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You are now listening to True Murder The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker bt K. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Good evening from the best selling author of The Vampire next Door. The true Story of the Vampire Rapist, John Crutchley JT. Hunter tells the story of a friendly, baby face Canadian boy next Door. He came from a loving, caring and well respected family, blessed with good looks and backwoods country charm. He was popular with his peers, and although an accident at birth left permanent nerve damage in
one of his arms, he excelled in sports. A self proclaimed diehard Calgary Flames fan, he played competitive junior hockey and competed on his school's snowboarding team, and he enjoyed the typical simple pleasures of a boy growing up in the country, camping, hunting, and fishing with family and friends. But he also enjoyed brutally murdering women, and he would become one of the youngest serial killers in Canadian history. The book they were featuring this evening is The Country
Boy Killer, with my special guest journalist and author JT. Hunter. Welcome back to the program and thank you for agree to his interview. JT. Hunter.
Fight Anne, glad to be here. Thanks for having me back on the show again.
Thank you very much. It's my pleasure in our audience's pleasure. I'm sure now this is an incredible crime that I had no idea about, even though I'm Canadian. Let's start with setting the stage as you very masterfully do in this book and introduce these the principal officers that end up in this faithful situation where they end up pulling over this gentleman, this young man. So let's go back to that small town in the RCMP detachment in Fort
Saint James and the guy named Officer Keller. He's been a constable duty constable for over just about a year. And this is a little small logging and mining town, you say, located on the southeastern shore of Stuart Lake at the end of Highway twenty seven. Before we do any of that for our international audience in American art, this is not familiar with what r CMP mean and
compared to city police versus rural police. So tell us what the RCMP and describe this little place that we're talking about where it is geographically, and then we can introduce the officers Keller and Sidhu and then Hill.
Okay, well, the RCMP that just stands for Royal Canadian Mounted Police and that's the you know, the equivalent of the Canadian Police Force, national police force. And where this took place is in a pretty remote area. It's in north central British Columbia, a big you know, logging area, not big populations in the area. And we had a chance encounter is what I called it in the beginning of the book as to how the case came to light.
Now, what brings us to to this Officer Keller has been on the force for only about a year. What happens on this little road one evening and tell us how he came to be a meet up with this eventual what we find out to be a very young but very prolific serial killer.
Well, the story really begins, and it was back in November of twenty ten, so about five years ago, and Officer Keller was driving along and as I said, it was a remote area on Highway twenty seven. He was actually on his way to return something that had been left by someone that had been involved in an accident,
a car accident. They had left a bag basically, and he was driving back to return this bag, and he was going to be meeting up with one of his solow officers coming in the other direction on I twenty seven, and that's the officer Sidhu, who was a more experienced officer. He'd been with the force there for about four years.
And so Keller was driving along this is that night, about nine thirty at night, and he ended up cresting a hill on the highway and he noticed up ahead in the distance what turned out to be two headlights kind of bobbing up and down as if someone was driving over rougher terrain. And he noticed the headlights were approaching the highway that he was on, and as he got closer, the headlights turned into a black pickup truck.
They belonged to a black pickup truck, and the pickup truck pulled onto the highway at a high rate of speed in front of him, really didn't slow down much at all, sped up onto the highway from from a side road there and continued pulling away from him. And he decided to something wasn't quite right, and he decided to follow the truck and see if you know, further
action needs to be taken. But because of the area he was in, it was so remote, and because of you know, it was fairly common for people out there in the area to be armed, you know, whether a gun or a knife or whatever. So he didn't want to confront the whoever was in the truck by himself, so he decided to wait until he met up with Sidhu, who again was coming the other direction on the highway there before he tried to initiate any kind of a
traffic stop. So he just kind of kept pace with the pickup truck and you know, clocked the speed and you know, noted that the truck was speeding. I think he was going about ten or fifteen miles an hour over the speed limit. And then eventually he did intersect with the city. We saw city coming the other direction, and he turned on his lights and pulled the truck over.
Now, what was the most odd thing and the first thing one of the first things he noticed, and also quite unusual for the climate at that time that the officer noticed the first thing to date noticed.
Yeah, well, the driver of the truck. It turned out to be a young, young, younger man, and he was wearing only shorts and a sweater of some kind. But the shorts aspect of it was certainly strange, considering it was late November at night, so it's certainly not appropriate for the for the weather. And that was the first odd thing he noticed. And then also when he when he looked in, he noticed that the driver had some smears of blood. It appeared to be on his face
and on his legs as well. And then he also noticed what looked to be some a wet pool on the on the driver's mat by the driver's seat. There looked to be, you know, a pool of a little pool of blood there right, So that certainly raised more red flags, and he asked he eventually, you know, in discussion with the driver asked.
