By: Akanksha
In the small farm town of Kipling, Saskatchewan, named after British author Rudyard Kipling, over a thousand people lived alongside the world’s largest paperclip. It was here that a seven-year battle for justice began, culminating in a shocking revelation between 1997 and 2000.
Dr. John Schneeberger was born in Zambia, then known as Northern Rhodesia. He grew up in South Africa and gained his medical degree from Stellenbosch University and became a registered medical professional in the 1980s. In 1987, he relocated to Kipling, Saskatchewan and worked at the local medical Center —Kipling Memorial Union Hospital.
He married Lisa Dillman, a divorced mother of two children, in 1991. They went on to have two daughters.
The doctor volunteered for charity events in the town and was a much-loved member of the community.
On October 31, 1992, 23-year-old Candice — also referred to in court documents as Candice Foley, Candice “Candy” Fonagy, and Candy, a single mother who worked at a local gas station, had a massive argument with her boyfriend. She became very angry and ran to the local hospital to find her friend, who worked there. Her friend was not working that night, and the nurses suggested that Candice speak to the on-call doctor. This doctor, Dr. John Schneeberger, Candice’s regular family doctor, who had delivered her baby.
He spoke to Candice in the examination room and suggested she take a light sedative. Candice assumed this would be in pill form. However, Dr. Schneeberger left the room and returned with a syringe. He closed the door and rolled up Candice’s sleeve. He injected her with the sedative. Candice immediately lost feeling in her body, couldn’t control her muscles, and couldn’t scream. She fainted on the examination table. While she was sedated, the doctor removed her clothes and raped her. When she came around from the sedative, Candice described a feeling similar to going to the dentist to have a tooth removed; the gums are numb, so there is no pain, only distinct pressure.
Candice was too dizzy to drive home and decided to stay overnight at the hospital, as suggested by the nurses. She didn’t say anything to them but placed her underwear into a clear ziplock bag.
The next morning, she confronted the doctor, asking, “What the hell was that drug you gave me last night?” He replied by asking why and whether it gave her “crazy” or “wild dreams” confirming her fears that he would never admit to the crime.
Candice drove two hours to a rape crisis center and clinic in Regina. She handed over her jeans and bagged underwear. She was examined for 2.5-6 hours. Blood tests were taken and showed she had Versed (Midazolam) in her system. Versed is a benzodiazepine which is used as an anaesthetic and sedative. It makes you sleepy, reduces anxiety, can cause amnesia, headaches, nausea, vomiting, hiccups, and pain or swelling at the injection site.
Swaps were taken from her vagina, panties, and jeans. They all came back positive for semen from an unknown male. As Candice hadn’t had sexual relations for weeks prior, she reported the attack to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
Dr. Schneeberger volunteered to give a blood sample from his left arm. However, the blood didn’t match the DNA from the rape kit, and police dropped their suspicion. Candice was shunned within the small community. She was known as a party animal, didn’t say anything to the nurses, and everyone believed the single mother wanted money from the well-respected doctor.
Candice was determined the test was incorrect and wanted another test done. In August 1993, a Registered Nurse took blood from the doctor's left arm in front of the police. The vials were sent to the police forensic lab. The DNA still didn’t match. Dr. Schneeberger told the police Versed can cause “erotic hallucinations”. The RCMP closed the case in 1994.
Due to the hostility, Candice moved to Red Deer, Alberta. She employed a private investigator, Larry O’Brien, who had 25 years of experience with the RCMP. O’ Brien tried to get the doctor to lick an envelope by pretending it was a radio competition. However this didn’t work due to cross-contamination. O’Brien then broke into the doctor’s car and took the hair from the headrest, but there were no roots attached to the hair to test. Some reports claim that he stole an illegal cigarette butt which matched but couldn’t be used.
On his third attempt, O’Brien broke into the car again. He found a used ChapStick tube with rounded edges. He smeared the lip balm inside a windowpane envelope to collect epithelial cells from the skin. Candice paid for a private laboratory to test the sample obtained from the used ChapStick tube. The sample matched the semen recovered in her case. As O’ Brien didn’t have a warrant, the evidence couldn’t be used in a criminal court. Thus, Candice decided to take him to civil court. During the hostile depositions with the doctor’s wife, Candice pushed Schneeberger into taking a third voluntary DNA test.
This was recorded on video at the police forensic lab on November 20, 1996. The RCMP Biology Lab Technician, Jean Roney, asked for a standard finger prick. However, the doctor refused and said he had a disease which made his hand bruise. He rolled up his left sleeve just past his elbow and insisted on having his blood taken from his arm. Roney had difficulty finding a vein. A small amount of blood was taken, but it was a dark colour and didn’t look fresh. The lab said there wasn’t enough blood and it was too old to analyze. Candice called the prosecutors.
