The mysterious case of Corey Scherbey’s death has haunted his parents for nearly eight years,
As I wrote in the Nov. 28, 2013 edition of the Chilliwack Times, nothing could have prepared Gladys Scherbey for the moment she walked through the door of her son Corey’s Chilliwack house and into his living room.
Corey was on his knees, head face down on the cushion of his couch. A sprawling pool of blood surrounded the 38-year-old, hardened to a crust where it had flowed underneath the couch on the laminate floor.
• READ MORE: Chilliwack parents can’t accept police findings in death of son
This was on a Monday after a hot summer weekend. He had likely died at least 48 hours before.
Raw with emotion, Gladys related the gory details five-and-a-half years ago through tears as if it had happened the day before. But it was two years prior, in August 2011.
And to this day in 2019, Ed and Gladys Scherbey still recount those details and their surrounding theories of what might have happened as if it was yesterday. The trauma and grief and frustration and anger is palpable in every strained conversation I’ve had with Ed Scherbey over and over since 2013.
So what the heck happened to Corey Scherbey?
“I think it’s murder and that’s it,” Ed told me back in 2013, something he has maintained steadfastly.
“A mother knows when something has been done to her son,” Gladys said that same day when I interviewed them in their living room, the coffee table sprawled with files, documents and grisly photos from the scene.
The official line is that Corey died of “acute combined cocaine and ethanol intoxication.” Cpl. Derek Santosuosso of the Chilliwack RCMP found no signs of trauma to the body, no sign of a struggle and no forced entry. Mounties determined no crime had been committed. Case closed.
But so many odd details have perplexed the Scherbeys and driven them to a rage about the investigation that has ranged from accusations of negligence to coverup to conspiracy.
| A type-written note left at the Scherbeys house in 2014 that came with a photocopy of a Chilliwack Times story written in 2013 about the 2011 death of Corey Scherbey. In 2018, two judges ruled the case was not investiat |
Then there was high-school friend Tammy Bourdon who told them Corey was killed over money and drugs, but she couldn’t tell them who was involved because she feared for her life.
Bourdon died of blood poisoning soon after.
Then the note from a “Reader of The CHWK Times” who left a type-written letter calling Corey’s death a homicide related to a “woman scorned.”
• READ MORE: Cryptic note may hold clue to Scherbey death
| A cardboard box found in the front closet of Corey Scherbey's house where he was found dead in 2011 with the words “Better Be A Funeral” written on it. |
Since his death in recent months, in late 2018, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki reviewed the case and agreed the investigation was not “reasonably thorough.” The Scherbeys turned to the courts, and in 2018 one B.C. Supreme Court called for a review, and another suggested the Minister of Public Safety should consider an inquest.
I asked the office of the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General Mike Farnworth about the case, and received a response that no decision has been made on an inquest.
“Any death of a loved one is difficult to endure,” a spokesperson wrote via email. “We understand a Court has ordered that there be further consideration as to whether an inquest should be held. The Court’s decision is currently being reviewed and I anticipate Mr. and Mrs. Scherbey will be contacted upon completion of that review.”
More hope. Or is it more uncertainty?
What has been problematic all along is the wildly conspiratorial tone the couple has taken regarding the whole situation. Blinded by grief and rage, they have become impossible to communicate with, at least for myself, if understandably. I tried to help but gave up when they explode in a rage about the case, a rage I’m sure a clinical counsellor could explain.
Corey Scherbey may have died amid a drug-fuelled party that left those involved to scramble like cockroaches in the night.
Or, he was murdered for some unknown reason.
The only unarguable fact of the matter is that there are a series of very odd circumstances in the case of Corey Scherbey. Someone most certainly knows something.
But whether we will ever really know what happened to Corey Scherbey is unclear.
I suspect the best case scenario down the road is that an inquest is called, the case is then reopened as a homicide, and it remains open indefinitely as the people who know something continue to keep quiet.
Then more uncertainty.
Ed and Gladys need a sense closure that I suspect they may never get it.
@PeeJayAitch
paul.henderson@theprogress.com
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