Toronto

What a catch he is, this “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

The porn-addicted, cheating pastor convicted of killing his pregnant wife in 2011 will remain free on bail while the Ontario Court of Appeal reserves its decision on whether he should get a new trial.

Philip Grandine, who surrendered into custody the night before his appeal hearing, will be released yet again to the care of his parents where he’s confined to their home under house arrest.

And where, according to an elder from his former church, the convicted killer has been busy trolling Christian dating sites.

“It’s a very small community,” explains Cliff McDowell. “He had a profile under his real name. He’s changed it now because he got found out.”

McDowell was at appeal court with other friends and family of Karissa Grandine, the beloved 29-year-old insurance adjuster who was five months pregnant when her husband “discovered” her drowned body in their bathtub after he returned home from a run on Oct. 17, 2011.

An autopsy revealed a high level of lorazepam in her system, the same sedative found in her blood when she went to the emergency room feeling ill three days earlier. According to the Crown’s theory, Grandine drugged his wife and either physically placed her in the tub or encouraged her to take a bath in a plan to kill her and continue his affair with his mistress. Originally charged with first-degree murder, Grandine was convicted instead on the lesser charge of manslaughter and sentenced to 15 years. On bail throughout his trial, he was freed again two years ago pending his appeal.

While Grandine was not present, his parents were seated at one side of the ornate courtroom while Karissa’s mother, sister and friends were on the opposite end. All listened intently as defence lawyer Michael Lacy argued that a retrial was necessary because Justice Robert Clark made a serious legal error in his answer to the jury’s question during their deliberations. If unconvinced, co-counsel Adam Posluns urged the appeal court to shorten Grandine’s “unduly harsh” 15-year sentence because the judge treated him as a murderer rather than someone convicted only of manslaughter.

Crown Roger Shallow insisted Grandine suffered no unfairness and his verdict and sentence should stand. But from their questions, the three judges on the appeal panel appeared to side with many of the points raised by the defence, leaving Karissa’s supporters increasingly worried by the end of the day. Justice James MacPherson told them to expect a decision in “weeks or a small number of months.”

“It’s very disheartening, it’s very painful,” McDowell said, speaking on behalf of the family. “We know that it is a legal system more than a justice system.”

McDowell had known Karissa since she was 16 and attended both her wedding and her funeral. “She was awesome, soft spoken, gentle, always a peacemaker,” he recalled.

As for Grandine, he never believed he was a good pastor or a good husband. “We know in the church there are wolves in sheep’s clothing and some real counterfeit Christians are out there and we know that,” said McDowell, a deacon at the church where Grandine first began as a student preacher. “He’s taken two lives here as far as we’re concerned. She was five months pregnant, she was going to find out the sex of the baby the week after.”

For both their church community and her family, it has been frustrating to watch the man convicted of killing their beautiful Karissa still “allowed to stay at home with mom and dad and do whatever he wants,” he said. “How is that fair? We think it’s very unfair.”

During his victim impact statement in 2015, McDowell faced Grandine and called him a “coward.” More than two years later, he’s hoping the appeal court will deny him a new trial and a new sentence and finally send Grandine to prison. But if they decide otherwise, the church deacon still has hope of a higher kind.

“We have a just God,” he said. “At the end of the day, he will get the justice he deserves.”

mmandel@postmedia.com