BC father should have been in custody before family murders, inquest hears

VICTORIA _ A family violence expert who testified at the O.J. Simpson trial says a Vancouver Island man should have been held in custody after he was accused of trying to kill his wife in a car crash last July.

Dr. Don Dutton, of the University of British Columbia, said Peter Lee should have been held after the July 31 crash in Victoria until a proper forensic assessment for violence potential was done.

Less than two months later Lee, in what was described as a killing frenzy, murdered his wife, his six-year-old son, his wife's parents and then killed himself.

Dutton said Lee's marriage and family breakdown, his death threats against his wife and previous gambling addiction were all risk factors for extreme violence.

He said there were enough risk factors to have him held in custody.

``I would have liked to have seen a threat assessment done,'' Dutton said.

``If you put those things together, that's sufficient to have a mandatory threat-assessment done.''

A coroner's inquest into the murder-suicide is in its second week.

Outside of the inquest, Dutton said the jury should make a recommendation calling for increased use of risk assessments in cases where violence is an issue.

The inquest has heard chilling details of what police found after they were summoned to the family's house in the Victoria suburb of Oak Bay by a hysterical 911 call on Sept. 4, 2007.

Sunny Park was stabbed 49 times and six-year-old Christian Lee was also stabbed repeatedly before the boy's father turned his weapon on himself, a pathologist told the coroner's inquest last week.

Park's parents, Kum Lea Chun and Moon Kyu Park, were stabbed repeatedly in the chest and back.

The inquest heard earlier this week that five weeks before the deaths, Sunny Park told police she was afraid her husband would kill her and her family.

She said in a videotaped interview that her husband was angry and violent and had a fascination with knives.

Her interview was taped the same day as she and Lee were in a car accident that broke her arm and injured her face.

Park told police Lee had crashed the vehicle into a hydro pole on purpose because he was angry at her plans to divorce him.

Lee was charged in the car crash but was not held in custody. He was under a court order to stay away from his family after the accident.