Him, well, you know, what is this.
Why do you have blood on you? What is this stuff? And the driver, who you know, it turns out, was Cody Ljakov. The driver told him that he had been out with a friend and they had been poaching and they had shot a deer and the deer had run off, and they had tracked it down and had put it out of its misery by either clubbing it or stabbing it with a knife. It was a little unclear what his story was exactly, kind of changed it a little bit,
but and that's the reason for the blood. And he made some sort of comment that, even though he knew it was illegal to be poaching, that I'm a redneck and that's the sort of thing we do for fun,
basically is what he what he had said. So the officers, you know, found the story a little suspicious, and they ended up calling out a conservation officer since you know, allegedly there was poaching involved with it, and the conservation officer came out to the site there and joined them, and during the course of the stop, they you know, they also had spotted an open container of alcohol in the cabin of the truck, which had given them the the ability to go ahead and you know, initiate a
full stop and search of the vehicle.
They also found a metal Leatherman multi toool with several knife blades attached, and when they opened that said that it was a red stain looked like blood on that, and they asked him about that, and he said something about that he'd killed some grouse. And then even Keller, the inexperienced cops, said there's no way that there's too much blood for that, and then he said, well, I
used it on a deer before that. So these guys were already incredulous before they called the senior guy the Hill, the conservation officer didn't, weren't they.
Yeah, as you mentioned, they did find out that leatherman multitool with the red stain on it, and certainly the story seemed to be become more and more questionable as as it went on, and as they found more things in the in the truck.
There now the conservation officers, he's also an experienced police officer or in law enforcement, so he's a very experienced guy. And what happens when he comes and what do they do in terms of to get his statement?
Well, the conservation officer Cameron Hill. As you said, he was a quite experienced law enforcement officer. He had decades on the force, if I recall correctly. And he got called out there a little bit later in the night and showed up at the site there, and it was decided that he would interview Cody and try to get
the full story from him. And you know, again he got the same sort of story that he was out in the area because basically his grandfather had told him about a road out there that had good hunting on it or something, and so he was out looking for the road his grandfather had told him about the hunting area his grandfather had told him about. And He'll basically said, well, you don't even have a rifle or anything. How are you gonna hunt, you know, without a gun for it
or anything. And Cody just said, well, I'm just out here just to you know, just to kind of get a feel for the area and see if it's a good place to hunt at, you know, some other time or something. And He'll wasn't you know, He'll didn't buy it, you know, he said, you know, all these roads out here pretty much the same. You know, it just doesn't make sense that you would drive all the way out here just to check out this one particular road when
they're all basically similar. And he, you know, he didn't he didn't buy into the story, and he didn't buy into the story about how the deer was killed and how they clubbed it with a wrench, which, by the way, was also found in the truck. There was a wrench, the metal wrench that also had red stains on it as well, and the you know, the threading part of
the wrench there. So none of this was making any sense, and it was decided that somebody needed to go back to the road that Cody had come off of onto the highway and see what the heck was going on back there, particularly because one other thing they found in the truck was a backpack, a monkey backpack, a backpack you know, in the form of a monkey shape basically, and when they looked inside it there they found an ID of a girl's ID identification and it raised the
red flags even more so they decided they definitely needed to check out the road.
Yes, so the woman was Lauren Dawn Taves, and when they did run a check on her, she was a missing person. So now they really knew they had something, didn't they.
Yeah, it was certainly looking like there was a lot more going on here than just some poaching.
Now, they decided to go back to this road. So tell us about the decision to go back and what happens when they do that.
Well, you know, they kind of talked amongst themselves and they figured, well, he would probably be the best one to do it because he was most familiar with those back roads, and he had a four wheel drive truck, and you know, it'd be best for him to do it.
He was just.
Had the best equipment and whatnot for it, and and knowledge of the area. So so you know, about this is about eleven thirty by now. And he went back and turned down the old road and it was an old bogging road that wasn't really used much anymore. And followed the tire tracks basically in this know, back down the road there and eventually came to a point where the tracks ended, and he, uh, you know, he got out and saw some sort of tracks, other tracks in
the snow there. The snow had been disturbed. There was an area there and they kind of the tracks kind of led off into you know, the bush, the tree line a little bit there, and so he followed it along in the snow there and eventually made a gruesome discovery which turned out to be Laurence Lauren's body there in the snow where Cody had had left her. And you know, it turned out when when Keller happened upon him on the highway there, he was essentially fleeing the scene of the murder site.
Well, let's let's we've got to give him and I not that we give credibility or reads to his story, but of course all along the way he is lying, conniving, thinking he might be able to outsmart police at some point because he has as we'll find out. But tell us what the injuries were, the extent of the injuries. What exactly did they find in terms of her injuries? The young woman's injuries.
