Sheldon O’Donnell, an enforcer for the infamous Vernon gang The Greeks, was the third member to be given life in prison with no parole for 25 years Friday for his role in three gruesome slayings.
A B.C. Supreme Court judge gave O’Donnell, 31, the mandatory sentence after he was found guilty for the first-degree murder of 32-year-old Ronald James Thom in 2005.
He was also sentenced to life with no parole for 18 years for two counts of second-degree murder, which involved the 2004 executions of Dave Marnuik, 37, and Thomas Edward Bryce, 30. The sentences will run concurrently.
Thom, who the gang mistakenly believed had cooperated with police, was lured to a road near Vernon in the middle of the night and shot to death.
Marnuik breached gang rules by stealing drugs and taking off with the dial-a-dope phone, leading Greeks enforcers to grab him. They then took him to their clubhouse, where they used a blowtorch and fatally beat him with a baseball bat and hammer.
For their role in Marnuik’s torture and brutal murder, fellow Greeks Dale Sipes and Leslie Podolski were sentenced to life in prison without parole for 25 years at the end of November. They also helped dispose of Marnuik’s body by burning it in the hills near Enderby.
Greeks boss Peter Manolakos was also convicted by a jury of first-degree murder. Greeks associate Douglas Brownell was convicted of manslaughter in Thom’s slaying, as well as the beating death of Bryce, a rival drug dealer fighting the Greeks for turf.
Manolakos and Brownell will have their sentencing hearings sometime in January. The five men were convicted after B.C.’s longest jury trial.