Witnesses describe arson at slain gangster’s home

Months before Red Scorpion gangster Kevin LeClair was gunned down in Langley, there was an arson at a Mission house where he lived, B.C. Supreme Court heard Monday.

Former volunteer fire chief Richard Dekker testified that LeClair, his girlfriend and parents arrived at the house on Eagle Road near Hatzic Lake hours after the early morning fire on April 13, 2008.

Dekker told Justice Janice Dillon that he didn’t know who LeClair was at the time, but “put a name to the face” later when he saw LeClair’s photo in the newspaper after his February 2009 slaying.

Witnesses resumed at the Cory Vallee murder trial Monday after a summer break.

Vallee, an alleged United Nations gang hitman, is charged with the first-degree murder of LeClair at a Langley shopping plaza on Feb. 6, 2009. He’s also charged with conspiracy to kill the Bacon brothers and their Red Scorpion gang-mates over several months in 2008 and 2009.

Dekker, a dairy farmer, testified that he knew there was something unique about the situation at the house by the number of police who showed up at the scene of the fire.

Once his crew of volunteer firefighters attacked the blaze with foam, he was able to enter the house to investigate, Dekker said.

He found no one inside, but did notice photos on the fridge that raised his suspicions about the home’s occupants.

“There was a picture on the fridge of definitely not Dewdney residents — if I can put it that way,” he told Dillon.

“They were large tattooed-up biker types.”

Later he entered an outbuilding being used as a garage to make sure the fire hadn’t spread. He saw vehicles inside.

“The one I recall the most was a black Tahoe or Suburban that had bullet holes in it and was all bulletproofed up,” Dekker said.

Because he deemed the fire suspicious, he called in Ken Gordon, another volunteer who was an assistant to the provincial fire commissioner and a trained arson investigator. He’s also Dekker’s brother-in-law.

Dekker testified that he had to leave the scene around 5 a.m. “to milk cows.” When he returned, LeClair was outside the house sitting on the tailgate of his truck, Dekker said.

Gordon also took the stand Monday and described how the fire started in a ground-level bedroom at the rear of the house.

He said there was no electrical problem that could have led to the fire, which he deemed suspicious.

He also described seeing the photographs on the fridge in the house and recognized LeClair, as well as one of the Bacon brothers in several of them, he testified. He said he recognized the Bacon brother from “pictures I had seen in the media previous to that,” but didn’t know his first name.

RCMP Const. Robert Hinman also attended the Eagle Road house that night.

Hinman testified that he had driven to the home in a marked police car after a call about an alarm at the residence.

He recognized the house from a ride-along he had done with a colleague after he had started at the Mission detachment, Hinman testified. That colleague “indicated to me that that property is associated to a known gangster” and that he should always have backup if approaching the house, he said.

While waiting for backup that night, Hinman said he noticed “an orange glow coming from the back of the house.”

“I was very confident that it was a fire taking place in the residence,” he said, adding that he called the fire department.

The trial continues.