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Jean Paul Aubee
Maple Ridge man charged
with killing witness
By Lori Wall
A local man has been accused
of killing a key witness before he could testify at a Burnaby
murder case nearly 10 years ago.
Paul Aubee, 45, of Maple Ridge
has been charged with the first degree murder of a Burnaby man
and will be sent to Saskatchewan for his first court appearance
this week.
Thirty-five-year-old David
Starchuk of Port Moody has also been charged with first degree
murder in the case.
Burnaby RCMP believe both men
are responsible for the 1992 disappearance and death of Gordon
Robert Spears.
Spears was 19-years-old when
he disappeared from his Burnaby residence on Oct. 10, 1992 without
a trace.
Const. Phil Reid of the Burnaby
RCMP detachment said Spears was considered an "essential
witness" for the Crown in another murder case when he disappeared.
Spears was scheduled to testify
at a murder trial in relation to the 1990 killing of 20-year-old
Kin Wai Lee.
Reid said Lee had been a member
of the Lotus Gang at the time of his murder, but did not reveal
what Spears' connection was.
A man named Richard Allan Soulie
was charged with Lee's murder. Spears had testified for the Crown
during a preliminary hearing which took place several months
before his own disappearance and death.
"Several days prior to
the murder trial Spears disappeared," said Reid. "As
a result of his disappearance, charges against Soulie were stayed
and he was released from custody in April 1993."
Spears' remains were not discovered
until last year in a remote area near Pierceland, a small community
in northern Saskatchewan.
As a result of that grisly
discovery and the positive identification of Spears, Saskatoon
RCMP officers contacted the Burnaby detachment and the missing
person case turned into a homicide investigation.
The Burnaby RCMP did not reveal
any other details regarding their murder investigation against
Aubee and Starchuk.
Maple Ridge man on trial
for gang hit
Lori Coolican, The StarPhoenix
The remarkable story behind
a scattering of bleached human bones found deep in the woods
near Pierceland almost three years ago began to unfold before
a riveted jury in Saskatoon Court of Queen's Bench Wednesday.
On trial is Jean Paul Joseph
Aubee, a 43-year-old from Maple Ridge, accused of first-degree
murder in the death of 19-year-old Gordon Spears of Burnaby,
who disappeared in 1992.
Spears' bleached skull, bearing
a single bullet hole in the middle of the forehead, was found
deep in the woods near Pierceland by passers-by almost two years
ago. The rest of his bones were scattered through the undergrowth.
To explain how a B.C. teen
came to meet his untimely end in Saskatchewan, Crown prosecutor
Jim Plemel took the jury through a story that sounds like the
seedy subplot of a Hollywood screenplay.
Certain parts of the evidence
can't be published because of a publication ban issued Wednesday
by Justice Mona Dovell.
Aubee killed Spears on Dec.
5, 1993, Plemel said, at the behest of an Asian gang to prevent
Spears from testifying against one of their members, who was
accused of murder in the shooting death of Kin Wai Lee in Vancouver
in 1990.
Spears had witnessed the shooting
and agreed to testify, said Plemel, but he disappeared three
days before that could happen, in 1992. His family never saw
him again, and the murder suspect was set free for lack of evidence.
The gang, according to the
Crown prosecutor, paid Aubee to hide Spears under a false name
in his Edmonton home for more than 14 months, then paid him and
another man - who must be called "John Doe No. 1" according
to Dovell's order - to take him to a remote site and kill him,
Plemel said.
Police believe the two men
carried out their orders on Dec. 5, 1993 - exactly three years
after Lee's murder. Charges have been reinstated against the
suspect in that case, and he is scheduled to stand trial in B.C.
this fall.
Dovell has ordered media outlets
to refer to him as "John Doe No. 2," until the conclusion
of his trial.
Several years after Spears'
death, Aubee and his wife Deanne separated, Plemel told the jury.
