Wrong video smuggled out of jail, convict testifies
CD with statement to police got out instead of exposé of living conditions
Convicted killer John Boulachanis says he simply screwed up.
The man who was convicted of a cold-blooded murder in December testified under oath for the first time Tuesday in a case where he and Montreal lawyer Dimitrios Strapatsas are charged with obstructing justice. The trial is being held at the Gouin courthouse and Boulachanis and the attorney are alleged to have made arrangements to have a videotaped statement — that a witness in the murder case gave to police in 2014 — uploaded to YouTube.
Boulachanis and the man who gave the statement (a convicted robber whose name cannot be published) talked to each other often while both were at the Rivière des Prairies Detention Centre in 2014 and the latter later told the Sûreté du Québec that Boulachanis made self-incriminating statements to him about the murder of Robert Tanguay, a man who was shot in Rigaud in 1997.
The video was uploaded on to YouTube in 2015 but by the time an SQ investigator found it, it had only registered 16 views.
After Crown prosecutor Jennifer Morin declared that the Crown’s evidence was complete on Tuesday, Strapatsas’s lawyer, Fabio Dell’Aquila announced he would call both of the accused to the witness stand. This appeared to upset Boulachanis’s lawyer, Marc Labelle, who asked to have his client’s case severed from the attorney’s. Quebec Court Judge Marc-André Dagenais agreed with the request and Labelle, an experienced trial lawyer, exited the courtroom while Strapatsas was still on the witness stand.
Boulachanis testified before Strapatsas and admitted he gave a CD to a fellow detainee and asked if he could find a way to have it uploaded to YouTube. But, Boulachanis claimed, he handed the other detainee the wrong CD. He said he wanted to post a video he had recorded, with a contraband cellphone, to show how filthy the living conditions were at the detention centre. He told Dagenais his intention was to embarrass the warden.
“I wanted to show how we were living — living in dirt,” Boulachanis said.
While being cross-examined, Boulachanis said it gave him “pleasure” to learn that the witness’s statement was posted to YouTube instead.
“I wanted people to know he was someone you shouldn’t talk to,” Boulachanis said.
When Morin asked Boulachanis about his connection to Strapatsas, he said they knew each other as teens but lost contact when Strapatsas moved and lived in Western Canada for many years. He denied that he is related to Strapatsas even though they were referred to as being cousins during the murder trial.
Strapatsas testified that he and Boulachanis first met more than 30 years ago when they were both in the Hellenic Scouts. He said he got to know Boulachanis’s parents before his father died.
“I have a certain respect for his parents,” Strapatsas said while explaining why he agreed to work as “second chair” during the preliminary inquiry in the murder case in 2011. The detainee who arranged to get the CD out of the detention centre testified that he convinced his girlfriend at the time to upload it to YouTube and that he told her Boulachanis told him Strapatsas would pay her $200 once it was on the internet.
The girlfriend also testified Tuesday and said she called and exchanged text messages with Strapatsas to arrange a meeting — at a Tim Hortons near the detention centre on April 15, 2015 — after posting the video. A security camera inside the restaurant captured images of Strapatsas and the woman entering the Tim Hortons four minutes apart.
Strapatsas testified that he did not suspect anything was wrong with the exchange.
“If he was going to ask me to do something illicit I would have said no,” Strapatsas said.
Closing arguments in the trial are scheduled to begin Wednesday.