Well, Lauren was very savagely beaten bludgeoned her. It turned out her her face was so badly damaged that they had difficulty being able to identify her. And you know that turned out they had to to really identify her, that they had to find a tattoo elsewhere on her body because her face was just so you know, just
just just just pulverized. She was not a big girl, and Cody was a pretty big guy, and he had beat her pretty bad, you know, with the wrench that they'd found, the piperrinch that they'd found, and it had done a lot of damage.
So obviously they have this crime scene, and now this crime has turned into something completely different, obviously just through some dogged police work here and a psychopathic killer that was maybe oblivious to how close he could be to being arrested. Let's go back with Cody Alan Ledjabakoff and talk about his life. We alluded to it or spoke mentioned it in the introduction that he came from a well respected family. How well respected and why so respected
and how normal was his family? Really tell us about the family and his upbringing. As far as you nicle in the book, well.
As best as I was able to determine, he came from a very seemingly normal family. They were highly regarded in the community. He was, you know, raised in the Fort Saint James area, and his his family had been there for quite a while. They had a lumber mill there that they operated for years and years and eventually sold. But they were they were a well known family and they were, you know, they were thought of highly and Cody was very popular. He was he had a lot
of friends in school. He played a lot of sports, you know, he excelled in in ice hockey, played that for years and years and years, and really had friends both both of both sexes. You know, he had male friends and female friends as well, and it was just a really popular, well thought of guy. Everybody already seemed to like him.
Any contact with police or any psychiatric background whatsoever, not.
That I came across. But he didn't have any kind of police record or encounters with law enforcement, no sort of psychiatric counseling that that was a parent.
And from interviews from friends, I know he was young. So it's not to say that you couldn't be duped from a relationship that was fairly wasn't that wasn't that long. But what was all indications about his character? Was there any hint at violence or anything untowards whatsoever.
No, there really wasn't. And that's you know, one of the things that made it such a shock to his you know, not just his his family members, but his friends and the people in the community there in Fort Say James as well. It was just you know, there was nothing really to indicate that he had any sort of violent tendencies. You know, some some some one of his friends had mentioned that, you know, he had he'd had chances to be violent at times and never had.
So it was just a complete shock that wasn't any indication of this, you know, he had. And in fact, he had been living with three female roommates, three friends of his, and you know, had they'd been getting along fine, there had been any kind of inkling, There had been no inkling whatsoever for any of these folks that he'd come into contact with that he would be capable of brutally murdering a young young girl, you know, young fifteen year old girl, which you Lauren was.
Now to attest to this normalcy. He has a girlfriend named Amy Vole Boyle, and tell us where what he's doing. Is he in school, is he working? What does he do as an occupation or what is his ambition? And tell us a little bit about Amy Voyl She's very important in this story as well, So tell us a little bit about that relationship and basically what was he doing at that time, at that age, at nineteen.
Well, yeah, he was working in Prince George at a Ford dealership. He was in working in the parts department there. His a family friend was the owner or the manager of the Ford Dealership, and so he had you know, gotten into contact with him and ended up planning a
job there. And so he was he was working there at the Ford Dealership, and that's where he met Amy who you mentioned, and she, you know, she hit it off with them and they started dating very seriously, and essentially where you know, one was spending the night at the others pretty much every night pretty soon after they started going out and and at the time was the rest he'd he'd been going out with her for several months very seriously, and they you know, they had you know,
been been far enough along in the relationship and serious enough about her that they were talking about each other's sharing the future together and future plans, and they were going to move in together, and uh, you know, he was going to work his way up at the Ford Dealership and she was going to school. She was going into to local college there and wanted to eventually be a teacher, and they were they were planning a life
together at the time. They were playing a future together and you know, of course, she had no idea of this other side to him, just like all the other folks. So it was there was a big shock to her as well when he was arrested and the information came out about his prior victims.
Was there any you know, I mean, you're nineteen and a lot of stuffs forgivable and probably and very very understandable. I can relate as well in terms of alcohol and drug use and occasional drug use and very serious drug use. There's there's a big difference. Then there's variations. So what was really the truth and what may he might have been had a different side? Did he showed amy even well, but for the people that really were candid, what was the extent of his drug use?
Well, he somewhere along the way he got involved with cocaine, and you know, he was a he was a pretty big drinker, but he did he did end up getting involved with cocaine. You know, he had experimented a little bit with some things in high school and stuff as well, but eventually started doing cocaine. And was I was using
uh prostitutes essentially to procure the cocaine. Forum He's using them to you know, buy the buy the drugs forum and you know Amy obviously Amy did not know of this habit that he had.
At the time.
