Cody Legebokoff : BC man convicted of four counts of murder

Cody Legebokoff has been found guilty of killing four women and a teenaged girl.

After two days of deliberation, the jury found Legebokoff guilty of four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Jill Stuchenko, 35, Cynthia Maas, 35, Natasha Montgomery, 23, and 15-year-old Loren Leslie.

He faces life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

During his trial in Prince George, B.C., which began in June and heard testimony from more than 90 witnesses, Legebokoff copped to the murders of Jill Stacey Stuchenko, 35, and Cynthia Frances Maas, 35, but denied killing the other two — legally blind Loren Donn Leslie, 15, and Natasha Montgomery, 23.

He told court he was present for Montgomery’s murder, but refused to name her killer for fear of being branded “a rat” in prison,” The Prince George Citizen reported.

Legebokoff claimed he had sex with legally blind Loren Donn Leslie, 15 — his fourth and final victim — whom he claimed he met online, and that she killed herself afterwards by hitting herself in the face and neck with a knife and a pipe wrench.

Leslie had told her family she was meeting up with a friend for a coffee Nov. 27, 2010.

That day an RCMP officer pulled over Legebokoff on a Prince George highway after exiting a logging road near Vanderhoof, B.C.

Legebokoff told the officer that the blood on his face and clothes was from poaching deer. A conservation officer would later find Leslie’s body along the logging road.

The body of Stuchenko, who was reported missing Oct. 9, 2009, was found partially buried in a gravel pit outside of Prince George two weeks later.

Maas went missing Sept. 10, 2010, and her body found in some woods a month later.

Montgomery was last seen at a friend’s house Sept. 1, 2010. Her body has never been found.

Legebokoff recently tried to plead guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree murder, but the Crown rejected the plea.

The jury had been deliberating since Wednesday.

Agencies/Canadajournal