Confession was a lie, teen says

Youth accused of double murder testifies he never saw slain pair

A 17-year-old on trial for double murder after confessing to undercover police told court Monday he is a chronic liar.

“I learned to lie on the streets to survive,” said the youth, who is accused of killing Susan Trudel and Barry Boenke at Trudel’s Strathcona County home in 2009.

He and another youth had run away from the Bosco Homes youth facility the day Trudel and Boenke were shot.

Both teens were charged with the killings after police found them in Boenke’s stolen truck but the charges were stayed after a preliminary hearing. The youth was charged anew after police launched a Mr. Bigstyle sting operation, tricking him into believing he was being recruited into a criminal gang. Now the court needs to decide whether to allow his confession as evidence in the trial.

The youth said he learned to lie during the two years and two months he spent in the Edmonton Young Offender Centre. That experience changed him.

“It scarred my life,” he said in response to a question from defence lawyer Mona Duckett. “I was looked at different so I started to make things up.”

Undercover officers befriended the youth after he was released. He told court the men worked with motorcycles, which helped convince him they were members of the Hells Angels.

Soon he was working for them, first painting a warehouse, then testing what he thought were counterfeit PlayStation consoles. They took him to his first concert and to an Oilers game.

During that time, he lied repeatedly. He told court he lied to them about his sexual exploits with an older woman, and when he told them his defence lawyer had 50 years of experience. He lied about being sick on a day he just didn’t want to work. That lie resulted in a lecture from one of the undercover officers, something that scared him enough to leave the group for several months, he said.

The youth confessed to the killings after meeting with what he thought was the head of the Hells Angels. He described a crime to move up in the organization, he told Duckett. “I wanted to work my way up the line.”

During cross-examination, the youth said he lied because he didn’t want to get kicked out of the gang. It gave him his best friend, paid for his phone, and gave him interesting things to do during the day. “I was going places I hadn’t ever been before. I didn’t want to give that up.”

The truth is that he never saw Trudel or Boenke, he said.

“So ... what you told (Mr. Big) was what you learned by sitting in the preliminary hearing?” asked Crown prosecutor William Wister. “Yes, it is,” said the youth. He also learned details from coverage of the murders in the media, from interactions with police during the first investigation, and possibly from material shared with him by his defence lawyers during the first trial, he said.

Clinical psychologist Valerie Massey also testified Monday, painting a picture of a youth with residual brain damage who would act like a “social chameleon,” saying and doing whatever it took to avoid being left behind.

The youth was exposed to alcohol and cocaine in the womb, she said. He witnessed severe domestic violence before being taken into provincial care at the age of seven and was sexually abused by his uncle, court heard.

Since then he’s had some counselling, but nothing sustained enough to help recover from that trauma.

Massey evaluated the youth in 2010, before he was released from the young offender centre. He’s “not at all street smart,” she said. He’s a pleaser, “very vulnerable and quite socially immature.”

When faced with undercover officers offering him friendship, interesting work, money and status, she said she would expect him to “say pretty much anything.” Young people with this type of brain damage, “they are social chameleons. They are who they are with,” she said. “He would have made up whatever he thought they wanted to hear.”

Boenke and Trudel were shot to death and beaten but no forensic evidence tied the youth to the murder scene.

The youth’s testimony Monday was part of a voir dire, or trial within a trial. The judge has been asked to rule on whether the youth’s statements to undercover officers should be allowed to stand as evidence. He is being tried in the Court of Queen’s Bench by a judge alone. The defence and Crown prosecutor are expected to summarize their arguments Tuesday.