Robert Bonisteel convicted of decades-old murder

They didn't say what he was sentenced to. Anyhow I don't think whatever sentence he was given is really justice.

I think sentencing is still to come. Will keep an eye on this one. 30 years is a long time for justice. Watched the local news on TV last night about the case. Apparently, this guy was the suspect all along, but I guess they couldn't make their case until recently.

Here's earlier news on this case....

Jurors in 30-year-old 'cold case' murders in B.C. hearing final arguments

at 17:15 on June 29, 2005, EST.
By GREG JOYCE

VANCOUVER (CP) - Jurors who listened to DNA evidence at the first-degree murder trial of Robert Bonisteel "don't have to have a PhD from Princeton" to realize that it was improperly handled, the accused's lawyer said Wednesday.

As his client listened intently from the prisoner's box, defence lawyer Jim Millar faced the jury and told them that the Crown's case against Bonisteel hinges on DNA evidence and a videotaped confession the accused made to undercover police officers in 2002.

Bonisteel, 57, is charged with the first-degree murders in 1975 of Judy Mariea Dick and her friend Elizabeth Inge Zeschner, both 14.

The jury heard evidence during the nine-week trial that Bonisteel was a suspect from the beginning but it was not until advances in DNA technology over the next 20 years that the Crown was able to allege that a trace of Dick's blood was found on one of Bonisteel's shoes.

The DNA link subsequently prompted the RCMP to set up an elaborate undercover operation with Bonisteel as the target.

But in his final submission, Millar painted a picture for the jury of sloppy handling of the blood evidence over the years by police and forensic experts that could easily have led to contamination.

Millar took the jury through the Crown's forensic experts and said they had use techniques in handling and examining the accused's shoes and the victims' clothes that would be unacceptable by today's standards.

"It's a recipe for wrongful conviction" said Millar, reminding the jury that only a miniscule amount of blood from Dick was found on one of Bonisteel's shoes, but none of Zeschner's.

Millar reminded the jury that evidence at the trial showed that for years the shoes and Dick's clothes were kept stored together in a box.

He also reminded the jury that some Crown witnesses had conceded that contamination was possible.

"You don't have to have a PhD from Princeton to realize that the handling of this material was a huge problem," Millar told the jury of eight men and four women.

The other cornerstone of the Crown's case against Bonisteel is a videotaped confession he made to undercover police officers, who had befriended him over several months and gave indications that they were part of a criminal gang and wanted him to join.

But before he could join, they said he had to tell them about the 1975 murders so that the problem wouldn't come back to haunt him and the gang later. He was told that an arrangement would be made for a dying inmate to take the fall for the murders.

On the videotape, Bonisteel confesses to murdering the girls and describes the killings, saying he did it because it was the "nastiest" thing he could think of doing at the time.

In a hotel room in Whistler, B.C., Bonisteel told the cop he picked up two girls who wanted to go to the Vancouver airport. He said he kept them in his car for five hours, digging a knife in one's chest and then slitting the other along her rib cage.

Bonisteel testified for several days and told the court he felt threatened by the boss of the gang and only told them what he believed they wanted to hear.

Millar argued that statements made by the accused in this way are "inherently unreliable" because Bonisteel felt he "had a gun to his head, metaphorically speaking."

Millar reminded the jury that the Crown must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Bonisteel committed the murders, not that the accused must prove his innocence.

"The accused in these circumstances can only do what Bob Bonisteel did - get in the witness box and tell you he didn't do it."

Source[/color]

The latest news....

B.C. man convicted of first-degree murder in double killing 30 years ago

at 18:03 on July 9, 2005, EST.
CAMILLE BAINS

VANCOUVER (CP) - Families who carried the stomach-churning details of how their sisters were murdered 30 years ago say they can finally let go of their pain after the killer was found guilty of the grisly slayings. As the jury's verdict was announced Saturday, Robert Bonisteel sat in the prisoner's box with his head in his hands. As sheriffs escorted him out of the courtroom, he turned to his lawyer and raised his arms in exasperation.

The verdict means an automatic sentence of life in prison with no parole eligibility for 25 years.

A B.C. Supreme Court jury deliberated for three days before reaching a verdict in the trial of Bonisteel, charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Judy Mariea Dick and Elizabeth Zeschner.

Outside court, Dick's sister Faith Peters was overcome with emotion.

"All the hurt in our hearts and everything has just been brought to a head again after 30 years but it came up positive for us," Peters said.

"The last few months I've been looking through tunnel vision but now I'm looking at the world through whole new eyes.

"Now somebody is going to pay and I'm just so thankful for everyone who put their efforts, all their hard work, the one that did the smallest thing, I'm thankful to every one of them."

The most difficult part of attending the nine-week trial was looking at Bonisteel in the courtroom, Peters said.

"Every time I looked at him I wondered how come he's still sitting there, how come he's breathing, how come he's still alive?" Peters said crying.

"He didn't have a right. He played God."

Bonisteel, now 57, confessed to committing the thrill killings to undercover RCMP officers in an elaborate sting where they pretended to be gangsters.

Later he claimed he made up the story based on details he got when police initially interviewed him about the murders.

Peters said she would tell her dead sister that "she can rest in peace now. Because I know she hasn't been."

Peters was also thinking of her mother, Ethel Dick, who went to her grave in 1980 without knowing who was responsible for her young daughter's death.

"I feel if this didn't happen she would still be here with us today," Peters said.

John Zeschner, Elizabeth Zeschner's brother, said he felt "total relief" at hearing the verdict against a man who has robbed so much from his family.

"The officers and everyone involved, we can't thank them enough," Zeschner said.

His sister Lori Zeschner said in a statement read by Crown prosecutor Hank Reiner that learning of the terror the girls suffered was like having them murdered all over again.

During the nine-week trial, jurors watched a videotaped confession in which Bonisteel provided intricate details about how he picked up the girls in his car and killed them on Feb. 6, 1975, at a suburban Richmond dump.

Bonisteel confessed that he knew right away he wanted to kill the teens just to know what that would feel like.

He also said he was trying to deal with the pain of his failing marriage, although his former wife testified the couple weren't having any problems.

Bonisteel said he drove the teens to a dump and had them in the back seat, where they thought he would rape them.

He said he kissed Dick, "the pretty one," and stabbed her in the side, leaving the hunting knife in for five minutes. When he took it out, blood gushed out like a fountain, Bonisteel confessed.

He said Zeschner, "the adventurer," was scared and that he ordered her into the front seat and told her she'd be OK if she just did what he told her.

But he stabbed her too, up the left side and across the ribcage and then the throat, killing her instantly, he said.

Bonisteel said he then dragged the girls out of his car by their feet and left them in the tall, dead grass, where they would be well hidden.

Reiner said in his closing argument that Bonisteel simply knew too many details that only the killer would know, including the types of clothes the teens were wearing.

The jury heard Bonisteel fled Vancouver the day after the girls' bodies were found, leaving behind his wife and five-week-old son.

On his way to Winnipeg, Bonisteel raped two women and spent 20 years in jail for the assaults.

Once he was released, undercover police posing as gangsters staged an elaborate sting to lure him with a promise of $80,000 in cash and elicited a confession.

Besides the confession, which Bonisteel maintained was coerced, the Crown provided DNA evidence from blood on Bonisteel's left shoe that linked him to the crime.

A forensic expert for the Crown testified the probability that it belonged to someone other than Dick was one in 14 billion.

DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, is the genetic blueprint in all human cells.

Dick and Zeschner had gone to the store the day they disappeared.

Source[/color]

May he Rot In hell, he really should be put to death yet we don't do that here.. How infuriating for the girls families..