Five months after the degraded blood draw, the quiet cover-up collapsed when a horrifying pattern surfaced inside the doctor’s own home.
On April 25, 1997, five years after Candice was raped, Lisa Schneeberger’s teenage daughter from her first marriage asked to spend the weekend with her biological father.
She had a babysitting job but started crying when Lisa asked why. She took her mother to her bedroom and pulled back the bedcovers to show her a condom wrapper. She said to her mother, “Mom, he has done this before.” She explained how her stepfather had been entering her bedroom at night and injecting her with an unknown substance. She alleged that he had sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions. She later withdrew the charge against him.
Lisa called John on his mobile whilst driving back from a medical conference out of town. She told him to pull over. “She told me what you’ve been doing to her. I know. You did it to Candice too, didn’t you?” she confronted him. John denied it but Lisa kicked him out the following day. She searched through John’s home office, which was next to her daughter’s bedroom. She found a box on a high shelf containing gloves, syringes, condoms and vials of Versed. She realized that when her daughter had woken up feeling sleepy and crying after being injected at midnight, John had convinced her that it wasn’t a sinister attack by telling Lisa, “Didn’t you hear her coughing?”
Lisa reported her husband’s actions to the RCMP. He was immediately arrested. This time, the police had a warrant and video camera. They didn’t take blood from his arm but took mouth swabs, hair follicles, and blood directly from his fingertips. The DNA was analyzed using PCR, electrophoresis and profiling techniques associated with CODIS. All three samples matched the semen on his step-daughter’s underwear and Candice’s rape kit from 1992.
In September 1999, Dr. Schneeberger was put on trial in Saskatchewan. He was charged with aggravated sexual assault against his stepdaughter and Candice, two counts of administering a noxious substance, and obstruction of justice. The judge dismissed charges of administering drugs to a third woman he sexually assaulted on two occasions.
During the trial, Schneeberger claimed he had been framed. He said Candice or an accomplice had broken into his home and stolen his sperm from a used condom. He had faked his blood tests to protect himself.
He admitted he had cut into the inside of his left arm and inserted a 15 cm Penrose drain —a soft, flexible rubber tube used during surgery to drain fluid from abdominal or pelvic wounds. He filled the tube with blood from a male patient mixed with anti-coagulants (blood thinners) and antibodies. By rolling up his sleeve slightly and directing nurses to the Penrose drain, he had deceived technicians three times until the two-year-old blood sample dried up.
The prosecutor described John as a “cold-blooded predator who took what he wanted” and highlighted how much Candice had sacrificed over the seven years. The jury found him guilty, and Judge Ellen Gunn sentenced him to 6 years in prison.
On the night before the verdict was given, Lisa refused to let John spend the night with their biological daughters, aged five and six, unsupervised. She was fined $2000 for being in contempt of court. Whilst in Bowden Penitentiary in Alberta, Schneeberger employed a lawyer to ensure he could visit his daughters once a month.
This was approved by Justice Gene Maurice of the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench, but Lisa asked to have the visits at a hotel and was refused as John was too dangerous. When Lisa arrived at the prison gates with 100 supporters, her daughters were terrified and clung onto her leg whilst crying.
The court appointed social worker cancelled the visit. The MP in Red Deer, Bob Mills, wrote a bill, Bill C-400 (Lisa’s Law) to limit convicted sex offenders’ access to their children. In December 2000, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Saskatchewan officially revoked Dr. Schneeberger’s medical license.
In June 2001, a parole board in British Columbia refused to give Schneeberger early parole as Lisa had testified he couldn’t be trusted. They said he was a high risk to re-offend and his apology in which he called his scar on his arm a badge of honor, was shallow.
He was released in 2003 after serving the mandatory ⅔ of his sentence, approximately 4 years. The same year a television movie was made, “I Accuse” starring Estella Warren, about Candice’s experience. His ex-wife ensured he had his final reckoning. In 2003, a Canadian federal court ruled that Schneeberger had obtained citizenship through false representation after he denied being under criminal investigation at his citizenship swearing-in ceremony. The court ruling led to the loss of his Canadian citizenship.
After a 10 minute hearing in Regina, he was deemed an undesirable alien. 2 RCMP officers escorted him out of Canada in July 2004. His medical license from South Africa in the 1980s had expired in 1991, and he had failed to reapply.
The disgraced former doctor moved back in with his mother in Durban, South Africa, and worked in catering. In August 2004, he applied to the Health Professions Council of South Africa to be readmitted as a medical practitioner. The council was considering his application when he withdrew it on October 17, 2004.
(Rh/APC/MSM)