all weighed in favour of his release,” wrote Justice Fenlon.

“In the present case, the judge found that Mr. Rosbergen should be released because a reasonably informed member of the public ‘would take into account that, if bail is denied, Mr. Rosbergen could spend a considerable amount of time in jail pending the hearing of his appeal.’”

However, wrote Justice Fenlon, criminal appeals are routinely heard in the BC Court of Appeal within 12 months of filing. “There was nothing to suggest that Mr. Rosbergen’s appeal could not be heard within that timeframe. It was, in my respectful view, an error in principle for the judge to consider the time Mr. Rosbergen could spend in jail while waiting for the outcome of the appeal, without placing that period within the context of the length of the sentence imposed — life with no eligibility for parole for 12 years.”

However, she noted that the Crown conceded the grounds of Rosbergen’s appeal were not frivolous and that he did not pose a flight risk and or a risk to the public. Therefore, she reasoned, the court had to “determine whether Mr. Rosbergen has met his burden of establishing … that his release would not cause a loss of public confidence in the administration of justice.”

In the end, she concluded the convicted killer’s appeal was “not a strong one … In my view, the enforceability interest carries significantly greater weight and must prevail in this case.”

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