Donald Hay, who in 1976 kidnapped 12-year-old Abby Drover and held her captive for 181 days in a bunker beneath his Port Moody garage, has died, according to Correctional Service Canada.
Hay, 79, had been serving an indeterminate sentence at the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon when he died of natural causes early Sunday morning following a lengthy illness at the institution's hospital.
According to Lorraine Guay, the assistant warden of management services at the facility, Hay was living in a hospital within the facility, where inmates with physical ailments are treated.
"It is a wing of the Regional Psychiatric Centre," she said. "We have a different wing built for physical health care housed within the fences of the regional psychiatric centre."
The hospital served inmates from correctional centres across the province and Guay would not confirm whether Hay had been residing in the psychiatric centre prior to his move to the health care facility.
Hay has been serving a life sentence since February 1977 for kidnapping and forcible confinement, and an eight-year concurrent sentence for sexual interference with a girl under 14. His last review was in late 2006, when his application for day parole from his jail in St. Albert, Sask. was denied. In 2008, he requested the automatic review of his sentence by the National Parole Board not go ahead.
Abby Drover was 12 years old in 1976 when she was locked in a bunker and repeatedly raped and tortured by Hay. For most of the ordeal, she was handcuffed and often denied food and water.
Hay claimed at the time that he thought he was helping the girl because he believed she was being abused. He also blamed alcohol for his crimes.
Six months after she disappeared, Drover was discovered after Hay's wife called police, fearing he was suicidal. When two Port Moody Police officers arrived, they found Hay with his pants around his ankles, emerging from a garage cupboard that concealed the entrance to the underground room. Drover, wearing the same clothes she had disappeared in, was in the dungeon.
Hay eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
In 2002, when Hay was up for parole, Drover told the parole board that her former captor should remain incarcerated.
"Please don't let him out," she said. "I was always terrified to think of him being released and now, after hearing him speak, deny and still minimize his crimes, it horrifies me to think the day will come that he will walk free."
She told The Tri-City News at the time that Hay "just doesn't get it."
"He's not ready [to be paroled]. He's still in denial. He still doesn't get it. He's still lying. And I'm glad the parole board could see that."
- with files from CTV
