How a matricidal 'pretty boy' transitioned from a maximum security men's prison to a female halfway house

Clayton Warkentin's family are sad and scared the man who murdered his mother in cold blood in 2016 is already out of prison, living as a woman

Serving time in the only maximum security federal penitentiary in B.C. can't be easy, so it's understandable that a good-looking young man would want to find a way out as soon as possible.

But how? Clayton Warkentin was sent to Kent Institution in 2018 to serve a life sentence for murdering his mother. And he found a loophole.

It was a tear-filled courtroom in Chilliwack on Jan. 30, 2018 as family members read victim impact statements regarding the trauma caused when the rage-filled, cocaine-steroid addicted 19-year-old asphyxiated his 51-year-old mother Lois Unger and crudely tried to make it look like a suicide.

“I struggle to trust people as one of the people I trusted most, my baby brother, killed my mother,” Clayton’s older brother Logan said in 2018.

“How do I tell my children that their uncle killed their grandmother?”

Originally charged with first-degree murder because of reports that he planned the murder for insurance money, Warkentin was convicted of second-degree murder, which comes with a mandatory life sentence with no chance of parole for at least 10 years.

After that sentencing hearing in January 2018, Warkentin was sent to Kent in Agassiz to start his life sentence. Just two years, eight months and 17 days later, on Oct. 16, 2020, he was transferred to Pacific Institution, a multilevel institution that includes minimum and medium security in Abbotsford.

Less than a year after that, on Sept. 21, 2021, he decided he was a she. She changed her name and Natalia Warkova was moved next door to Fraser Valley Institution for Women.

Warkova not only got out of getting raped by burly dudes serving real life sentences, now he was able to have sex with women, have girlfriends and he even got women pregnant.

Last week, a little over three years after that transfer, on Feb. 26, 2025, two days after the ninth anniversary of this horrific murder, looking fresh-faced in a new photo, Natalia Warkova was granted day parole and moved into a halfway house for women in New Westminster.

"He may have changed his name to a girl's name so people wouldn’t know him but still looks like a pretty boy," Logan's stepmother Theresa Clark-Kampman told me this week.

"We as a family are sad that Clayton Warkentin who now goes by Natalia Warkova is released from prison after only serving nine years for the murder of his mother Lois. Clayton/Natalia was not having an easy time in Kent being a young, good-looking guy so he found a loophole and said he was a girl and was moved to the female prison in Abbotsford in minimum security."

Warkentin went from a muscular young man in 2018 to Warkova who, at least relatively recently, was described by family members who saw her at a parole eligibility hearing as skinny with long blonde hair. Not anymore. She is back working out again. And in response to a request for detailed information about Warkova's parole, the Parole Board of Canada was provided a detailed statement and a photograph of her that she was told not to share.

In the photo Warkova looks thinner than he did when he was sentenced. With short, neatly coiffed hair and a wry smirk on his clean-shaven face, his prominent Adam's apple protrudes next to the stylized letter "F" of the "Family" tattoo on the left side of his neck.

Having jumped through all the hoops needed, Warkentin/Warkova is still legally in the custody of Correctional Service Canada (CSC). But nine years after being sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for 10 years, he is living in a halfway house "in the area of New Westminster" to which he must return nightly.

As far as his family can tell, Warkentin/Warkova hasn't taken responsibility for what he did.

"During the parole hearing, we did not see any remorse from him about murdering this mom, still just making up excuses and saying the drugs made him not remember what he was doing," Clark-Kampman said. "Now after only serving nine years he is out free to live his life. Well, we are scared for our lives.... Lois doesn’t get to live her life or watch her grandchildren."

The only element they feel a sense of comfort about is that Warkova is forbidden from coming to Yarrow or anywhere in Chilliwack or Abbotsford. The CSC release information says that Warkova is allowed to travel mostly in Metro Vancouver from Richmond/Delta/White Rock to the south to Vancouver/Burnaby/TriCities to the north, and east to the edge of Langley. The restrictions specifically say "east to Lefeuvre Road," although Lefeuvre Road is technically about 600 metres into the City of Abbotsford.

The decision to grant day parole came at a hearing on Jan. 25, and Warkova was released Feb. 26. Beyond the geographic restrictions other conditions of his release include that he is not to consume drugs or alcohol, not communicate with other criminals, and to report all "intimate sexual and non-sexual relationships with females and males" to a parole officer. She can be approved for up to four overnight stays away from the halfway house each month.

Most importantly, Warkova is forbidden from having any contact with the victim's family, which is, of course, his family.

"It’s sad that we have to now live scared as he might reoffend to be able to go back to [a woman's] prison," Clark-Kampman said.

Warkova's day parole will be reviewed by the Parole Board of Canada in six months.

How common are trans transfers?

"You didn't hear it from me but ... 'she' now serves at Fraser Valley Institution for Women," a source inside CSC told me three years ago about Warkentin/Warkova. "Oh and 'she' has a 19-year-old girlfriend now too. We have had sexual assaults, pregnancies and who knows what else since we became 'coed.' I see no coverage of this in the media."

I filed a freedom of information request almost three years ago to find out how common this was. Specifically, I asked how many inmates born and sentenced as a male had decided they were female and were moved to female institutions in the five years prior (to 2022) in British Columbia. After many months, the response I received was "one."

I guess Warkentin/Warkova was it, but anecdotally, in a charged atmosphere where gender identity conversations are boiling over, I have heard there have been many more transfers of this kind this since then.

CSC's policy states that all transfer requests to a different institution are assessed on a case-by-case basis by a parole officer at the sending institution. In the case of a transfer to a women's institution, such as Warkova's, included in that assessment is a "security reclassification scale" completed by a parole officer at the receiving institution. This is meant to "identify any health or safety concerns, including mitigation strategies and accommodation measures considered at both sites, and why these measures were accepted or rejected and deemed sufficient or insufficient."

While there appears to be several bureaucratic steps taken regarding gender-diverse inmates, in practice, if a man says he's a woman and wants to go to a female institution, CSC allows it.

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Paul J. Henderson
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