While they were embroiled in
child custody hearings, she told police she witnessed Aubee and
John Doe No. 1 planning to kill Spears, and knew where they'd
disposed of the weapon.
Aubee was arrested for murder
in 1998, but Spears' body had not yet been recovered, Plemel
said.
He was later released without
being charged.
After the skeleton was found
and identified in April 2000, RCMP investigators began an undercover
sting targeting Aubee. It began with an officer going door to
door in his neighbourhood, posing as a beer marketer offering
free samples and tickets to a fictitious raffle.
The prize - which Aubee won,
of course - was a ticket to an upcoming basketball game.
The other "winners"
were undercover RCMP officers.
One of them befriended Aubee
at the game, and over the ensuing four months managed to convince
him he was trying to become a gang member, Plemel said. Other
officers played gang roles, as well.
During their often-taped conversations,
Aubee "spoke several times of how he shot and killed Gordon
Spears," Plemel told the jury.
Some of the tapes are expected
to form part of the evidence placed before the jury as the trial
continues during the next three weeks.
Beer taste test used
in sting
Darren Bernhardt, Saskatoon
StarPhoenix
SASKATOON - When Jean Paul
Joseph Aubee won dinner, NBA tickets and a chauffeured limo ride...he
joked to the contest people he thought they were cops when they
knocked at his door.
They were. It was a sting.
Aubee (pronounced 'o-bay'),
43, of Maple Ridge, is now on trial in Saskatoon, accused of
first-degree murder in a gangland-style killing.
During questioning Friday by
Crown attorney Jim Plemel, RCMP Cst. Shannon Leibel testified
she and another undercover officer posed as marketers when they
went to Aubee's apartment in Dec. 2000. Aubee and a friend were
setting up a Christmas tree. The officers asked them to take
part in a "taste test" for a new beer (a legitimate
brand of beer) and gave them instant scratch tickets.
The promotion was set up so
Aubee won a case of beer and was told his ticket would be entered
into a grand prize draw. A few days later, Leibel informed him
he'd won again.
On the way to the Vancouver
Grizzlies NBA game on Jan 19, 2001, Aubee was joined by Leibel
and three other "winners" -- all undercover RCMP officers
as was the limo driver.
The conversation ranged from
Aubee's job as a truck driver to the death of his 20-year-old
daughter and his friends' envy over the contest.
"He was very friendly,
very open," said Leibel, who was stationed in B.C. at the
time but is now part of the prime minister's protected detail
in Ottawa. "Then he said when we knocked on his door (for
the taste test) he thought it was the cops until he opened the
door."
The issue wasn't pursued, to
avoid raising suspicion. One of the other "winners,"
who befriended Aubee at the game, talked with him over the ensuing
months. He convinced Aubee he wanted to become a gang member.
During taped conversations,
Aubee "spoke several times of how he shot and killed Gordon
Spears," Plemel told the jury earlier this week.
Plemel alleges Aubee killed
19-year-old Gordon Spears of Burnaby. B.C. in December 1993 at
the request of an Asian gang to prevent Spears from testifying
against one of its members in B.C. Spears disappeared three days
before he could testify.
His bones weren't found until
April 2000 in the bush on a farmyard in Pierceland, Sask. The
community of 350 is about 16 kilometres east of the border, close
to Cold Lake, Alta. The skull had a bullet hole in the forehead.
Logan Davis, 37, found the
weathered, bleached white bones with his cousin Travis Palffy.
They were target shooting on the Palffy family farm in Pierceland
when the bright white skull grabbed their attention.
"We thought it was a mushroom
or a stone. Travis rolled it over with his foot and we saw the
teeth and upper jaw," Davis testified Friday.
Palffy rolled it back to where
it was and the men called the police.
As Davis waited on a bench
in the Queen's Bench courtroom to testify, a balding but long-haired
Aubee smiled at him as though they were friends. Davis, a Canadian
Forces officer from Cold Lake, ignored the stare.
