Hitchhiker’s killer fails in bid to overturn conviction
A man convicted of murdering a woman more than 20 years ago and dumping her body in a park in northern B.C. has failed in a bid to have his second-degree murder conviction overturned.
Paul Russell Delano Felker launched the appeal in B.C.’s highest court on the basis that a judge’s instruction to the jury in his 2009 trial contained an error. The jury found him guilty and he was sentenced to life in prison with no parole eligibility for 12 years.
On July 24, 1990, the naked body of 21-year-old hitchhiker Cynthia Marie Burk was found hidden under bushes in Kiskatinaw Provincial Park, off the Old Alaska Highway between Fort St. John and Dawson Creek. Her throat had been cut.
Police questioned Felker about the murder in 2004, but he was not charged until two years later following an extensive investigation that included a “Mr. Big” under cover operation. Officers posing as members of a criminal organization recruited Felker to help them in their endeavours in exchange for money, but said he could not do so with a potential criminal charge hanging over his head — it would have to be “cleaned up.”
In recorded conversations with the “boss” and other undercover officers Felker admitted to killing Burk, although there were some inconsistencies in Felker’s accounts. The Crown also presented DNA evidence linking Felker to Burk. B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Mary Saunders wrote in a unanimous decision released Friday that although the trial judge in Prince George erroneously instructed the jury that the law presumes incriminating statements are true, the evidence implicating Felker in Burk’s murder was “overwhelming.”
“Not with standing the error in the judge’s instruction, no substantial wrong or miscarriage of justice occurred,” Saunders wrote.