"I was very sneaky about it"

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THE VANCOUVER SUN - BLOG - OCTOBER 26th 2011 - KIM BOLAN
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Accused Killer Jean James Confessed to Undercover Cop

Jean Ann James looks like a typical 72-year-old Richmond senior, small in stature, well-dressed. She has a slight English accent.

But a video-taped “confession” has her admitting that she killed her husband’s mistress in 1992 and would be willing to kill again for a purported criminal organization that had promised her hundreds of thousands in earnings.

The secretly-recorded confession to an undercover cop posing as a crime boss was played in B.C. Supreme Court Wednesday.

She said she used brand-new boxcutters when she slashed Gladys Wakabayashi’s throat on June 24, 1992. She had purchased them for use at a school fund-raising event. She said she tricked Wakabayashi – her friend of five years – by telling her she had brought her a gift.

“I was very sneaky about it. She thought I was giving her a surprise. And we were upstairs. She was sitting in her closet. And I had this necklace. She had her back turned and I had gloves on,” James said.

Her lawyer Aseem Dosanjh suggested several of the things James said in the confession do not match evidence police found at the time. And he suggested she was lured by the undercover operator, who had a big burly ”body guard” who was very menacing when she met with the officer.