Now, let's talk about the arrest and and before we talk about Amy well, and then that confrontation at the police station, which is just profound, or that confrontation anyway where we get to see Amy and the police play well, it's a very well I'll let you explain, and the theatrical and dramatic thing that you capture in a book with the girlfriend and and and led Javakov and the police officer. So first let's talk about what happens when
he's initially arrested and the initial interview. How much does he say, does the lawyer up? What happens?
Well, when he was first placed under arrest out there on the highway, he you know, he denied have anything to do with the murderer of Lauren, and you know he was he was giving read his rights and including the right to an attorney, and sid who actually did the uress, you know, kept asking him, well you have a lawyer. Do you have a lawyer? Do you have a lawyer? And he kept saying no, I just want to talk to my dad, which it really kind of
reinforced to me how young he was. You know, he's periods in the situation, and he just wants his dad, and you know, so he gets mean, he's wanted to speak to his dad. And eventually he was brought to you know, the local uh r CMP post there and put in an interview room and wasn't wasn't doing much talking at the beginning. He was he was pretty quiet.
They had a couple a couple of guys from the r CMP interview team started talking with him and they, you know, they essentially did sort of a you know, the kind of a good cop, bad cop sort of routine and got him to open up. Eventually, he got him to start talking a little bit, and so, you know, his story changed as they as they spoke to him. It went from he didn't have anything to do with their with her being murdered. He just kind of stumbled
on her there, found her there too, you know. Eventually, well we were right along and she just suddenly went crazy in the truck and started screaming and hitting herself and then grabbed the pipe wrench from the floor of the truck and started hitting herself in the face with it, and as a result of her injuries and everything, he just ended up, you know, putting her out of her
misery using the leatherman tool. He had the knife part of that to finish her off, so to speak, because you know, I guess the explanation being that it was just such a bizarre thing to happen. He you know, he didn't really know what to do and just kind of just reacted that way and so ended up finishing
her off that way. But she had been the one that had caused all her massive injuries to begin with, So his story changed the more he talked with him, He started kind of admitting a little bit more and a little bit more, and you know, they eventually had enough there to start seriously taking a look at him for some other unsolved murders in the area there, and they eventually were able to tie him to to to three other murders three other women in the area Prince
George area there, primarily through DNA evidence. He apparently didn't do a very good job of clean up after some of these murders, and there was DNA evidence left all over the apartments that he was living in, on on his clothing and also on some of the weapons the instruments he had used to kill these there were still you know, bud residue DNA evidence on there as well, if they were able to tie him to the three other murders.
Let's go back, because I wanted to get you to recount what you do with his girlfriend, Amy Boyle, like I said, and Cody Ledjabokov in terms of reputing or refuting what he had said and using that you know, it was very much like a fictional law and order episode where they were psychologically using the one to manipulate the situation, to be to have an advantage over the other, and to elicit as much information as they could from
the situation. So tell us, as again masterfully as you do in the book, tell us about the situation and what the police did get as a result of this altercation that they set up.
Well, after after several hours of interviewing him, using the two policemen to interview him, they did eventually bring Amy in there to the station, and she was going to help them, you know, talk to him and try to get him to to open up more and be more honest about what had happened.
And so.
She they they brought her in eventually and there was a you know, a tender embrace between her and Cody, and you know, there was a lot of a lot of emotion going on there for both of them, and she, you know, basically just asked them, well, you know, tell me what happened. And you know, he kept denying that he had killed the killed Bourn and said he you know, he would he would never do such a thing. And you know, you know, you know what kind of person
I am. I'm not capable of killing somebody, and you know I would never do something like that, and the U So he had that emotional poll going on there with Amy, and then you know that they would have a policeman in there as well at the time the same time, and you know, he would be prodding Cody as well, you know, saying things like, well, you know, Amy came here to find out, you know, what the truth is and what happened, and you know, you need
to tell her. She deserves to know the truth. And so they were working on him that way as well, playing on his emotions there, and eventually he you know, he ended up admitting that he had how he had
met Lauren, that he hadn't just stumbled on her. That he had met her on a social site online Canadian site called nxopia, and that he had met Lauren on there, and you know, they had kind of exchanged messages back and forth, and eventually he set up a time to meet and he had picked her up and they had had sex in his truck and had decided to drive out to the abandoned logging road where she was killed.
