Tax feud led to murder: Crown
Prosecution says retired judge was accused’s ‘focal point of rage’
OTTAWA — Ian Bush kept a rambling, handwritten journal about his deep hatred for the tax man. He also kept a tool kit for murder. In opening statements at Bush’s triple murder trial on Wednesday, Assistant Crown Attorney Tim Wightman revealed the police theory to the jury, saying the accused’s “focal point of rage” was Alban Garon, a retired chief justice of Canada’s tax court.
Enraged over a bitter tax feud, the Ottawa consultant targeted Garon in a murder plot he executed on the morning of June 29, 2007, allegedly hog-tying the elderly judge, the judge’s wife and a friend, then beating them and suffocating them to death with plastic bags in their Ottawa condo, Wightman said.
Garon, 77, was found with a plastic bag over his head and a hangman’s noose around his neck. He had been beaten about the head. The judge, his wife Raymonde, also 77, and Marie-Claire Beniskos, 78, were found in a pool of blood on the living-room floor the day after the killings when a worried relative knocked and opened the unlocked door to Unit 1002 in the high-security building.
The jury also heard Ottawa police found DNA evidence at the crime scene that they matched to Bush years later.
Bush took notes in the prisoner’s box on the first day of his trial on three counts of first-degree murder.
After linking Bush to the killings in 2015, police searched his home and seized a tool kit with ducttape, rubber gloves, a sawed-off rifle, ammunition, and plastic bags inside. Ottawa police also found his handwritten journal, which stated tax collectors were the “lowest form of humanity” and likened them to extortionists.
The jury also heard about an “arrogant and insulting” letter Bush, now 61, sent to the judge, in which he summoned him to his home.
In one of his writings, the accused lists what appears to be ingredients for a crime — from gaining access, to securing “parties, cash, plus credit cards and pins, assets,” right down to leaving his “calling card.”
Bush also kept bogus ID cards in a wallet, including an RCMP inspector’s ID, a hydro worker’s ID, a federal government ID card and a delivery man’s ID, court heard.
The jury also heard Raymonde Garon told friends about a visit from a delivery man two days before the killings. The delivery man said he had a package for her husband, but when told he wasn’t home, the man said he’d return another day.
The jury was told they will hear other evidence linking Bush to the murders, including a bloody shoe print at the scene believed to be from a New Balance sneaker Bush wore in 2007. Police also say they matched rope at Bush’s home to the rope used to hog-tie the victims.
The prosecutor told the jury the victims didn’t fight back, and noted there were no signs of a struggle.
The court also heard about security video of Ian Bush captured at a nearby bus station minutes before and after the killings.
Bush has pleaded not guilty and the trial is expected to last two months.