Jury hears man’s confession in wife’s death
Undercover officer told of fight with woman that included ‘twisting of the neck’
A man accused of murdering his wife and one other man told undercover police that before his spouse’s slaying, people were telling him to get rid of her and that he twisted her neck during the fatal assault.
For two days, a B.C. Supreme Court jury has been listening to details of Jaswant Singh Gill’s confession to the killings of wife Gurpreet (Ruby) Gill, 33, on Valentine’s Day in February 2006 and Thomas Eldon Akerman, 26, in December 1994.
He has pleaded not guilty to the second-degree murder of Gill and not guilty to the first-degree murder of Akerman.
The court heard that Gill, who had a stormy relationship with his wife, told a police officer — posing as the leader of a criminal organization — that before the slaying people were telling him the same thing: “Get rid of her. Get rid of her. Get rid of her.”
He added later: “What I did was, I did what my parents told me to, to get rid of the relationship.”
Gill said his wife “flipped her switch” when he confronted her.
“It was just, she just kept going on and on about my mother, just cursing her, just — I mean, wishing like the evilest things on her, do you know what I mean?”
Asked by the officer what kind of fight it was, Gill replied that it was a “twisting of the neck.”
“And then like, did it break her neck?” asked the undercover cop posing as Mr. Big. “Ah, I didn’t hear it,” said Gill. “But it might have,” said the officer. “Was she still alive after that?”
“Ah, there was a lot of her demon coming out,” said Gill, who added that by demon he meant an energy “like a vibration.”
Gill confessed to being on top of the victim, holding her down and making eye contact with her during the assault.
“Yeah, I was looking right at her and making sure that it was the real her, the one that I saw, when I seen her in India.”
Gill told the officer that after he killed his wife, he put her in a plastic bag, stored her body in a refrigerator before getting the assistance of another man to dispose of the body on “military” lands in Richmond.
Court has heard that Gurpreet Gill came to Canada from India after an arranged marriage with her husband in 2000, initially living in Victoria with the husband’s family and later moving to Vancouver to be with Gill.
Gurpreet’s mother reported that her daughter was missing to the Vancouver police, initiating a missing person’s case that eventually turned into a homicide investigation.
During his meeting with the undercover officer at a hotel in Whistler, Gill made the startling admission that he’d killed another person.
He said he shot a man three times in a vehicle parked near Metrotown. Akerman was shot while he sat in a vehicle at a park in Metrotown.
Asked by the officer whether the fatal shooting was a “drug thing,” Gill replied that it was a “greed thing.”
“He — he is greedy and you need to take care of it?” said the officer.
“Ah — the message was to get rid of people that were gonna make things harder for your own families later on,” replied Gill.
The trial is expected to continue Friday.