Homicide victim’s son arrested
Just one day after the body of Naramata homicide victim Kathy Richardson was discovered in her home last week, Mounties arrested her son on unrelated warrants.
And in an unusual move Thursday, the lawyer representing Wade Cudmore, 32, applied for a closed-door bail hearing in provincial court in Penticton. A Penticton Herald reporter who attended the hearing was asked to leave before the application was heard and the result was unknown by press time.
Under the Criminal Code, a judge can grant such an application if it’s “in the interest of public morals, the maintenance of order or the proper administration of justice or is necessary to prevent injury to international relations or national defence or national security.”
RCMP spokeswoman Staff Sgt. Janelle Shoihet would only confirm Thursday that Cudmore was arrested June 10 in Kelowna on five warrants for failing to report to a bail supervisor Cudmore in connection with charges that arose in 2020 in Penticton.
Shoihet declined to say if police believe Cudmore is somehow linked to the triple-homicide case.
Cudmore is accused of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle and flight from police in May 2020, resisting arrest or obstructing a police officer in July 2020, and flight from police in January 2021.
All of the charges, plus the five other counts of breaching release conditions that led to the warrants, arose in Penticton.
Richardson’s body was found inside her Naramata home on June 9 by police investigating the killings of Kamloops brothers Carlos and Erick Fryer, whose bodies were discovered May 10 by hikers in a wooded area about two kilometres from the Naramata village centre.
Mounties have said they believe all three slayings are related to local gangs and drugs.
Citing an unnamed friend of Richardson’s, the Vancouver Sun reported last week that Richardson, 57, was worried her home had been linked to the Fryers’ deaths and she believed she was being followed during a recent trip to the Lower Mainland to pick up Cudmore.