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Jury Convicts Cody Legebokoff of Four First-Degree Murders in Prince George

Three women and a 15-year-old girl died in northern British Columbia in 2009 and 2010; he testified that others killed them.

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An RCMP officer holds up a photograph of Cody Legebokoff at a police news conference in Prince George

The jury came back on Thursday, September 11, 2014, and word spread fast enough that drummers from the Carrier Sekani First Nation were outside the Prince George courthouse before the verdict was read. Inside, the jurors found Cody Alan Legebokoff, 24, guilty on four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Jill Stacey Stuchenko, Natasha Lynn Montgomery, Cynthia Frances Maas and Loren Donn Leslie, who died in 2009 and 2010 in northern British Columbia.

Stuchenko was the first. She was 35, a mother of five, and she was found dead in a gravel pit off Otway Road on the outskirts of Prince George in 2009. The Crown said she died of blunt force trauma to the head. Montgomery, 23, from Quesnel, was reported missing in August 2010, and her body has never been found. Prosecutors told the court that shirts, shorts, bedsheets, a comforter and an axe taken from Legebokoff's apartment had all tested positive for her DNA. Maas, also 35, went missing the next month; her remains were found in L.C. Gunn Park, in a remote part of the city, a month after that.

None of those cases had been solved when a 15-year-old from Fraser Lake who had met Legebokoff online was killed in November 2010. An RCMP officer saw his truck turn onto Highway 27 near Vanderhoof from an unused logging road and pulled him over. The officer saw a smear of blood on his face and legs and a pool of blood in the truck. A conservation officer, thinking of poachers, drove up the logging road and found Loren Leslie's body. Investigators concluded she had died only hours before the stop.

At trial Legebokoff offered to plead guilty to four counts of second-degree murder. He testified that he was present when all four died but that he did not kill them, and he suggested that Loren had been trying to kill herself. The plea was not accepted, and the jury convicted on the higher charge. In Canada first-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Outside, the families spoke in turn. "This verdict is bittersweet," said Judy Maas, Cynthia's sister. "All we wanted in this system was justice." She asked that her sister and the other two women not be dismissed for their work in the sex trade. "They weren't 'just' a drug addict and they weren't 'just' a sex trade worker. They were loved. They're missed." Robert Donovan, Natasha's grandfather, said he had broken down hearing the evidence of how she died. Her mother, LuAnn Montgomery, said it was not over for her. "I still don't have Natasha back, and I want to remind the public to keep an eye out for her remains." Doug Leslie, Loren's father, thanked the officer who stopped the truck that night and made it possible for his daughter to be found. Of the suicide theory, he said: "How can you be offended with something that's not real?"

Neil MacKenzie, a spokesman for the province's Criminal Justice Branch, said the victims of the crimes included the families and friends of the women and the young woman who lost their lives. Legebokoff had been 19 when the first murder took place.

What this story covers. The verdict, the evidence summarized from the Crown's case, the circumstances of the November 2010 arrest and the families' words come from the CBC News report by Rhiannon Coppin published September 11 and 12, 2014, read here as syndicated by Yahoo News Canada. Legebokoff's account that others did the killing was his testimony and was rejected by the jury. Natasha Montgomery's remains have not been found; her age appears as 23 in 2014 reports and as 24 in a later one. On the day of the verdict no sentencing hearing had taken place; he was then sentenced to life with no parole eligibility for 25 years, and the British Columbia Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal in September 2016, as reported by the Prince George Citizen. The photograph shows an RCMP officer holding up a photograph of Legebokoff at a police news conference in Prince George; it was not taken on the day of the verdict.

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