Plemel made a concerted effort
to go over every detail of the target practice to eliminate any
chance for the defence to argue that Davis and Palffy may have
made the hole in Spears' skull themselves.
"We did not shoot into
the bush at any time," said Davis, explaining the target
was set up at the end of a clear cutline to the south and the
bones were off to the west side.
An RCMP expert testified this
week the bullet hole in Spears' forehead and in the brim of a
black ball cap recovered nearby suggest the victim was kneeling
when he was shot.
Plemel alleges Aubee and another
man -- who must be called "John Doe No. 1" according
to Justice Mona Dovell's order -- were paid to take Spears to
a remote site to kill him.
The trial resumes Wednesday
afternoon under a voir dire, to determine admissibility of some
evidence. The 12-person jury won't be present. It will return
Thursday when the Crown is expected to call two more RCMP officers
and Aubee's estranged wife, Deanne.
Some years after Spears' death,
the couple separated. While embroiled in child custody hearings,
Deanne told police she witnessed Aubee and John Doe No. 1 planning
to kill Spears and knew where they'd put the weapon.
Aubee was arrested for murder
in 1998, but Spears' body had not yet been recovered. He was
later released without being charged.
Different man on the
stand
By Lori Coolican, The StarPhoenix
The tough-talking, beer-swilling
trucker who spouted profanity and bragged about his prowess as
a hired killer to undercover police officers in front of a hidden
camera two years ago was nowhere in sight when Maple Ridge's
Jean Paul Joseph Aubee took the stand at his murder trial Wednesday.
In his place was a man who
looked like Aubee and sounded like Aubee, but behaved an awful
lot like a Sunday school teacher.
The 43-year-old sat bolt-upright
in his chair through a full day of testimony, turning purposefully
towards the jury and using stiff, formal vocabulary as he answered
each of the questions put to him.
Many of those answers were
lengthy and complex, as Aubee attempted to explain away the mountain
of evidence tendered by the Crown over the past month.
He is accused of killing 19-year-old
Gordon Spears with a single bullet to the head on a snowy secondary
road near Pierceland in Saskatchewan in 1993, and then dumping
the body in the forest nearby, where it lay undiscovered for
more than six years.
Spears went missing in 1992,
just before he was scheduled to testify as a key eyewitness for
the Crown against a B.C. gang member in another shooting.
Several witnesses, including
Aubee's ex-wife Deanne, have told the jury Aubee was paid by
an Asian gang to hide Spears in his Edmonton home for more than
a year, and then to kill him.
During a massive undercover
operation in which RCMP officers posed as members of an Italian
crime ring interested in hiring him as a driver, Aubee was secretly
videotaped providing accurate details of the killing, bragging
about how well he'd covered his tracks, and even laughing about
Spears begging for his life.
During his testimony Wednesday,
he told the jury he'd made up the whole thing.
Because the fake gangsters
were promising $25,000 for an upcoming trucking job, he was willing
to tell them anything, even "steal Jesus from off the cross,"
to get that money, he said.
"The $25,000 was the motive
for everything that took place in the undercover operation,"
Aubee testified, adding he needed the money so he could hire
a good lawyer to "rescue" his sons from "a potentially
dangerous situation" by winning custody of them.
It was really his ex-wife and
her violent-tempered brother Lance who killed Spears, he said,
claiming he thought the young man had moved to Ontario until
later on, when Deanne and her brother told him the details.
Lance murdered Spears with
Deanne's help because Spears had molested their three-year-old
son -- and the brother-and-sister duo threatened to kill him
if he told anyone, said Aubee. His ex-wife and her brother have
been trying to frame him for the killing ever since he divorced
Deanne and sought custody of their kids, Aubee testified.
Though he denied hating her,
he continually volunteered information about his ex-wife's past
shortcomings as a mother, wife and citizen during his testimony,
even telling jurors he thought she might have a sexually transmitted
disease.
