Suspect in restaurant massacre helped undercover cops dig grave, Calgary court told

Article originally appeared in: Calgary Sun

CALGARY - Cops posing as criminals, helped by triple-murder suspect [The Accused], dug a grave for a delinquent debtor in a bid to draw out a confession, court heard Wednesday.

Det. Reynold Bangloy said the ruse included taking another undercover police officer to the makeshift burial plot and threatening his life if he didn’t pay up.

Bangloy testified he got into the grave, dug up in Chilliwack, B.C., with the other officer and had him kneel down.

“I then pointed a disabled weapon ... at his head,” he told Crown prosecutor Susan Karpa.

“I told (him) we were going to give him five days to pay the six grand and if he doesn’t pay, on the sixth day he was going to sleep in this grave.”

The Calgary cop said the ploy was convincing to [The Accused], who had recently joined their criminal organization.

Bangloy and another officer picked up the kidnapping victim from a Vancouver-area hotel and put him into the back of an SUV occupied by [The Accused] and a third undercover cop.

They then drove the 20 minutes to the grave site with the victim “pleading for his life” and being periodically beaten in the back by Bangloy’s two partners

“It sounded very real ... but, again, it was all a staged beating.”

The scenario was one of more than three dozen contacts Bangloy had with [The Accused] after befriending him several months after Calgary’s New Year’s Day massacre on Jan. 1, 2009.

[The Accused] faces three counts of first-degree murder in the killing of the victim gangster, his drug associate and an innocent bystander.

Bangloy testified [The Accused] told him about the killing, insisting Su’a wasn’t a bystander, but was actually a major drug dealer.

“[The Accused] said that ‘they say he’s an innocent bystander ... but he knows for a fact he was a major drug dealer,’” Bangloy said.

[The Accused] also said the Victim was killed inside the Bolsa restaurant while fleeing the table at which the victim sat, a claim not supported by the facts.

The Victim, a regular customer at the eatery off Macleod Tr. S., was killed in the parking lot after he ran from his table when the gunfire erupted.

Bangloy’s testimony continues on Thursday.