He'd said they decided they wanted to go four wheeling or something along those lines, and so that's why they were out there. And but then he did he did have the story about, well, she kind of went crazy out there and started hurting herself and all that. And you know, with this continued back and forth with with Amy, you know, pleading with him to tell the truth, and you know, because if he loves her, he needs to tell her the truth, and the sort of the sort
of pleaing. He eventually started divulging a little bit more, and you know when a policemen kind of challenged him and said, you know, the story you're telling here is just a bunch of bologney. You know, this is ridiculous. You know, we've had someone look at Moren's injuries and there's no way she could have done those to herself. It's just physically impossible for her to have, you know, hurt herself and inflicted these injuries to her, you know,
by herself. And so he, you know, he had all that coming at him, and eventually it warmed down, and you know, he said, Okay, well maybe I maybe I hit her with a wrench, you know, and they said, well, you know how many times? And you said, you know, I mean not more than not more than a couple of times. I didn't hear her more than a couple
of times with it. But they did eventually get him to admit that that he had he actually struck her with the with the wrench, and you know, he he still tried to say, well, I didn't kill her though, you know, she was already going to be dying. You know, I just didn't know what to do when I saw
the injury she had done herself. You know, she'd stabbed herself with a leatherman tool, and so I just kind of I just kind of freaked out basically and hit her in the head, just you know, just because I didn't know what to do basically.
So, yeah, we will talk. We have a pausitive just for a second to talk about direct TV. But we'll talk when we we about the signature, the state of the body that has the similarities for the police to further investigation. Once they know what they have in their hands, they're going to question him further in those other areas. So we'll be just going to pause for a second to talk about direct TV. Direct TV right now they have an incredible offer nineteen ninety nine a month for
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three eight one two OKJT. When we last spoke, we last left off, we were talking about that signature that police first would have noticed and would have compared to other similar crimes, unsolved murders that shared that signature and those and the in this and he would have been a candidate for So tell us about what how that investigation moves forward in that direction.
Well, when they found when they found the Wren's body, you know, out there in the in the snow and in the remote area there, she had been left in a really you know, kind of a sexually degrading way. Her pants had were pulled down around her ankles, and she'd also been as I said, she'd been savagely beaten. And that that condition of the body and the way it was left was similar to some of these other
missing women in the area. So that's really what got them looking seriously at there be perhaps being a connection between Orn's murder and the murder of these other women.
Now we have the other victims are Jill Stachenko, Natasha Montgomery, Cythia Moz and again we mentioned Lauren Leslie. So let's talk about which was the next victim that they discovered evidence of and how they proceeded with that investigation.
Well, yeah, the other three, Jill, Cynthia, and Natasha, they were a little bit different from from Lauren in that they had some common characteristics. They were they were all three known to be drug users, and they were also known to be prostitutes as well, So they had this this commonality amongst them that that Lauren didn't didn't share with them. She was a little bit a little bit different, a little bit different situation there. But so the these three had god missing in the the year or so
prior to Cody's arrest. I think Jill Sachenko was the first one that went missing. She disappeared in October the year before two thousand and nine, and then her body was found several days later around George. There and Cynthia was last seen about a year later in twenty ten, a few months before Cody was arrested, and then her body was found in Prince George about a month later. And Natasha was also last seen around the same time. Period, and I think it's around September twenty ten, but her
body was not found. It's still still has not been found to this day as far as I know. But they were able to tie her murder to Cody as as I mentioned before, through DNA from samples taken in his apartment.
It was interesting to you talk about the DNA and the two was a Natasha to Montgomery. The hair of DNA was everywhere I was in the living room, the bathroom, the bed, the comforter, the jack hooded jacket, the dining room, and the floors, plus all kinds of points in the closet as well. So they did find incredible amount of, as you had mentioned, DNA evidence at all the locations where he was. He wasn't a very tidy guy in this regard, was he.
Yeah. It's really remarkable in a sense that the the the lack of effort almost I guess would be the way to say that he took in trying to conceal these murders. I mean, he didn't. I don't know if it's he he wasn't quite sure how to go about it, or he didn't really care or what it was. Maybe it's you can chalk it up to partly to his youth, you know, because it is pretty unusual to have a serial killer operating at the young age that he was at.
I mean, he was nineteen when he started. So whatever the reason, though, Yeah, it was very strange to me that he had left so much evidence there to be found. And you know, thank goodness, because otherwise they might not have been able to the time to these other ones at least give some closure to the families of these these other women. But it was certainly a something that struck me is the fact that, as you said, there was just so much of this just all over the place.
You also talk about that the weapons he used to use, a variety of weapons, and I got to stress again because I don't think we have stressed this, that there is overkill and there's anger, but we never see where this anger really comes from. There is no evidence of his philosophy being like some serial killers, you know, in their mentality in terms of the classification that they want to rid the world of, you know, the undesirable prostitute. So we don't really see any of that, any real
strong evidence of that. And again he's only nineteen years old. But with Cynthia Moss, she had a pic arron. There was an axe used either before and after for disposal or for a weapon itself. And knives and so a variety of weapons. And like I say, if you could agree that this is even unusual for these guys that are trying to meet out some kind of punishment on someone.
