A B.C. coroner’s report indicates that a convicted killer whose body was partially eaten by a bear outside of Kamloops last May had committed suicide by overdosing on cocaine.
The coroner’s report says 53-year-old Rory Nelson Wagner died of a drug overdose via an injection of cocaine.
Wagner’s body was found partially eaten and buried by a black bear in a remote area of Kamloops. Wagner was out on day parole when he disappeared.
The report lists Chilliwack as Wagner’s place of residence.
Investigators believe Wagner sat dead in his 1986 Volkswagen Jetta, parked on the rural roadside for days before the bear found him. The bear pulled his body from the vehicle through an open window and buried it under a pile of dirt and undergrowth, said investigators. Hunters found the body and alerted conservation officers.
Conservation officers tracked down the bear a short time after Wagner’s body was found and it was put down.
Wagner pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of Langley man Andy Kohlman in 1994. Wagner, along with his brother, who has also since died, and another man, Gerald Beaugrand, served time in jail for killing Kohlman, who was accused of sexually assaulting two young relatives of the Wagner brothers.
On Oct. 21, 1993, Rory Wagner and two accomplices kidnapped Andy Kohlman and took him to a remote wooded area somewhere in the Fraser Valley.
They beat him to death and left the body. It was never found.
Shortly before Kohlman disappeared, he was acquitted on sexual assault charges involving two of Wagner’s nieces.