Life sentence for B.C. man who shot two dead, in killings deemed ‘not suspicious’

The Law Courts building, home to the B.C. Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, is seen in Vancouver, B.C., Thursday, Nov. 23, 2023. (Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press)

CRANBROOK — A Creston, B.C., man has received a life sentence after being convicted of two killings in which the victims were shot in the head on the same day, but whose deaths were both initially ruled to be from natural causes.

The BC Prosecution Service says Mitchell McIntyre was sentenced on Thursday to life without eligibility for parole for 13 years in the second-degree murder of Julia Howe, who was found dead on February 6, 2022, at a Creston home.

The service says McIntyre also received an eight-year sentence to be served concurrently for the manslaughter of David Creamer, who was found dead the same day at his home in Kimberley, some 133 kilometres northeast of Creston.

B.C. Supreme Court documents show that coroners in both killings initially ruled they were the result of falls and were not suspicious, and investigators didn’t discover Howe had been shot until an autopsy two days later.

Creamer was cremated due to the death initially being ruled as an accident, resulting in “literally no forensic evidence” gathered in his case.

McIntyre turned up at the Cranbrook RCMP detachment the day after the killings and said he “needed to be arrested,” but he was sent to hospital for treatment, and it was more than a month before he was arrested for his neighbour Howe’s killing.

While McIntyre told doctors that he had also killed a second person, they did not immediately tell police, and investigators only found out about the confession when they obtained medical notes.

“The doctors struggled to figure out whether Mr. McIntyre’s statements were reality-based or delusional,” says the judge’s factual overview in a November 2024 preliminary ruling.

It says there was “a frank exchange of positions” between police and McIntyre’s psychiatrist about his failure to tell police about the confession to killing Creamer due to “confidentiality reasons.”

Hospital staff did tell police of McIntyre’s statements on Howe’s death, which police later identified as a homicide through the autopsy.

A handgun was found in McIntyre’s car, and he was arrested on March 16 — but not before he had already been discharged once from hospital before being readmitted.

The BC Prosecution Service says the court has also placed a 10-year firearms ban and a DNA order on McIntyre as part of his sentence.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 9, 2026.