Retrial underway for murder of Calgary bartender in 2010

Cold-blood killer, or a poor man hoping for a rags-to-riches ending?

That’s the question a Calgary jury will grapple over in the next three weeks as they preside over the retrial of accused murderer Kyle Ledesma.

In her opening statement to a four-man, eight-woman Court of Queen’s Bench jury, Crown prosecutor Hyatt Mograbee detailed the case she plans to call against Ledesma.

Mograbee said jurors will hear in Ledesma’s own words that he fatally shot Calgary bartender Dexter Bain more than eight years ago in a botched robbery attempt.

The prosecutor said police conducted an undercover operation for several months, a so-called Mr. Big sting, targeting Ledesma, who faces a charge of second-degree murder in the Nov. 27, 2010, death of Bain.

“You’re going to hear his own words ... that he shot Dexter,” Mograbee said.

“What Mr. Ledesma will tell you in his confession will match other Crown evidence,” she said, adding the comments from the accused to undercover operators were recorded and will be played in court.

Mograbee said Bain was working at Our Place bar and had closed for the night when he and friends who were still there heard something in the back.

Bain went to investigate, but ran back in obvious distress.

The prosecutor said even though he had been shot twice, those there did not know what had happened to him.

“He died after taking two bullets and I ask you to take note where those bullets entered his body,” she said.

“None of the friends ... knew exactly how Dexter died; they only knew he was injured.”

Mograbee said even the undercover officers who targeted Ledesma didn’t know where on his body Bain was shot.

“No one in the public knew what happened.”

But in her own opening statement, defence counsel Rebecca Snukal said her client lied to police because they offered him a better life.

“He was poor,” Snukal told jurors. “He was an alcoholic, he was a drug addict.”

Despite his problems Ledesma pined for a better life.

“He dreamed of being a rap star; he had never been on an airplane,” she said.

When the undercover officers entered his life, he felt his dreams might come to fruition.

“He was wined and dined by the Calgary Police Service undercover operators,” Snukal said.

Ledesma saw his new friends as members of an “organization that could make all his dreams come true,” she said.

“You are going to hear a rags-toriches story that induced a false confession.”

Meanwhile, in evidence, pathologist Dr. Graeme Dowling said Bain was shot twice in the right side of his back.

Ledesma was convicted in 2015, but the Court of Appeal ordered a new trial.