Officer posed as crime boss to gleen Bolsa shooting info from gang member, court hears

A key witness in a triple homicide on New Year’s Day 2009 told an undercover police officer that he was one of three masked shooters at a southeast restaurant who fired at and killed the victims.

The witness, who must be identified as John Doe because of a court order, talked in the surreptitiously recorded June 2, 2009, interview of a plan by the FOB gang members to abduct one of the victims to set up and kill a high-ranking member of the rival FK gang.

“We had the kid, we had the kid the whole time,” John Doe told Calgary police Sgt. Darren Berglind, who was posing as the boss of a powerful criminal organization.

Berglind was conducting what’s called a “Mr. Big” sting where the police officer says he is a crime boss. In this case, John Doe was made to think he was being considered for recruitment to the organization.

The final scenario at the hotel came after about 30 previous meetings between John Doe and lower-ranked members of the fictitious criminal group, Berglind told Crown prosecutor Shane Parker.

John Doe, who refused to testify in front of the jury earlier this week, said he also had targeted Mann, because Mann’s cohorts had come to his parents’ house and threatened them to tell them where they could find him.

He said he and another man picked up Bendle on New Year’s Eve and held him all night, forcing him at gunpoint to send messages to Mann to set up their meeting.

They went into the restaurant the next afternoon, he said, and gunned down the “target” and Bendle. John Doe said he did not want or expect to be paid for his measure of revenge.

“My buddies picked me up. Me and my buddy goes in. Boom-boom-boom-boom. We walked in the door, put our masks . . . put our gloves . . . put a hood. Saw our target. Basically, the target saw us right away. They knew exactly what’s coming to them. . . . They hid. Moved the chairs. Moved the . . . table. See him . . . asking for his life. Boom-boom-boom. Kid that set him up, boom-boom-boom. Their buddy that’s supposed to be the bystander, got out of the table, ran behind us. He ran out the door. Boom-boom-boom.”

John Doe told the undercover officer the guns used in the slaying were then wiped clean and disposed of somewhere between Airdrie and Edmonton.

He said he and Nate, whom he said was one of the other shooters, drove past Airdrie the next night, dug a hole in the ditch and threw in the guns. He told Berglind he’d never be able to find them as they didn’t particularly note where they had stopped along Highway 2.

He said he and the other two shooters had gone to a northeast home after the shootings, then burned their clothes in a firepit in a nearby park, and went shopping for new clothing.

Sanjeev Mann, 22, and Aaron Bendle, 21, and bystander Keni Su’a, 43, were killed in the shooting incident at Bolsa Restaurant in Macleod Mall at Macleod Trail and 94th Avenue S.E. at about 3:45 p.m.

Nathan Zuccherato, 25, and Michael Roberto, 27, both alleged to be members of the FOB gang, are on trial for three counts of first-degree murder for the bloody incident.

John Doe only identified the other alleged shooters as Nate and Eric, adding he didn’t know either that well.

He said one other man came into the restaurant with him and saw a guy sitting on the right-hand side of the Vietnamese eatery with three others.

John Doe said a third shooter remained outside in case somebody escaped.

“We just unloaded the clip on them,” he told an undercover Berglind, who had told the man he could help him move on in the wake of the heat he was in from police regarding the shooting and possibly get a new identity.

He also told the officer he had no qualms about killing the other shooters if he had to, in case they “ratted me out just to clear themselves.”

John Doe said the target of the shootings, identified as likely being Mann, appeared from the look on his face in the restaurant to know what was about to happen.

“Just the, the, the face of death,” said John Doe. “He didn’t know what to do. Just, just that look in his eyes. You could tell from his eyes, you know the eyes say it all.

“He didn’t say nothing. Didn’t scream. He just knew it. Just froze. The kid was like, screaming. Trying to hustle his way out of there.”

John Doe said multiple shots struck a bulletproof vest that Mann was wearing: “You can’t stop a forty-five (calibre gun) from a vest. Blow through the whole thing.”

Berglind told Parker earlier that he started the interview with John Doe with several pieces of “holdback information” that only a small circle of police officers from the scene and the offenders would know, in order to test his truthfulness.

The holdback information included the fact that three people were murdered, including an innocent person, that there were nine-millimetre and .45-calibre shell casings found in the restaurant, where Mann and Bendle were slain, and .357-calibre shells found outside where Su’a was killed.

Berglind also said it had never been revealed to the public that Mann had tried to run away when he saw the shooters and was wearing a bulletproof vest.

He also said Bendle was shot in the head.

Court heard earlier that Bendle was kidnapped on New Year’s Eve to set up Mann, because the FOB believed Mann had killed FOB member Roger Chin in July 2008.

Bendle was also killed because he had seen too many faces the night before.

M.M., who cannot be identified and has been given immunity from prosecution in the case for his evidence, testified last week that he was involved in kidnapping Bendle the night before the slayings in order to set up Mann to be killed and was present at the bloody scene outside the southeast Vietnamese eatery.

M.M. told court that he and the two co-accused drove to a home in the northeast community of Rundle, where he threw the suspects’ clothes and cellphones into a firepit in the backyard and burned them.

Several points in John Doe’s story, including the location where the clothes were burned and where they purchased new clothes, differed from that of M.M.

The playing of the recorded interview will continue on Tuesday when the trial before Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Earl Wilson and a jury of seven men and five women resumes.

dslade@calgaryherald.com