Justine Vanderschoot family fights parole for killers after 20 years

Daniel Bezemer was denied parole again in August 2024, extending a long-running fight by the family of Justine Vanderschoot, the 17-year-old killed in Placer County in 2003. The case has kept returning to California’s parole system, putting the family back in front of hearings that can reopen the trauma of a crime that began with a disappearance on Labor Day and ended with convictions for strangulation and murder.

Justine Vanderschoot vanished in 2003 after leaving home in Placer County with her boyfriend, Daniel Bezemer, and his roommate, Brandon Fernandez. Her remains were found on Sept. 18, 2003, in a remote location more than two weeks after she disappeared. Both men were convicted that same year in Justine’s killing, and the case quickly became one of the county’s most painful criminal cases, drawing sustained attention from prosecutors and the community.

The parole fights have unfolded in a steady series. Brandon Fernandez was denied parole in July 2022 by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Bezemer’s Aug. 10, 2022 hearing was later vacated by the California Board of Parole Hearings on Oct. 17, 2022 because of a procedural error tied to technology issues, sending him back for another proceeding. He was denied parole a second time on March 23, 2023, then denied again in August 2024. By December 2025, he was denied once more, more than 22 years after Justine was killed.

The repeated hearings have kept the family’s fight alive as California’s post-conviction system has changed around them. In 2025, a change in state law was described as potentially opening a path to freedom for one of the convicted killers, intensifying the stakes for a family that has spent years opposing release. Placer County officials have publicly backed the Vanderschoot family, opposed parole for both men and publicized petition efforts aimed at keeping them incarcerated.

Lynnette Vanderschoot, Justine’s mother, said in February 2025 that “It’s … 21 years since we’ve lost Justine … but it’s still very fresh in our mind.” That line captured the central tension in the case: a legal system built around review, rehabilitation and time served, and a family that sees a 17-year-old’s murder as a permanent loss that should not be revisited through parole.