Nova Scotia fugitive to appear in court
Ex-MMA fighter accused in 2011 slaying
When former mixed martial arts fighter Steven Skinner appears in a Dartmouth, N.S., courtroom Monday morning, it will mark a homecoming of sorts after a dramatic six-year odyssey that began with a cold-blooded murder, then progressed through an intercontinental manhunt and an abusive “Mr. Big” police operation to a dramatic takedown of the shirtless fugitive on a Venezuelan tourist beach.
But for Gloria Adams, whose son Stacey Jordan Adams, 20, was found shot to death in a car in Lake Echo, N.S., it will mean the fulfilment of a promise to see his alleged killer brought to justice.
“Gloria did have a promise to her son. She has always said that and she knew that this day would come. We never gave up hope that this day would come,” said Kendelle Blois, a longtime family friend. “It’s obviously been an emotional roller-coaster for six years.”
A few months after Adams’ death, his own son, Elijah Stacey Adams, was born to Stacey’s girlfriend, Ellen Etmanskie.
Skinner, 44, who is facing a second-degree murder charge in Adams’ death, plus other unrelated charges, arrived by plane in Halifax early Saturday in the company of RCMP officers, according to Cpl. Dal Hutchinson.
He was arrested by Venezuelan police more than a year ago on the beach at El Yaque on Margarita Island, a popular tourist destination just off the north coast of the South American country.
Neither Global Affairs Canada nor the Department of Justice Canada would comment on the handover of the prisoner, which was contested at length in Venezuelan courts, and further complicated by the fact Canada and Venezuela do not share an extradition treaty.
How he got to Venezuela is almost as complicated as how he got back, according to police and court records.
At the time of Adams’ murder, Skinner, who fought professionally in Moncton, N.B., and trained in Toronto and Montreal, was on bail and under a judge’s orders to stay away from Nova Scotia except as directed by the courts.
Two years earlier, Skinner had been arrested in Ontario and charged with aggravated assault, forcible confinement, and other offences, following a gruesome assault in Lower Sackville, N.S., in which a 66-year-old man was allegedly burned with hot spoons as some sort of revenge involving the victim’s son. Skinner still faces those charges.
Despite the bail condition, police allege Skinner returned to Dartmouth and was at a house in Lake Echo, outside Dartmouth, with Ryan Belanger, a prominent cocaine trafficker, when Adams arrived to buy marijuana. That is when police allege Skinner shot him three times and left his body in a car.
Adams’ family members deny he was involved with the drug trade, Blois said in an interview.
That same night, according to court records, Skinner flew from Moncton to Vancouver, and the next day flew via Calgary, to Mazatlan, Mexico. A CBC report on his court battle against extradition describes how Mexican police investigating the 2012 murder of a British Columbia drug trafficker near Puerto Vallarta discovered what appeared to be pictures of Skinner’s dead body, but this turned out to be false.
In fact, Skinner travelled to Panama and on to Medellin, Colombia, using a fake Mexican passport in the name of Shane Martinez. He was fingerprinted and released, then vanished again.
When police located him in Venezuela, he is alleged to have been carrying fake identification, and living under the name James Alexander O’Neill Pirela. While in jail contesting extradition, he is alleged to have been dealing drugs and trying to bribe his way out.
Meanwhile, back in Nova Scotia, police had suspected Skinner, and their investigation zeroed in on a young woman named Brittany Leigh Derbyshire, who had once dated Belanger.
Police devised an operation to pose as senior members of an outlaw motorcycle gang tasked with cleaning up the mess Skinner had left behind. Dressed the part, and driving a large SUV, two officers confronted Derbyshire at her apartment and acted menacingly, eventually convincing her to talk and show them places of interest to their investigation. She was charged with being an accessory after the fact to murder.
At trial, a judge found this “Mr. Big” sting to be an abuse of process, and ruled the evidence obtained by it could not be used against Derbyshire (although whether it can be used against Skinner remains an open question). Left with no evidence, the Crown appealed, and lost.