Darren Middleton was forty-nine years old. He had a common-law partner named Brenda Adams. He had known Dereck Donald Sears for about five months — since February 2021 — and had hired him occasionally for manual labour around his property, paying in food and drinks. They were friends.

A few days before June 16, 2021, Sears told Middleton and Adams that he now identified as a woman and went by Gabby or Gabriella. They had known him as Dereck. They began adjusting.

On the night of June 16, Middleton went to Sears' home and did not return. When Adams went looking for him in the early hours of the following morning, she found him on Sears' bathroom floor, lying next to a running bathtub, surrounded by blood. His body had been beaten with a baseball bat. He had been stabbed multiple times. His penis had been partially severed. His testicles had been removed. They were never recovered. Sears had consumed them.

As Adams fled the house, screaming, she saw Sears dancing alone in the middle of the road — eyes closed, arms raised, moving to music that was not playing.

This case is before the courts as of May 2026. No verdict has been returned. Dereck Donald Sears — who calls himself Gabriella — pleaded not guilty in November 2024 and is pursuing a defence of not criminally responsible due to mental disorder. His defence psychiatrist says he was following "telepathic instructions from a child ghost" when he removed and consumed Darren Middleton's testicles, and that he cannot be held criminally responsible for what he did.

Meanwhile, Sears has filed a novel application to have his name changed from Dereck to Gabriella on the murder indictment itself — using Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the equality rights provision, as the legal basis.

The Crown prosecutor described it as unprecedented. No one in Canadian criminal law had seen Section 15 used this way before.

This is the Sears case. It is ongoing. It is unresolved. And it raises questions about how transgender identity intersects with criminal law, institutional placement, and the Charter that Canadian courts have not yet answered.

Darren Middleton

Darren Middleton was a man with a common-law partner of four years, a job, and a connection to his community in Kelowna, British Columbia. He was forty-nine years old when he was murdered in June 2021.

He had met Sears in February of that year through Adams, who had connected with Sears socially. The arrangement that developed was informal: Sears did odd jobs around Middleton's property — yard work, small construction projects, manual labour — and was paid in food and drinks. He was around often. They got on well.

Just days before Middleton's death, Sears told him and Adams about his gender identity. He now identified as a woman. He went by Gabby or Gabriella. They adjusted to this new information as friends do. Middleton continued to employ Sears. The relationship continued.

On June 16, Middleton told Adams he was going to pick up some turf and would be back soon. He went to Sears' home. He did not come back.

Brenda Adams discovered his body in the early hours of June 17. She discovered it in the bathroom of the home of the man he had hired to help him around his property — the man he had just learned identified as a woman — lying on the floor next to a running bathtub, with his genitals mutilated and a scene of blood that surrounded him.

Adams told police, with certainty: "He killed Darren."

The Murder — June 16, 2021

What Was Done to Darren Middleton

The forensic evidence presented at trial is precise and documented. Darren Middleton died of blunt force trauma to the head. His body sustained at least thirty-one separate injuries.

He was struck with a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. He was stabbed, including in or near the eye. The gash to his throat was described by Adams, who saw the body, as so deep "she could see right inside." His penis was partially severed. His testicles were removed. The testicles were never recovered by police.

Four weapons were found at the scene, including the baseball bat, an X-Acto knife, and a retractable utility knife. Middleton's body was found partially undressed, wearing some clothing that did not belong to him, lying next to a bathtub with the water still running.

Crown prosecutor David Grabavac described the crime scene as "horrifying." The word is inadequate.

Sears' Account

Sears was arrested approximately four hours after Adams found the body, found by police on Moyer Road — about a fifteen-minute walk from the house — still. Before he was permitted to speak to a lawyer, Sears told police twice that he had killed Middleton. He offered a reason: Middleton had sexually assaulted him. He had fought back.

This claim has not been proven in court. It remains Sears' stated defence. The two confessions in which he made these admissions were subsequently ruled inadmissible by Justice Carol Ross, who found that RCMP had violated Sears' Charter rights during the arrest — by failing to provide timely access to legal aid and by conducting a strip search and genital swabbing in a manner the court found unreasonable.

The confessions exist. They cannot be used as evidence.

