2015-12-15 Documents reveal RCMP have DNA linking Travis Vader to killing of St. Albert couple | Edmonton Journal
Published by Bretton McCann,
Documents reveal RCMP have DNA linking Travis Vader to killing of St. Albert couple
RCMP investigators believe they have Travis Vader’s DNA and other forensic evidence that links him to the killings of Lyle and Marie McCann.
Recently released court documents show a sprawling, four-year investigation involving hundreds of police officers, dozens of tips, surveillance, jailhouse informants and undercover operations used to determine who killed the St. Albert couple during their 2010 road trip to British Columbia.
Lyle McCann, 78, and his wife, Marie, 77, were last seen on the morning of July 3, 2010, buying gas at a St. Albert Superstore. Two days later, their burning motorhome was found near a campground southeast of Edson. The Hyundai SUV towed behind their motorhome was discovered abandoned eleven days later.
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Vader, 43, faces two charges of murder in the case and has always been the RCMP’s main suspect.
"Forensic evidence ties the SUV to Travis Vader," states a case summary prepared for a 2013 pre-trial conference. "Items in the SUV are consistent with trauma to the McCanns, including the blood of Marie McCann and Lyle McCann’s hat with a bullet hole in it."
Investigators also believe Vader was using the McCanns’ cellphone at 2 p.m. on July 3, the day they disappeared.
Previously, RCMP had not publicly disclosed what tied Vader to the investigation or what evidence led them to declare the McCanns dead while their bodies remain undiscovered.
In August 2010, police secured a warrant for Vader’s DNA while he sat behind bars on unrelated crimes. Three weeks later, investigators prepared a script to tell Vader his DNA was linked to the McCann investigation.
The prosecution’s case is "dependant upon circumstantial evidence, motive and exclusive opportunity, forensic evidence and post-offence conduct evidence," according to documents filed with the court.
The day Vader’s capture ended a provincewide manhunt, the RCMP put an undercover police officer in his cell at the Edson RCMP detachment in an attempt to pry information from him.
"The audio is 34 hours long with very little conversation," the summary of that operation states.
By 2011, several undercover RCMP officers were getting close to Vader’s sister Bobbi Jo, who saw her brother in the days after the McCanns disappeared. Previously, Bobbi Jo Vader had spoken with investigators and consented to a DNA sample.
"She talked about how her brother couldn’t have done it, but gave herself a disclaimer by saying ‘I was pretty f—ed up at the time,’" court documents state.
The undercover officers recruited the "very motivated" Bobbi Jo Vader for odd jobs to gain her trust. In one operation, she drove from Edmonton to Calgary with a false ‘co-worker’ and stopped to visit her brother at the Red Deer Remand Centre. Another time, she was on a train to Winnipeg with two undercover officers when she changed the story she’d previously told uniformed RCMP.
"She said she believed that Travis was involved in the murders and she saw guns wrapped up in blankets that could have come from the McCanns’ motor home," according to Crown prosecutor documents.
Family members told investigators Lyle McCann owned guns, but couldn’t say whether he had them with him in the motorhome on his road trip.
"Objectives of the scenario were achieved," an RCMP officer wrote about the undercover investigation.
The Vader court documents show a massive investigation involving, to varying degrees, 600 RCMP officers that investigated tips, watched Vader’s family, intercepted his in-custody communications, seized vehicles, met with informants and produced thousands of documents, videos and audio recordings.
As the investigation grew — and Vader went through numerous defence lawyers — the disclosure of prosecution material became problematic and RCMP discovered late in the process that they hadn’t disclosed all the necessary materials.
The information about Bobbi Jo Vader changing her story seemingly wasn’t disclosed to defence lawyers until February 2014, even though it happened in November 2011.
Vader’s current lawyer, Brian Beresh, was still asking for disclosure only weeks before the double-murder trial was scheduled to begin in April 2014. That March, Beresh received 5,000 pages of new material not previously disclosed to the defence. It was the late disclosure that forced the prosecution to stay the murder charges.
Nine months later, the murder charges were brought back and Vader is scheduled for trial in March 2016. The prosecution filed a direct indictment in the case, which means a judge has never examined the evidence against Vader in a preliminary inquiry.
None of the accusations in the court documents have been proven in court.
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