There was barely-stifled laughter
from spectators in the public gallery of the courtroom when Aubee
followed one such diatribe with the comment, "I'm not trying
to slander her or anything."
While he was under investigation
in early 2001, Aubee made repeated comments to undercover officers
about wanting to have Deanne "taken care of," telling
the supposed crime family she might be a loose end. On the witness
stand, he denied any of the comments were about having her killed.
Jury members exchanged glances
and wore wry smiles as Crown prosecutor Jim Plemel, appearing
more and more perplexed, wound his way through the confusing
maze of Aubee's past and current statements.
His cross-examination of Aubee
was expected to conclude Thursday (after The TIMES' press deadline),
and no further defence witnesses are anticipated. The trial was
scheduled to conclude Friday, but the jury may not begin deliberations
until next week.
Aubee guilty of first
degree murder
By Lori Coolican - The Saskatoon
StarPhoenix
Members of the jury showed
more emotion than the accused as they pronounced Jean Paul Joseph
Aubee of Maple Ridge guilty of first-degree murder in Court of
Queen's Bench last week.
While one juror appeared to
wipe away tears, the 43-year-old contract killer didn't bat an
eyelash. He stared intently at jury members as they stood one
by one to confirm their decision. Most of the jurors returned
Aubee's stare as they said the word, "guilty."
On his way out of the building,
he was already talking about his next move.
"The Appeal Court is another
kick at the can," he told reporters.
Throughout his trial, Aubee
maintained his ex-wife Deanne and her brother Lance should have
been the ones accused of killing Gordon Spears and dumping his
body in the woods near Pierceland about 10 years ago.
Spears went missing from Burnaby,
B.C., in 1992, just before he was supposed to testify for the
Crown against an Asian gang member in an earlier shooting.
He lived with Aubee and his
family in Edmonton for more than a year after that, hiding from
the authorities to avoid testifying, while the gang paid the
Aubees for his upkeep.
When that arrangement grew
tiresome, Spears was taken across the border to Saskatchewan
under the pretense of moving to a new hideout.
Instead, he was executed with
a bullet through the forehead, dragged into the bush and left
for predators.
He was still considered a missing
person when two men spotted his bleached skull while target shooting
in the area in April 2000.
Aubee was considered a suspect
for years before the remains were found, but police had insufficient
evidence to charge him, court heard. When he separated from his
wife and a nasty custody battle was under way, Deanne told RCMP
officers she'd heard him planning the murder with his best friend,
and helped him dispose of evidence afterward.
During a massive undercover
operation in 2001, police officers convinced Aubee they were
members of the Italian Mafia.
Unaware that Spears' body had
been recovered, he was secretly recorded on several occasions
bragging about Spears' death and disclosing details of the killing.
He even drove to the area with one undercover officer to look
for the remains, and persuaded his best friend to tell them about
it, as well.
His friend's name is banned
from publication.
During nearly two days on the
witness stand, Aubee claimed he was lying to the undercover officers,
making up a story to impress them based on details he'd heard
from Deanne and Lance.
However, the logic of his various
explanations was sometimes hard to follow, prompting chuckles
in the courtroom.
"That was an unbelievable
story, and the jury obviously rightfully rejected it," Crown
prosecutor Jim Plemel said outside court.
"I think the jury made
the right decision. I think the evidence was overwhelming, and
they virtually had no other choice but to render this verdict."
When told that his client was
already talking about appealing the verdict, defence lawyer Bill
Roe said grounds for an appeal may exist in a pre-trial ruling
about the admissibility of a taped conversation between Aubee
and his friend about the murder. The jury reached its decision
shortly after listening to the tape a second time.
Man found guilty of killing
teen
By John Knox, Burnaby NOW
reporter
It was almost three years ago
that Travis Pahlke and Logan Davis discovered a human skull in
the bushes near Pierceland, Sask.
Little did they know they had
just set the wheels of justice in motion for Gordon Spears, a
Burnaby teen who had vanished years earlier just as he was about
to testify as the star witness in a high-profile murder case.
