Man’s murder trial in deaths of parents, sister delayed two weeks
RED DEER A triple-murder trial has been delayed for a central Alberta man accused along with a friend of setting his family’s home on fire and killing his parents and sister.
The trial for Jason Klaus on arson and first-degree murder charges was to begin in Red Deer on Tuesday, but the start date was put over to Oct. 23.
The Klaus home near the small community of Castor was found burned to the ground in December 2013.
The remains of Gordon Klaus and his daughter, Monica, were identified in the rubble.
The body of Gordon’s wife, Sandra Klaus, was never found, but it’s believed she was also in the home.
Co-accused Joshua Frank, 33, faces the same charges and is being tried along with Klaus, 42.
Frank is also accused of cruelty to an animal in the death of the Klaus family’s dog.
Both men have been in custody since they were arrested in August 2014. They sat next to each other in the prisoner’s box Tuesday before a packed courtroom.
Instead of opening arguments, proceedings began with defence lawyers asking for an adjournment.
They argued the Crown missed its deadline to present evidence from an undercover sting.
Crown prosecutor Douglas Taylor, who was not assigned to the case until Aug. 29 after a previous prosecutor resigned, said he worked to rectify the problem as soon as he was made aware of it.
Defence lawyers argued they would need to review “hundreds of hours” of material to properly prepare, so Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Eric Macklin delayed the trial’s start date by two weeks.
The judge has yet to rule whether the evidence in question — which amounts to almost three hours of audio and audio-video recordings — is admissible.