Crown failed to prove murder in case against Vader, defence says

By Bob Weber

The CANADIAN PRESS

The lawyer for a man accused of killing two great-grandparents, burning their motor home and hiding their bodies said the case against his client is just speculation.

"Where’s the beef?" asked Brian Beresh Thursday in his closing arguments in defence of Travis Vader.

Beresh told an Edmonton court that the Crown has failed to prove the most basic elements of its case against Vader and is relying almost entirely on a theory that things "must have happened this way."

" ‘Must have happened his way’ was the standard applied by vigilante groups that often executed the wrong person," Beresh told Justice Denny Thomas. "There is an absence of fundamental evidence in this case upon which you could ever convict Mr. Vader."

Vader, 44, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the deaths of Lyle and Marie McCann, who were in their late 70s when they vanished while on their way to a family camping trip in 2010.

They were last seen July 3 of that year as they fuelled up their motorhome in their hometown of St. Albert, a bedroom community north of Edmonton, before they headed out to British Columbia.

Two days later their motorhome was found burning in the bush. The SUV they had been towing was later found hidden in some trees on a rural property.

The Crown has argued that Vader was a desperate drug user living in a makeshift camp when he came across the McCanns and killed them.

But Beresh — summing up his defence in front of a packed courtroom with many members of the McCann family present — pointed out that without the bodies of the seniors, a murder weapon or even much in the way of forensic evidence, there’s no real proof the couple is even dead.

He took a similar tack with other pieces of Crown evidence. He said there’s nothing to prove, for example, that Vader ever actually had the McCanns’s cellphone, used the day of their disappearance to place calls to Vader’s ex-girlfriend.

Beresh suggested that two key Crown witnesses, who identified an SUV Vader was driving as similar to one owned by the McCanns, had conspired against his client and lied about the identification. He said the keys to the SUV, later found in a truck that Vader had been driving, could have been planted there by police officers.

The keys, Beresh said, were discovered long after the truck was first found and searched.

"We suggest those keys were not present when the vehicle was taken to the storage yard."

DNA evidence placing Vader inside the SUV is sketchy at best, Beresh said, and doesn’t prove anything more than Vader was at one time near the vehicle. Drops of Lyle McCann’s blood, which were found on his hat, could have come from the nosebleeds to which the man was prone.

Beresh said there’s no evidence to show that Vader was broke or out of money.

"This is an attempt to paint Mr. Vader as a bad person, which we say is being used as a substitute for any real evidence."

On Wednesday, prosecutor Ashley Finlayson acknowledged the Crown’s case was circumstantial.

But he asked Thomas "to consider the totality of the evidence as a whole."

The trial began in March. Thomas has heard testimony from more than 80 witnesses and examined about 200 exhibits. He is expected to deliver his verdict on Sept. 15.

Outside court, Beresh said a persuasive circumstantial case would offer evidence that led to logical conclusions. The Crown, he said, is asking the judge to connect dots that don’t necessarily lead to each other.

"Mr. Vader … feels that this trial demonstrated how a transparent case can be seen by the public and how when you come to look at all the evidence, there’s a much different complexion than there was before the trial started."