GUELPH – Two men charged in connection with the beating and murder of a 43-year-old Kitchener man kidnapped from Harriston Cemetery in 2019 were sentenced in Guelph court on Monday.
Steven Jon Walsom-Gerigs and Travis Willard Wand both pleaded guilty in Superior Court to aggravated assault against Jason John Brown, and to causing bodily harm to Brown’s friend, Alan Marchand.
Walsom-Gerigs, of Brantford, was initially charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping in 2023.
Wand, of Wellington North, was initially charged in 2024 with first-degree murder, kidnapping, two counts of assault with a weapon and three other offences.
Justice Clayton Conlan sentenced Walsom-Gerigs to five days, in addition to just over two years of time already served (considered by the courts to be a sentence of more than three years when of a credit for pre-sentence custody is applied).
Conlan sentenced Wand to 11 months, in addition to the year — credited as 19 months — he already spent locked up.
Walsom-Gerigs was involved in arranging a fake drug deal to lure Brown to the cemetery on March 12, 2019, assistant Crown attorney Peter Keen said.
Marchand, who was driving Brown, was beaten and left bleeding in the Jessie Street cemetery while Brown was beaten with a baseball bat, bound with duct tape and taken to the Scarborough chapter of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club.
Brown’s body was found the next day, on March 13, dumped off Stevenson Road north of Whitby.
A collage of photos arranged by Tara Brown of her brother, Jason John Brown, who in 2019 was beaten at and kidnapped from the Harriston Cemetery before being murdered. Submitted image
“Jason Brown was severely beaten and murdered at some point after he was removed from the Harriston Cemetery,” Keen, the prosecutor, said.
“He had multiple fractures, a brain injury, multiple broken bones, and was obviously beaten to death.”
Brown was killed by blunt force trauma and a cocktail of drugs he was later given after being kidnapped, Keen added.
More than four and a half years after his slaying, police would make the first arrests, in November 2023.
Outlaw connections
Police first charged Joshua Alexander Drumond, of Edmonton, and Walsom-Gerigs with first-degree murder and kidnapping.
Joshua Drumond is now serving an eight-year sentence for manslaughter.
In June 2024, Wand was charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and other charges.
In January 2025, Brown’s best friend (and Joshua’s brother) Mathew Drumond, of London, was charged with first degree murder and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.
Brown and his friend were once prospects for the Outlaws Motorcycle Club. Drumond went on to become a patched member and Brown did not.
Mathew Drumond’s matter is still before the courts.
Also in January, Jessica Martin, of North Perth, was charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping, obstructing justice and other offences.
Martin, who was pregnant with Wand’s twins at the time of Brown’s slaying, pleaded guilty earlier this year to being an accessory after the fact to manslaughter.
She was released, credited with time already served.
‘I wish I got to say goodbye’
On Monday, court heard Brown struggled with addiction, racked up drug debt, and had an intimate relationship with Mathew Drumond’s girlfriend while Mathew was serving time.
Close to seven years later, questions remain for Brown’s family about a motive and what exactly happened to the father of two in the 24 hours after he was kidnapped.
“Christmas is three days away … this is the seventh Christmas without my brother,” said Nancy Brown, the second of three Brown siblings, reading aloud from a victim impact statement.
Tara Brown, the youngest, said in a statement read aloud by the prosecutor that she would give anything to have her older brother back.
Family members of the late Jason John Brown, who was kidnapped and murdered in 2019, stand outside of the Superior courthouse in Guelph on Dec. 22 wearing shirts featuring Brown. Two men pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the killing, and were sentenced on Monday. From left: Jason Baxter-Brown, Andrea Baxter, Nancy Brown, Tara Brown and Emily Baxter-Brown. Photo by Jordan Snobelen
Sitting in the court gallery, her right hand raised to a reddened face, Tara bent forward and wept as she listened.
Her brother, Keen said reading from the statement, was “left on the side of the road with so many questions unanswered.”
Brown’s son, Jason Baxter-Brown, now a pre-med student, said he has yet to see the full effects of his father’s absence on his life.
Jason’s sister Emily Baxter-Brown, in a statement read aloud by Keen, recalled her father’s pride when she made the high school honour roll.
“I wish I got to say goodbye,” she said in the statement.
Andrea Baxter, the mother of Brown’s children, said Walsom-Gerigs and Wand gave her children a “life sentence without their father.”
‘I feel really angry’
Walsom-Gerigs declined to address the court.
Wand stood and briefly apologized for his actions before asking to serve the rest of his time at Algoma Treatment and Remand Centre in Sault Ste. Marie, for which Keen and Conlan advocated.
As Wand was led from court, he turned and blew an unwelcome kiss to Tara.
“He doesn’t feel bad for what he did,” Tara said afterwards, adding she has never met Wand, nor seen him in person before Monday.
She told the Advertiser the two families are “disgusted” with the sentences.
“I feel really angry,” Tara said, adding, “the judicial system needs to change.”
Keen empathized with the families’ “deep sense of frustration” with a plea deal failing to match the severity of what was done to Brown.
But Conlan, the judge, called the sentences “significant” considering the charges and a frail case against the men.
Unable to prove what happened when its sole witness, Marchand, died of esophageal cancer last year, Keen said the Crown wanted some measure of justice.
But justice, in the families’ eyes, can never truly be served; it’s another Christmas spent without a brother, a father, an uncle.
“It’s not the same,” Tara said, speaking for Nancy, Jason, Emily and Andrea.
“He would always call in the morning (of Christmas) and wake me up, and it was so annoying, but I miss that,” she said.
