Murder trial focuses on receipts

In the months before he was murdered, gangster Stephen Leone bought a barbecue and got an oil change.

Receipts from some mundane commercial transactions engaged in by Leone were presented as evidence in B.C. Supreme Court in Kelowna on Monday.

Leone is said by the Crown to have been in Kelowna on Aug. 14, 2011, the day gangster Jonathan Bacon was shot to death outside the Delta Grand hotel.

Leone was murdered in Surrey on Oct. 22 of that year in what is said to have been a revenge killing for his role in Bacon’s slaying.

Jujhar Khun-Khun, Thomas McBride and Michael Jones are charged with first-degree murder, and with the attempted murder of three others who were injured, after a Porsche Cayenne was sprayed with gunfire at the hotel’s main entrance.

The Crown says the killing in Kelowna was an offshoot from an ongoing gang war in the Lower Mainland.

In court Monday, the Crown introduced the receipts as a way of trying to establish Leone was the principal user of a certain phone number.

On July 17, 2011, according to data retrieved from The Home Depot’s main records centre in Atlanta, Ga., Leone bought a Weber barbecue from the company’s store in Langley for $477.

His name and phone number were also a receipt provided for an oil change at a Mr. Lube franchise in Langley on Sept. 23, 2011.

Under cross-examination, representatives for The Home Depot and Mr. Lube’s accountant acknowledged people did not have to provide photo identification before being given a receipt after purchasing goods or services.

“You never met this customer?” one of the defence lawyers asked accountant Jas Hari. “No,” he responded. The inference from defence was that it was possible someone else was using Leone’s name and phone number.

The trial continues.