‘ Mr. Big’ police tactic eff ective, but risky
Academic says undercover sting can lead to false confessions
A made- in- Canada police tactic designed to elicit confessions from suspects in murders and other serious crimes is “ingenious” but also carries a “high risk of incriminating the innocent,” says a Canadian professor.
Timothy Moore, chairman of the psychology department at York University, is to give a presentation about “Mr. Big” undercover stings today to an international conference of law enforcement investigators and academics in Toronto.
The tactics involve undercover agents posing as underworld figures and befriending a suspect over a number of weeks and sometimes months, then eventually eliciting a confession of past crimes.
At Alexander Laglace’s seconddegree murder trial in March, the B. C. Supreme Court heard that Laglace told an undercover police officer he killed his girlfriend, Tammy Cordone, by stabbing her in the chest with a knife 10 to 15 times in West Vancouver’s Lighthouse Park.
Laglace made the confession on March 25, 2010 as he was riding in a wiretapped car with an undercover officer posing as a crime boss.
Last November, a jury found Richmond resident Jean Ann James, 72, guilty of firstdegree murder in the 1992 killing of Gladys Wakabayashi at her home in Vancouver’s tony Shaughnessy neighbourhood.
The case had remained unsolved until November 2008 when James confessed to an undercover officer during a year- long Mr. Big operation that she had cut Wakabayashi’s throat because she believed the woman was having an affair with her husband.
The technique has been successful in catching and convicting “very bad guys” who might have got away with murder, according to an advance copy of Moore’s speech. But he also calls Mr. Big tactics “extraordinarily invasive and psychologically manipulative” and says the targets of such an operation might have more reasons to lie about a crime they did not commit than to tell the truth.
The elaborate police operations typically work like this: Officers, posing as members of a criminal organization, entice the suspect to join the group. They get the suspect to carry out a variety of jobs — such as selling guns, cashing in casino chips and delivering packages — in return for money, Moore says.
The undercover agents flaunt their wealth by driving fancy cars, eating at upscale restaurants and frequenting strip clubs, and work hard to forge a personal connection with the suspect. “If the target had no friends, he does now. If he has low self- esteem, they bolster it. If he has no money, they supply it ... If he is naive and uncomfortable around women, an appreciative female friend appears,” says Moore.
They also “create an atmosphere of apprehension” by conveying to the suspect that they will use violence against those who betray the gang.
On one occasion, investigators threw a woman — covered in what appeared to be blood — into the trunk of a car in front of a suspect. It was all staged, of course.
Eventually, a meeting is arranged between the suspect and Mr. Big, the boss of the fictitious crime group, designed to get the suspect to cough up details of past misdeeds.
Moore and other critics worry about the reliability of confessions in these situations. It is possible, they say, that innocent
Without corroboration from some other independent source verifying the suspect’s version of events, there is a risk of eliciting a false confession.
KOURI KEENAN
SFU PHD STUDENT
suspects may end up confessing to a crime just to stay in the good graces of the big boss.
Moore stressed in an interview that he is not dismissing Mr. Big as a policing tool. But in order for it to be used properly, investigators need corroborative evidence from the suspect, such as information about the crime that investigators didn’t previously know. A simple “I did it” isn’t going to cut it.
Kouri Keenan, a PHD criminology student at Simon Fraser University, agrees. He has analyzed 81 Mr. Big cases and found that 23 lacked substantial corroborating evidence.
“Without corroboration from some other independent source verifying the suspect’s version of events, there is a risk of eliciting a false confession,” he said.
A spokeswoman at RCMP headquarters in Ottawa said the force could not provide any details about Mr. Big beyond what is on its website.
The website says the Mr. Big method is a “tried, tested and true technique” and that charges are “always supported with corroborating physical evidence and/ or compelling circumstantial evidence.”
The website states that Mr. Big tactics have been heavily scrutinized and accepted by Canada’s courts. It cites a 1981 Supreme Court of Canada decision that concluded “authorities, in dealing with shrewd and often sophisticated criminals, must sometimes of necessity resort to tricks or other forms of deceit.”
According to the website, 75 per cent of Mr. Big operations result in a person of interest being cleared or charged. Of the cases that get prosecuted, the RCMP says 95 per cent result in convictions.
But not all Mr. Big prosecutions are successful.
In 1992, Kyle Unger was convicted of the murder of 16- yearold Brigitte Grenier, whose naked body was found two years earlier in a creek at a ski resort near Roseisle, Man.
The conviction was based, in part, on a confession Unger gave during a Mr. Big sting operation, as well as a strand of hair found on the victim.
But in 2004, new DNA analysis of the hair sample determined that it did not come from Unger.
After reviewing the case, federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson concluded in 2009 that a miscarriage of justice had likely occurred. He quashed Unger’s conviction and ordered a new trial. At the re- trial, the Crown didn’t call any evidence and Unger was acquitted.
In September, Unger sued Manitoba and federal justice officials and the RCMP for $ 14.5 million.
The suit alleges that the Mr. Big operation was designed to “induce and/ or trick” Unger into saying he killed Grenier “regardless of whether he was actually responsible for her death.”
“The Plaintiff was deliberately led to believe that if he said he committed the Grenier murder, he would receive a career, money, respect, companionship and many things sorely lacking in his life,” the lawsuit claims.