Brett Ryan came to prominence in Canada almost a decade ago after he committed a series of heists while disguised as an elderly man.
The stunt earned him the nickname “Fake Beard Bandit”, a name as “sweet” as the man behind the attacks, and his fiancée knew all about his sordid past.
Kristen Baxter met Ryan while he was on parole and, like his sentencing judge, she gave him the benefit of the doubt.
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The spree of robberies, committed during a depressive episode triggered by his break-up with another girlfriend, was deemed so out of character for the charming, popular Ryan that the judge rejected the prosecution’s suggestion of 10 years, instead giving him just three years and nine months.
With good behaviour, Ryan was granted day release after just 15 months while the Parole Board of Canada noted he didn’t suffer major mental illness, psychopathy or have a history of violence.
In fact, they felt the whole scenario had reconnected him to his family if anything.
“You remain a low risk for offending,” the board wrote in 2011 as they granted him full parole.
Just six years later, Ryan strangled his mother Susan and killed his brothers with a crossbow on August 25, 2016.
Just like that, the sweet “Fake Beard Bandit” had transformed into the murderous “Crossbow Killer”.
Brett Ryan and his fiancée, Kristen Baxter.
Although Baxter had readily accepted his past, it was a new embarrassment he couldn’t bear to reveal to his fiancée that caused him to murder his family.
When Ryan’s new job at an IT company found out about his time in prison, they fired him but he was too ashamed to tell Baxter and pretended to work from home.
After months of deceit, his mother Susan encouraged him to tell Baxter what was really happening and offered to help him until he was back on his feet.
But, she said, if he didn’t tell his fiancée, she would cut him off financially.
Desperate that Baxter not find out his secret, Ryan started to set up an alibi days before the triple murder by setting up an iPad and iPhone in his apartment to create an electronic footprint, according to police.
“Brett Ryan was worried that if his fiancée discovered the web of lies, she’d call off the wedding,” Justice John McMahon said at the sentencing hearing.
“This was a sophisticated plan to build in an alibi, although these devices were never used.”
Ryan also hid a crossbow in his mother’s garage and when he confronted her on August 25, 2016, a row erupted. Susan Ryan called her other son Christopher to come help the situation.
Before he got there, Ryan stabbed his mum with the crossbow and strangled her with a yellow nylon rope, the court heard.
When Christopher arrived, he shot him in the back of the head.
He then covered the bodies with a tarp and lied in wait for his younger brother Alexander, who he then fatally stabbed with the crossbow.
The third and final brother Leigh, who lived with their mother, saw Ryan standing over Alexander’s body in the driveway and ran inside to call police.
Despite being attacked, Leigh managed to escape to a neighbour’s house and raise the alarm.
Ryan immediately confessed to all three murders when police arrived at the house.
Ryan’s life sentences for the murders will run concurrently.
