On a drive from Edmonton to Calgary in May, 2010, convicted murderer Roy Thielen told an undercover officer posing as a gang leader that he killed “for fun.”
“They used to call me Dirty Deeds because I used to do it (kill) for dirt cheap,” said Thielen, whose taped conversation was played to a jury at the double murder trial of Robert Bradshaw on Tuesday.
Bradshaw is charged with first degree murder in the killings of Langley’s Marc Bontkes and Laura Lamoureux in March 2009. The murders took place within five days of each other, and within a few blocks of one another in Langley City.
The jury was to hear more than an hour of Thielen’s conversation with the undercover officer where he details how he killed both, while also saying he had killed before. Thielen has already pleaded guilty to both killings and is serving a life sentence.
The judge in Bradshaw’s trial instructed the jury to listen to the tapes and remember what Thielen volunteered as evidence in the re-enactment videos. The judge asked the jury to decide if there are inconsistencies and weigh his credibility with that.
In the taped conversations with the undercover officer, Thielen bragged about killing Bontkes and Lamoureux himself. But after he was arrested, he volunteered to re-enact the killings for police and implicated Bradshaw as the shooter who killed Bontkes.
The Crown subpoenaed him to testify in Bradshaw’s trial, but he has refused to do so. The judge will hold a contempt of court hearing today (Thursday).
“I did it (killed for hire) for five years,” he claimed to the fake crime boss. “I’d get a call and I’d only get $6,000 to $7,000. I was hooked on doing it for fun. I was such a loose cannon then,” said Thielen.
“The last two I did, I had cops at my door the next day,” he said of Bontkes’ murder. He said that police figured it was him but didn’t have enough to charge him. He told the undercover officer that he wasn’t going to get busted for those killings.
He told the officer that he may seem nice and easy going but he can get very angry. He told of beating up a guy in Grade 8 and leaving him in a vegetative state.
“I’m a little guy but I can f*** you up.”
He told the officer that he went up to Lamoureux and unloaded his .45 gun into her. With Bontkes, he said he killed “execution style.”
In the video re-enactment, he said he gave his gun to Bradshaw, who then shot Bontkes.
The jury will have to decide what to believe of Thielen’s statements. The Crown is expected to wrap up its case after these tapes are played to the jury. It isn’t known yet whether Bradshaw’s lawyer will present a case or not. If the defense doesn’t present any evidence, then closing arguments from both sides are expected, followed by a decision by the jury.