Elderly killer who was granted bail pending appeal has it revoked by B.C.’s highest court

Mounties respond to the discovery of a body near Fraserwood Way and Westminster Highway on Thursday, March 2, 2017. The deceased was 52-year-old Delta resident Allen Skedden. (CTV News)

B.C.’s highest court has revoked the bail of a convicted killer who had been released from custody while his appeals of his conviction and sentence made their way through the courts.

Adrianus Johannes Rosbergen was 82 years old when a jury convicted him of second-degree murder in December 2024, according to a B.C. Court of Appeal decision issued earlier this month and published online Monday.

The killing for which Rosbergen was convicted occurred in February 2017, the night before he and his victim Allen Skedden were due in court for an enforcement hearing related to a tenancy claim.

“Mr. Rosbergen had been ordered to pay Mr. Skedden $1,080 but failed to do so,” the appeal court decision reads.

Rosbergen and a friend went to Skedden’s home in Delta, and the killer told his friend he planned to bring Skedden to a bank to get the money. Rosbergen dropped off his friend without visiting a bank “before carrying on with Mr. Skedden,” according to the decision.

It was the last time Skedden would be seen alive.

“During sentencing, the trial judge found that Mr. Rosbergen had beaten Mr. Skedden until his bones were broken and then suffocated him before callously disposing of his body by the side of the river where it was predated upon by animals,” the appeal court decision reads.

Rosbergen was 74 years old at the time of the murder.

After his conviction late last year, he was sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for 12 years.

He filed his appeal in April of this year, and he applied for bail pending his appeal in August. A lower-court judge granted Rosbergen’s application, despite the Crown’s objections. Crown prosecutors appealed the bail ruling, which led to the high court decision that was published this week.

Reviewability and enforceability

According to the appeal court decision, the test for granting bail to an offender who is appealing his conviction is three-pronged. The offender must show that his appeal is not frivolous, that he would surrender himself into custody for the hearing of the appeal, and that his detention is “not required in the public interest.”

The Crown conceded during the bail hearing that Rosbergen’s appeal is not frivolous and that he was not a flight risk, but it argued that the public interest required keeping him in custody.

The bail judge concluded that Rosbergen would not pose a threat to public safety if he were granted bail, so the question of public interest came down to the tension between “enforceability” and “reviewability,” according to the appeal court decision.

The principle of enforceability says court decisions are to be enforced immediately, while the principle of reviewability acknowledges that the justice system is fallible.

“Persons who challenge the legality of their conviction should be entitled to a meaningful review process—one which does not require them to serve all or a significant part of a custodial sentence only to find out on appeal that the conviction upon which the sentence was based was unlawful,” the decision reads, summarizing the logic behind the reviewability principle.

On appeal, the Crown argued that the bail judge had failed to engage with the strength of Rosbergen’s grounds for appealing his conviction, as well as failing to “consider the length of Mr. Rosbergen’s sentence relative to any anticipated delays in the hearing of the appeal,” according to the decision.

The three-judge appeal court panel agreed, concluding that these failures amounted to “errors in principle” by the bail judge.

Writing for the unanimous panel, Justice Lauri Ann Fenlon found the bail judge had incorrectly assumed he should be “circumspect” when assessing the merits of Rosbergen’s appeal.

“In my view, this error is a material one because the merits analysis is the primary determinant of the weight to be given to the reviewability interest relative to the enforceability interest,” the decision reads.

Fenlon also found it “evident” that Rosbergen would not be incarcerated for a substantial portion of his sentence before his appeal could be heard, and she rejected his lawyer’s argument that his advanced age weighed in favour of releasing him on bail.

“The potential for Mr. Rosbergen’s life sentence to encompass a shorter period of time because he began serving it at age 82 weighs equally in favour of enforceability,” the decision reads. “If Mr. Rosbergen turns out to have only a few more years ahead of him, there is a greater public interest in seeing that he begins to serve his sentence immediately rather than spending a significant portion of his remaining years out on bail.”

Having concluded that the bail judge made two material errors, Fenlon re-weighed the evidence that was before the lower court and concluded that Rosbergen should not have been granted bail.

“Having assessed the merits of the grounds raised by Mr. Rosbergen, I conclude that the appeal is not a strong one,” the decision concludes.

“That assessment must be placed on the reviewability side of the scales, and weighed against the strong enforceability interest on the other side. In my view, the enforceability interest carries significantly greater weight, and must prevail in this case. I would accordingly set aside the release order imposed on Aug. 22, 2025, and order that Mr. Rosbergen be returned to custody to continue serving his sentence pending appeal. Given that the progress of the appeal to date has been delayed in part due to counsel’s focus on this bail review, I would also direct that the appeal be expedited.”