Yeah, it really is striking the extent to which he, you know, you damaged these women that just as you said, there was some almost as if there was some just rage coming from within. I mean, just the brutal attacks
on them. You know, you mentioned you mentioned Cynthia's murder, and you know he had used this pickroon and you know she had she had stab wounds all over, she had you know, blunt trauma, She had fractured ribs, she had broken neck bones, cheekbones, broken fingers, you know, defensive damage trying to protect herself, and you know some of her some of the vertebrae in her neck were so were broken so bad that it was almost as if
someone had stomped on her neck. You know, when they examined it, it was just so so horrifically inflicted, so extensive, and and yeah, there wasn't.
Really.
It's it's really hard to explain where this came from. You know, it's talking hearing what all his friends had to say, and his family members, you know, including his grandfather, who apparently spent a lot of time with especially you know, in the summers they hunted out together and fish together
and on all that kind of good stuff. And you know, he's always been described as very easygoing, calm, you know, essentially a harmless kid, and there's just nothing there to really clue anybody into this other side of him, this this inner, darker, violent, brutal side that he had, and
you know, the one. He did make one comment during the course of the trial where he was talking about Amy and said that, you know, they to be that she was, you know, a good girl, and the kind of the implication there being that that his victims were not good girls, they were something less than that. So, you know, perhaps he just regarded these these other women as something less than you know, human or or whatnot. You know, it's hard to explain, but it definitely seemed
like he viewed them differently. They weren't he didn't value their life like he you know, valued Amy.
Yeah, I think that's the only that's the only real evidence that there might have been something amiss. But at the same time, like when you look at uh, you know, Otis Tool, or you look at even Colonel Williams, or you look at Robert Picton, you might see that rejection and even the prisitude ripping them off in some kind of drug deal or using them, or them at least realizing them that they are a misfit. This guy isn't old enough, doesn't have any of those type of experiences.
He isn't a loner, loser, unsuccessful, isolated guy. It seems very very odd that he just does not fit in that profile at all in terms of why he would go to those lengths in a short period of time, at at such a young age, without any indication of anything, you know, I just it seems the would be the cruise of other older like I say, Robert Picton type serial killers in terms of motivation. Anyway, let's talk about the you know, the grandfather. The family of Lejabakoff was incredulous.
They couldn't believe that their grandson, that their family member, would do something like this, and they hired a really good lawyer. But despite that he was charged, I was surprised with first degree murder and four counts of first
degree murder. So tell us a little bit about how that how they interpreted this first degree murder, because we have a difference in Canada and the US in terms of that sort of definition of determination premeditation, I should say, so, tell us a little bit about how they were successful in being able to charge him at least with first degree murder. On what grounds did they figure that they could were able to successfully be able to do that?
Well, I think the key was that the murders were committed in the course of or in connection with sexual assault is one of the keys that really allowed them to do that. And you know, during the course of the trial, he really tried to distance himself from that aspect of it, and actually, you know he did. He tried to plead to a second degree murder and that was not accepted. And you know, we did go to trial, he said on the on the first degree murder counts on all four of them.
And they did have a possibility of manslaughter, but that would he would have to prove that his he was intoxicated to the point that he there was he had no intention of killing, and of course he.
Had the the cocaine use as part of the case, and as part of the defense, they did raise that his cocaine use as well. And but uh, you know, obviously the.
It uh.
It wasn't there wasn't enough there too.
To allow him to.
Get the the manslaughter charge were conviction.
Now did he speak at trial, and if he did, what was his demeanor and what did he say?
Yeah, he took the He took the stand at trial, and he had a very interesting explanation as to where he had why he had been around when these murders had taken place. He came up with a story about some unnamed individuals, three individuals he would not specifically identify. He called them X Y and Z, and he his story was that X Y and Z were the ones that had actually killed these three women, not not him.
He had just been there for each of the murders, and as it turned out, the murder is always also coincidentally also happened at his apartment each time. And basically what he said was that he has gotten to know X Y and Z because they were drug dealers, cocaine suppliers, and he had come into contact with them that way, and they had said, hey, can we come over to your place later on, and he had said, okay, yeah, sure,
that's fine. And so they showed up at his place later on that night and had a bunch of people with him, and you know, on each of these occasions they had one of the one of the victims there.
They had you know, Cynthia and Tasha and Jill with them, and you know, during the course of partying they're all together, you know, one of them x or whoever would basically say, hey, you know, Cynthia has to has to be killed, or words to that effect, and then one of one of those other guys would end up killing her, and he just kind of was there, and you know, sometimes he
would help him. You know, they would ask for, you know, an axe or something, and so he would give him whatever he had that was close to what they wanted, and that would be about the extent of his involvement in the actual murders. And then afterwards he would help them, you know, either clean up or dispose of the body. And he you know, he claimed that he when asked why he was helping him do that. You know, he's basically said that I was afraid if I didn't that,
you know, I might be killed. They might kill me. So he said, you know, he felt like he didn't really have much choice in the matter, that he had to kind of go along with it.