The Dancing

As Brenda Adams fled Sears' home, she saw him. He was in the middle of the road. He was dancing — eyes closed, arms raised — to no music. She did not stop. She screamed. She called her daughter. She called police.

This image — of a man dancing alone in a road at night, after what had just been done inside — recurs throughout the reporting on this case. It is unexplained. It is not presented in court as evidence of anything specific. It is documented by the witness who saw it, and it sits in the record of this case without the interpretation that it seems to demand.

The Transgender Identification — Days Before the Murder

The timing of Sears' transgender identification is the most significant element of this case for this database's purposes.

Sears did not have a documented history of identifying as a woman before February or March 2021. When he met Darren Middleton and Brenda Adams in February 2021, he introduced himself as Dereck. He was known to them as Dereck for the months they knew each other.

A few days before the murder, he told them he now identified as a woman. Days later, Darren Middleton was dead.

The Castanet's reporting notes that "Sears is a transgender woman who Middleton knew as Dereck Sears until several days before the killing, when she changed her identity." The Kelowna Capital News reports that "at the time of her arrest, Sears was publicly identified by police as a man" and that "at the time of the incident, Sears had only told a few people about her gender identity, including Middleton and his wife."

The Kelowna news outlet Vernon Morning Star notes that "at the time of her arrest, she identified as a woman but publicly presented as both a man and woman, depending on the circumstance."

This is, in the context of this database, one of the most recent pre-crime transgender identifications documented. Other entries document identifications that emerged years after criminal proceedings began, or after appeals were exhausted. In the Sears case, the identification emerged days before the murder of the person being identified to.

The legal significance of this timing is unresolved. It is relevant to the psychiatric defence — whether a new gender identity claim made just before a violent act can be contextualized as a symptom of the mental health crisis the defence psychiatrist describes. It is relevant to any future institutional placement decisions if Sears is found not criminally responsible. It is, at minimum, part of the documented record of how rapidly transgender identification can emerge in proximity to violent criminal conduct.

The Trial — A Case Study in Procedural Breakdown

Confession Exclusion

The most consequential legal decision in the Sears case so far was Justice Ross's ruling excluding Sears' two confessions from evidence. Sears had admitted to police — twice — that he had killed Middleton. Those admissions, had they been admitted, would have been central to the Crown's case.

Justice Ross ruled that RCMP had violated Sears' rights in two ways: by failing to provide timely access to legal aid, and by conducting the strip search and genital swabbing in a manner the court found unreasonable. On the basis of those Charter violations, she excluded the confessions.

This ruling was secured by the defence lawyers Sears subsequently fired.

Firing Three Sets of Lawyers

The trial has been repeatedly disrupted by Sears' relationship with his legal representation.

His first lawyers, Jordan Watt and Tom Forss, successfully argued for the exclusion of Sears' confessions — one of the most significant defence victories available in a murder case. Sears fired them eighteen days into the trial, accusing them of "gaslighting" him and colluding with the Crown.

His second lawyer, Mark Swartz, withdrew citing a "fundamental breakdown in the solicitor-client relationship."

Multiple other lawyers have taken on and withdrawn from the case. As of late 2024, Vanessa de Jong was representing Sears.

The case has also lost its original trial judge — Justice Carol Ross reached the mandatory retirement age of seventy-five before the trial could be completed and was replaced by Justice Miriam Gropper.

The Jordan's Principle Problem

In R v Jordan, the Supreme Court of Canada established a 30-month presumptive ceiling for Superior Court cases to proceed from charge to verdict. The Sears case was charged in June 2021. It is now May 2026 — nearly five years later. The trial is scheduled to continue through December 2026.

Crown prosecutor Grabavac has flagged the Jordan issue publicly. The delays have been primarily attributable to the defence — Sears' repeated firing of counsel, the multiple competency assessments, the successive lawyer withdrawals. Courts generally attribute defence-caused delays to the accused rather than to systemic delay, which would protect the case from dismissal under Jordan.

But the five-year timeline of a murder case that has not reached verdict remains extraordinary — and raises questions about whether Darren Middleton's family will receive the judicial resolution they are waiting for.

The Name Change Application

In May 2024, Sears filed an application in the Kelowna courthouse seeking to have the name on his murder indictment changed from "Dereck" to "Gabriella." He cited Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the equality rights provision — as the legal basis.

