A Langley man who was sentenced to life in prison for the first degree murders of Marc Bontkes and Laura Lamoureux will be tried again for both crimes.
On Tuesday, May 5, the B.C. Court of Appeal granted Robert Bradshaw a new trial.
Bradshaw — who was known as 'Paulie' — appealed his convictions, arguing that the trial judge erred by admitting into evidence a re-enactment of the crimes made by co-accused Roy Thielen.
Thielen pleaded guilty to both killings and is serving a life sentence.
The videotaped re-enactments, which were shown to the jury, implicated Bradshaw in both murders. Thielen then refused to testify at the trial.
"The re-enactment was hearsay evidence that did not demonstrate circumstantial guarantees of trustworthiness necessary to meet the threshold reliability test," wrote Judge Elizabeth Bennett in her decision to grant Bradshaw a new trial.
The March, 2009 murders took place within five days of each other, and within a few blocks of one another in Langley City. Bontkes was a drug user and Lamoureux was an addict and a dealer. At the time of the killings, dial-a-dope operations were popping up all over Langley, and a turf war was erupting.
After the killings, Thielen quickly emerged as a suspect and became the target of a “Mr. Big” investigation.
In May 2010, during a road trip between Edmonton and Calgary, Thielen provided the undercover officer with a lengthy account of his involvement in the two murders. He said that he had been hired to kill both victims by a Langley drug dealer, and that he was the sole shooter.
He said he shot Lamoureux in the head and chest as she was walking down the street. Thielen told the officer he killed Bontkes with the help of a close friend who he called a 'sister' — Michelle Motola.
Motola served six years for her part in Bontkes' murder.
In undercover operations, Thielen said he was a killer for hire, and was nicknamed Dirty Deeds because he would kill for dirt cheap, claiming to have killed several people.