What was he like in the cross examination because he could try out his story but then under cross examination and again for the listener, if they don't know, this is really like a latch dis ditch effort. No, no, real a lawyer would not advise it. A criminal might want to do it, and they would have the right to do it. But it is sort of you have nothing to lose because you have no defense, really, isn't it.
Yeah, yeah, I mean I think part of this X Y and Z story was to again try to distance himself from this sexual assault aspect of it, and he was he was he was concerned about what would happen to him in in a federal prison, you know, as a as a sexual offender. You know, the these type of folks don't get they're not looked upon very well by the by the other inmates there, and so he
didn't want to have that label on him going in there. So, you know, he had time to think about a story, and he came up with one X, Y and Z story and.
You know it.
It wasn't it wasn't very believable to put him mildly, but it certainly was an interesting attempt to try to get out of it a little bit there. And you know, he talked to trial, to you a little bit about his background and upbringing and stuff, and you know, he himself said that he had a very normal childhood growing up, and he had normal parents and got along with his parents fine, and you know, the whole family got got
along well. And his mom, you know, made him breakfast every morning, had it ready on the table, and you know, it really just kind of made it sound like he had a you know, kind of a happy childhood and happy family life. So, you know, just kind of getting back to what we were talking about earlier there about you know, any indications of how he could do what he did and everything, and it's just it's just really it's a really hard one to blame.
Now. The thing is we've got to explain too, is that at the time of this trial, there was no law or consecutive sentencing for multiple murder. So even though it'd be convicted of these murders, it would be concurrent sentencing, meaning one life sentence maximum twenty five years or at least, pardon me, at least twenty five years. In this case, he was eligible for parole after fifteen years. So just to explain that that this serial killer could be potentially
be walking around again. As you put in your book, what.
Age, Well, yeah, as he said, so he was twenty four when he was convicted on these four first three murder accounts, with the twenty five year sentences for each one of them, but as you said, running concurrently at
the same time. So yeah, So under the Canadian law, this is what's known as the Saint Hope clause, he could apply for parole in twenty twenty nine after fifteen years in prison, and which would mean, you know, if he was able to get out, then you know, he would be before he turns forty, he'd be able to get out on parole. He'd be he could be out again thirty nine years old, which is just you know, mind boddeling when you think about it, the brutality of
these murders that he committed. He could be technically he could conceivably be out walking around again, you know, a free man when he's thirty nine, still still relatively young man. And you know this after the presiding judge had, after weighing all the evidence and hearing everything that he did and seeing how he conducted himself on the stand, showing no remorse, you know, showing no empathy for his victims, really just being kind of cold blooded up there really,
and his mannerisms and responses and everything. So the judge, after seen all this in his in his findings, you know, made a finding including that. You know, he said that he doesn't think Cody should ever be allowed to walk among us again. And yet here he is under the law of petitionally being.
Able to do that. I got to say too for the for our audience as well. As of twenty and twelve, the Conservative government enacted consecutive sentencing for multiple murder rape or child rape, I guess. And so now the maximum that someone could get and this Cody would have been eligible for seventy five years before eligibility of parole, which which would have made him a much older man.
Yeah, he he just kind of got in just just before then. You know, his his the murders he did were in two thousand and intends though he was able to avoid that that new enactment or that repeal of the old law.
Did you make any advances towards being able to interview him, and what was his response? Tell us about any of that correspondence or potential correspondence.
You know, I never really tried to get in touch with him. I got a lot of my information through the trial proceedings, through the police records and speaking to one of the one of the victims father. I got a lot of my information that way. And I never actually tried to contact Cody himself, largely because he filed an appeal earlier this year. And I just you know that with a with an active appeal, there's just not much chance of someone talking about their their case when
they have an appeal pending. So sure that really wasn't It wasn't something I pursued.
The victims families were very active at trial and in this case, and and also you spoke to them as well, So tell us a little bit about some of the families and their response and their interaction at this trial.
