‘You dug the hole,’ trial told
Lawyer grills alleged accomplice over claim he was unaware of murder plan
An accomplice in the murder John Boulachanis is accused of committing in 1997 claims he didn’t know he was driving the victim to his death.
But that key part of the accomplice’s testimony in Boulachanis’s first-degree murder trial was put to the test by defence lawyer Marc Labelle on Wednesday. The victim, Robert Tanguay, 32, was killed in Rigaud on Aug. 9, 1997. His body was buried in a commercial sandpit and his remains were discovered in 2001.
The 58-year-old accomplice, whose name can’t be published due to a publication ban, was on the witness stand for the second day. In 2003, the same man pleaded guilty to manslaughter in Tanguay’s death and has finished serving the equivalent of a 12-year prison term.
When he first testified on Tuesday, the 58-year-old admitted he acted on Boulachanis’s orders and drove Tanguay to the sandpit where he was shot, allegedly by Boulachanis. But he also told the jury he believed Boulachanis intended to scare Tanguay. He said Boulachanis told him beforehand that he suspected Tanguay was a police informant and was leaking information on the stolen car ring all of the men were involved in.
While cross-examining the witness on Wednesday, Labelle had him go over a detailed chronology of events that took place before Tanguay was killed.
The witness repeated that sometime before the murder, he, Boulachanis and another accomplice (whose name also cannot be published) broke into a farming coop, filled three bags with lime and stole them. The witness said that because he owned horses he knew lime is commonly used to make things, like animal carcasses, decompose faster. Also, hours before Tanguay was killed, he, Boulachanis and the other accomplice took turns, using one shovel, to dig a hole in the sandpit large enough to hide a body.
While they dug, the witness said, Boulachanis showed them a revolver. And just before the murder, while eating together at the other accomplice’s home, the 58-year-old saw the automatic rifle that he alleged Boulachanis used to kill Tanguay.
“You dug the hole. You stole the lime. You saw the firearm (beforehand). And yet you say that you thought the plan was to scare (Tanguay). That’s your answer to the jury?” Labelle asked at one point. “Yes,” the witness replied. Another part of Labelle’s crossexamination provided more evidence the real motive behind the murder involved a relationship Boulachanis apparently had with Tanguay’s wife, Dominique Drouin.
Labelle had the 58-year-old witness go over a statement he provided to police in August 1997, after Tanguay was reported missing by his father. The statement was intended to put police “on a false path,” the witness conceded on Wednesday, but, he said, part of it was true.
In the statement, provided 13 days after the murder, the accomplice wrote that Drouin was thinking of leaving Tanguay because they were in debt and Tanguay couldn’t feed his family.
Labelle also highlighted how the accomplice gave police a sworn statement, recorded on video in July 2011, during which he said the three men initially dug the hole with the intention of killing and burying a dog Tanguay owned because it had bitten his finger a few days before. The witness reluctantly admitted he lied, in 2011, because he was still serving his sentence and feared he could be charged again in Tanguay’s homicide.
The trial resumes on Thursday.
You say that you thought the plan was to scare (Tanguay). That’s your answer to the jury?