Last week Jean Paul Joseph
Aubee, 47, of Maple Ridge received a first degree murder conviction
for carrying out a gangland hit on the 19-year-old that was allegedly
ordered by an Asian crime ring based here in the Lower Mainland.
The conviction brings something
of a conclusion to this bizarre, decade-old saga, although the
status of criminal proceedings against a second suspect in the
Spears murder remains unknown at this time.
A Saskatchewan judge has also
prohibited the publication of the second suspect's name in connection
with the case, although it is known to be a 37-year-old man from
Port Moody.
This tragic story begins back
on Dec. 5, 1990 with the execution of Lotus gang member Kin Wai
Lee, 20.
Lee had been shot once in the
back of the head and left in a stolen car on Abbotsford Street
in south Burnaby.
Within a few days, police had
a suspect and a witness who could testify against him.
Richard Allan Soulie, 18 at
the time, was charged with Lee's murder, and the alleged shooter's
buddy - Gordon Spears - was asked to point the finger.
"Gordie," as he was
known to his friends and family, did as he was told _ and he
paid the price with his life.
Spears testified at Soulie's
preliminary hearing in January 1991, an inquiry in which the
judge determines if there is enough evidence to proceed with
a criminal trial.
The judge ruled there was,
and the teen was listed as the Crown's primary witness.
But when it came time for Soulie's
criminal trial in October 1992, Spears packed up his things and
vanished.
Gordie's father, Robert Spears,
would tell the NOW years later that threats had been made against
Gordie and his family, particularly his older sister and her
children.
The boy fled the province,
his father said, and began making his way eastward.
At some point, Spears came
into contact with Aubee and began living at his Edmonton home.
What he didn't know at the
time was that Aubee had allegedly been hired by an Asian gang
to shelter the teen for a period of time but, when that arrangement
grew problematic, a decision was made to end his life.
That fateful moment came about
a year later, and Spears was shot through the head and dumped
in the bushes near Pierceland, Sask., where his body remained
undetected for several years.
With their key witness missing
, Crown counsel was forced to stay their charges against Soulie
for the 1990 shooting of Lee.
But those charges would eventually
be reinstated in 2001 as investigators began to piece together
the last few months of Spears' life on the run.
Just how the teen came to be
fall into company with Aubee and the second suspect is somewhat
unclear - Robert Spears said neither were known to Gordie or
the family at the time Soulie's trial was in the works.
But some undercover work by
the RCMP managed to uncover some of the details surrounding the
events leading up to the shooting.
Police arranged to have Aubee
win tickets to a basketball game, and when he arrived he found
himself seated amongst several police officers posing as members
of an Italian crime family.
One of the investigators befriended
Aubee at the game, and over a period of time piqued his interest
in joining up with the bogus mob.
The goal was to win Aubee's
confidence and get him talking about whether or not he'd ever
killed anyone before.
It worked.
This month a jury convicted
Aubee after hearing several tape recordings where he bragged
about shooting Spears after being paid by an Asian gang based
in Vancouver.
Aubee's failed defence outlined
a different scenario - he alleged that his ex-wife and her brother
had actually murdered Spears for molesting Aubee's daughter,
and that he had simply claimed responsibility to win good favour
with the Italians he met at the basketball game.
The jury rejected that version
of events, as did the Crown counsel who tried the case.
"That was an unbelievable
story, and the jury obviously rightfully rejected it," said
Saskatchewan prosecutor Jim Plemel.
"I think the jury made
the right decision. I think the evidence was overwhelming, and
they virtually had no other choice but to render this verdict."
A first degree murder charge
carries a sentece of life in prison without the possibility of
parole for 25 years.
Soulie's trial for the 1990
murder of Kin Wai Lee is scheduled to resume later this year.
- jknox@burnabynow.com
- with files from Lori Coolican,
Saskatchewan Star Phoenix
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