Well, the families had a hard time during the trial, you know, they they felt like the the whole the way, the whole system is set up. They just felt like it offers a lot of protections for the criminal or the accused, and not a lot of protection for the for the victims. So they had a they had a
hard time. They struggled. You know, a lot of them sat through the trial every single day, including Baron Leslie's father, Doug Leslie, who I talked to you quite a bit, and it really wore on them and they had a difficult time with it, and they were obviously, you know, relieved probably the best word I guess to say that
that he was convicted ultimately. And you know, it was important to them that their loved ones not just be thought of as prostitutes or you know, drug users, that instead they should be thought of as mothers and daughters and sisters and you know, people that who were loved and who were missed when they were gone, and people who had, you know, their own special talents and you know, offered their own individuals, old personalities to the world, and
you know, people that should be thought of as as real people, not just these these kind of these nameless, faithless sort of victims. So that was that was important to them as well. So you know, they they spoke after the trial and had the opportunity to address the media and really bring out and emphasize a lot of these aspects of their family members.
Yeah, it's a it's a real occurring theme that we just have to we have to humanize a victim. Well, we certainly are gung hole humanizing a killer. We do it in fiction, we do it in non fiction. We we we we romanticize basically their lives to a certain degree as well, you know, and and yet the victim is still called the hooker, reduced to you know, sex acts. And I don't know how professional some of these people are if they just have a drug problem anyway. So
I mean, I can't I have said it before. I just have an issue with the media always playing up on that that's somehow they had it almost coming to them. And it's almost a cautionary tale that you know, well, if you go there and you do this, and you do this and you lose like this in life, this will be your fate. And yet at the same time, as we know, lots of times they're looking for reasons why an upstanding person from a good background might want
to do something, looking for rationalization or excuses. Luckily, in this story. I didn't seem to be anyway any sympathy for this, Cody Ledjebakov, was there, No, I mean I.
Really, As you said, it's important to make sure that the victims are are personalized, that you know, they have some sort of voice in the story, and you know, I attempted to do that and to do that in every time I write, I try to do that, and.
You know it.
The ability to do that really depends largely on the amount of participation often that you know, you get from from family members. And you know, the more the more the family members are willing to talk to you and participate, the better as a writer you're able to to do that, to to bring the victims alive on the pages and let the readers see, you know, who they were as as people as individuals.
Yeah. Yeah, it's an incredibly sad story too, with this these young women, their lives ended in such a horrible way and then having the victims family have to relive the details in court, and right from the very beginning this this guy plays like a real psychopath, at least from my experience into how he was so cool and calm and yawning as you describe in the interview, he was initially yawning with the police, even though his life could be you know, at this super cross road, he
was still yawning. And he's a very good actor, wasn't he.
Yeah, he, as you said, he certainly seems to have this psychopathic personality, and you know that being the it's just lack of utter lack of remorse, this lack of empathy, and just this this coldness and this you know, almost robotic sort of reaction or lack of reaction, I guess you said, say, and in mannerisms and.
Just not really.
Faising, you know. And in fact, his defense counsel made multiple attempts during the course of the trial to try to humanize him, to try to humanize Cody and try to show that, you know, he's not this like cruel monster, and he became very the defense counsel became very exasperated in trying to do this because every time he tried it,
it didn't work. You know, Cody either didn't understand what was trying to be done or just didn't care because he kept coming across the same way, and it certainly didn't help his his case to be seen that way. But he didn't seem to care or or he couldn't he couldn't change, couldn't change his mannerisms.
How big a story was this in the media, Well, it was.
It was covered nationally. I mean, it got a lot of attention, you know, not just in Canada, but outside of Canada as well. And you know because you know, partly I think because of Cody's age, how young he was, and partly because of the area that this happened. It's in an area that has had a large number of murders or a large number of missing women. Women have gone missing in that area in recent years. So it did get a lot of media coverage and attention.
Well, I want to thank you for coming on and talking about the country boy killer JT. For those people that might want to contact you and look at the other work that you have, like the true story of the vampire rapist, tell us tell our audience how they might be able to contact you, or if you have a Facebook page or how you promote yourself. So I'll give us that information if you could, please.
Yeah, I do have I have a Facebook page. I mean, you know, it's just a type in JT Hunter and I'll come up on there. I have a page for my prior novel on there, The Vampire next Door, a few story The Vampire Rapist has a Facebook page as well if you were to type that in on Facebook. And I have an author page on Amazon, and the publisher of these books, R J. Parker r J. Parker Publishing has a web page and links to me on there as well, and I can also be reached by email.
I always I'm always happy to hear from folks, you know, whether they have questions about something I've written about, or whether they have their own story to share, or a suggestion about something that might be something I could be interested in and finding more about or writing about. And I'm always interested in ideas and things like that as well, so they can always reach me my email as well. In my email address is just JT. Hunter eight one four at gmail dot com.
Great again, I want to thank you very much JAT for coming on and talking about the Country Board Killer. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much and you have a great evening, all right.
Dan, Well, thanks again, and hopefully I will be talking to you again soon about another work as well.
Absolutely look forward to it. Ok. Thanks Dan Tak here YouTube, good night, good night,