The bachelor party was all set for this long weekend, a boys’ trip to Montreal intended to be Brett Ryan’s final hurrah as a single man. In two weeks, he was going to walk down the aisle.

For friends of the man now accused in a bizarre triple homicide, shock comes in no small part because of the extreme turn of events. On Aug. 25, Ryan, 35, transformed from a groom occupied with wedding trappings to a man charged in the grisly deaths of his own family.

Wearing an orange jail jumper, his usually gelled brown hair unstyled, Ryan was calm in a brief court appearance by video Friday from the Toronto East Detention Centre, a 10-minute drive from his family home in Scarborough.

In the hours after Ryan allegedly strangled his mother Susan, 66, and killed his brothers Christopher, 42, and Alexander, 29, with crossbow arrows, the tidy brick bungalow at 10 Lawndale Rd. turned into a dissonant mix of crime scene and suburban life. Steps from the orange tarp covering the body of one brother, dead by a single arrowhead wound to the neck, was a manicured lawn, two patio chairs neatly set under a white umbrella in the backyard.

Friends close to Ryan are “reeling,” according to a former flame who maintained a friendship with him, and who spoke on condition of anonymity. She hopes to speak to Ryan in jail, eager for any information that could provide a glimpse into what happened.

“I have to believe that it was some kind of psychotic episode,” the friend said.

Det. Sgt. Mike Carbone said this week that investigators are still trying to put together a motive. Ryan’s friends believe there had been an internal family dispute, but can’t know how it could have escalated, allegedly, to such an extreme.

Having seemingly overcome a rough patch that included prison time for a string of bank robberies in 2007 and 2008, Ryan appeared to have made strides toward a happy, healthy life. Though he’d been diagnosed with depression, a psychiatrist deemed the illness manageable through counselling; it was determined at the time of Ryan’s incarceration that he had no major mental illness.

With no known interactions with police since his release, Ryan’s criminal past appeared to be, as parole documents stated, an “aberration.”

But as tempting as it may be to suggest a person who seemed and acted "normal" prior to committing a horrible act "just snapped," it tends not to be so simple, said Toronto forensic psychiatrist Hy Bloom. “Closer examination almost always discloses that something was amiss in the person’s psychological and emotional state, and often, that it had been brewing for some time.”

Ryan was born Dec. 30, 1980, to Susan and William Ryan. He grew up in Scarborough, the middle of four boys; Christopher was the oldest, Alexander the youngest. William Ryan died in 2015.

According to neighbours, Ryan’s surviving brother was a witness to the alleged attacks and ran across the street for help, yelling, “my brother is bleeding in the driveway.” He suffered unspecified injuries.

Ryan attended Sir Oliver Mowat High School, graduating in 1997. In a yearbook message typical of a high school grad — largely inside jokes and shout-outs to friends — Ryan wrote: “Thanx to my Parents, Bros.”

Following graduation, he led what appears to have been a crime-free life until his late 20s, when Ryan ran into financial challenges due to what parole board documents call “unhealthy intimate relationships.”

As he went into debt, performed poorly in university and went through two difficult breakups, he slipped into a depression and felt his only recourse was crime, according to parole documents.

In fall 2007, Ryan began a spree of bank robberies, his first hold-up in Toronto on Oct. 20. A week later, he hit a bank in the Pickering area. Less than a month later, another bank. On Christmas Eve, another.

In the initial robberies Ryan would don an elaborate disguise of medical bandages covering his face and walk with a pronounced limp. In later robberies, he opted for a fake beard, glasses and a hat.

Ryan would hand over a note to the teller stating he had a gun and demand money, typically two or three thousand dollars. Ryan denied ever having a gun.

The spree came to an end on June 20, 2008, when police arrested him as he was about to commit another robbery. He later told parole officials he was relieved to be caught.

In total, an estimated $28,000 was stolen; little was recovered.

In January 2009 he pleaded guilty to eight counts of robbery and eight of disguise with intent to commit an indictable offence. He was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison.

A psychiatric report filed in court at the time of his guilty plea stated that Ryan had no history of aggression and violence. He was found not to suffer from any major mental illness, had no substance abuse or personality disorders and did not exhibit psychopathic or antisocial traits.

Concerned Ryan was at risk for developing the more serious form of depression that runs in the family, the parole board made counseling a condition of his day parole, granted in April 2010.

With his days free, Ryan found part-time work as a server at a downtown Swiss Chalet. Former co-workers say he was helpful and charismatic, often chatting up customers. One co-worker said Ryan confided in him about his struggle with depression.

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In November 2010, he was granted full parole, and Ryan met his fiancée on a blind date set up by a mutual friend.

Social media profiles show the arc of an average relationship: dates to baseball and hockey games; an elaborate Valentine’s Day dinner; a vacation in the Bahamas with his fiancée’s family.

Ryan eventually moved into his fiancée’s Queens Quay condo. It was there, two hours after his family’s bodies were found, that police located items suspicious enough to prompt a building evacuation. Police now say there was no threat to public safety.

Ryan’s fiancée could not be reached for comment. Earlier this week, a source close to the family said she has crumbled “into a million pieces weeks before what would have been the happiest day of her life.”

In cases like this, experts say there were almost always missed cues. “There are people that do appear to be leading ‘normal’ lives that ‘snap,’ but usually there is a precursor to this snap,” said Evan McCuish, assistant professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Criminology. “We can, retrospectively, look at the individual’s life and find stressors responsible for their departure from their typical behavior.”

Ryan ’s arrest is shocking not only because of the timing, but because of the victims. He stands accused of a rare crime that University of Minnesota professor Carl Malmquist dubbed “familicide.” To understand such a unique occurrence, it needed a stand-alone category, Malmquist told the Star.

Generally, there is no “character profile” for people who commit familicide; cases can involve adolescents who kill their parents and elderly men who murder their wives and kids and then take their own lives. The factors “vary from a guy who’s angry and upset, all the way up to a serious mental illness,” Malmquist told the Star.

However there are subtypes, with their own psychological dynamics and motivations, according to Bloom, the Toronto forensic psychiatrist.

For instance, in a scenario in which a spouse kills a partner and one or more children, motivations can include revenge by a rejected spouse. These cases often end in suicide.

While stressing that severe violence by mentally ill individuals is uncommon, Bloom said another scenario is that of a young to middle-aged man with a serious, established mental disorder, such as schizophrenia, who may kill a mother “with whom he has had a longstanding, hostile-dependent relationship.”

But even where there’s no major mental disorder, Bloom said an aggrieved man may kill multiple family members, most likely after being angry and resentful for a long time.

“There is usually some kind of dispute going on, a poor, distant and strained relationship between the killer, his parents and his siblings, hostility over the years and an event or events that results in an extreme emotional state and the release of homicidal rage.”

Ryan is due back in court later this month.

With files from Alex Ballingall