Crown prosecutor Grabavac told the court he was "not unsympathetic" to Sears' concerns but that "maybe perhaps this isn't the right time to be bringing this application." He continued: "This is a novel legal issue which may have far-reaching consequences… I've never seen Section 15 of the Charter used like this in a criminal matter."

The application is precisely what it appears to be: an attempt to use Canada's constitutional equality rights framework — the same framework that protects women from sex-based discrimination — to compel a court to use an accused murderer's preferred name on the document charging him with murder.

If the application is granted, it would establish a precedent that defendants in criminal proceedings can use Charter equality rights to modify the legal documents in their case to reflect a self-declared gender identity. It would mean that a man who identified as a woman days before murdering another person could, in legal proceedings, require the state to describe him by the name he adopted in those days.

The Crown has not publicly stated its final position on the application. The application remains outstanding.

The Not Criminally Responsible Defence

Dr. Lacroix's Assessment

The defence psychiatrist, Dr. Robert Lacroix, submitted a report concluding that Sears had Bipolar I disorder with psychotic features at the time of the murder, intensified by crystal methamphetamine use. In the report, Lacroix concluded that Sears "was unable to know the wrongfulness of his actions at the time of the killing and emasculation of Mr. Middleton."

Sears himself, in his account of the events, told police and later Lacroix that he believed he was following "telepathic instructions from a child ghost" directing him to remove and consume Middleton's testicles.

If the court accepts the NCRMD defence, Sears would not be convicted of murder. He would instead be transferred to the Forensic Psychiatric Hospital in Coquitlam, British Columbia, where he would remain until the BC Review Board determines he is no longer a danger to the public. The forensic hospital is not a women's prison, but the question of how Sears would be housed within the forensic psychiatric system — given his self-declared female gender identity — is one that the NCRMD process would be required to address.

The Question of Institutional Placement

If Sears is convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to federal incarceration, he is eligible under Commissioner's Directive 100 to request transfer to a women's federal institution. If Sears is found not criminally responsible and transferred to a forensic psychiatric facility, the question of his gender-identity-based housing preferences enters the forensic psychiatric system instead.

Either outcome places a man who murdered and cannibalized another person — who identified as a woman days before committing that murder — in an institutional system where gender self-identification has implications for who he is housed with.

What This Case Documents

The Sears case is included in this database not as a case of a trans-identified male being housed in a women's institution — that placement has not yet occurred and may not occur — but as a case documenting several patterns this database exists to record.

First, the extreme recency of Sears' transgender identification. Days before the murder. To the very person who was murdered. This is the most recent-to-violence transgender identification in the database.

Second, the novel use of Charter equality rights to seek modification of criminal proceedings to accommodate a self-declared gender identity. The Section 15 name change application has no precedent in Canadian criminal law, according to the Crown. If it succeeds, it creates one.

Third, the intersection of a not criminally responsible defence with questions of institutional placement under gender self-identification policy. If Sears is found NCRMD, he enters the forensic psychiatric system with a self-declared female identity and the institutional policies that apply to that identity.

Fourth, the sustained procedural disruption of criminal proceedings by a defendant who has weaponized his legal rights — firing lawyers, seeking competency assessments, filing novel Charter applications — in ways that have stretched a 2021 murder to a still-pending 2026 trial.

Conclusion

Darren Middleton was murdered in June 2021. His killer has been in custody since arrest. His killer admitted to the killing before speaking to a lawyer. The admission cannot be used as evidence.

The trial has been ongoing, with interruptions, for five years. It is scheduled to continue through December 2026. A verdict has not been returned.

The man who killed Darren Middleton told Middleton he was a woman a few days before killing him. He is now in the legal system — in the criminal courts, in the Charter jurisprudence, in the psychiatric assessment framework — as Gabriella Sears.

He told a psychiatrist he killed because a child ghost told him to through telepathy. His defence psychiatrist says he was not criminally responsible. The Crown says Darren Middleton was "brutally murdered, with severe injuries, his genitals mutilated" and that "needs to be the priority."

Darren Middleton's partner Brenda Adams found his body. She found him on the bathroom floor with the water running. She saw his killer dancing in the road to no music. She has been waiting for a verdict since 2021.

As of May 2026, she is still waiting.