"My mother always told me if you have secrets, keep them to yourself"

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
THE VANCOUVER SUN - OCTOBER 26th 2011 - KIM BOLAN
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Accused killer describes murder to undercover officer in video-taped meeting

VANCOUVER -- Accused killer Jean James matter-of-factly described how she used box-cutters to slit the throat of Gladys Wakabayashi in a video-taped meeting with an undercover officer posing as a crime boss.

The tape of the November 27, 2008 meeting in a Montreal hotel room was played for jurors in B.C. Supreme Court Wednesday.

James, who was 69 at the time of the confession, told the officer that she was furious to learn in June 1992 that her friend was having an affair with her husband Derek James, an air traffic controller.

"I wasn't going to put up with this nonsense any more and I did something about it,"James told the officer, whose identity is shielded by a court order.

She said she went to Wakabayashi's westside Vancouver home on June 24, 1992 and confronted her.

"She lied to me. And I caught her because I checked," James said, referring to hotel records of her husband that showed he had called Wakabayashi's home.

"She said 'oh' and she started laughing in my face, and I just got furious and I just did it," James said. "I slit her throat."

The jurors have heard that at the time of the meeting, the Provincial Unsolved Homicide Unit had launched a new probe targeted James as the suspect in the case. They created an elaborate scheme where undercover police agents arranged chance meetings with James, became her confident and eventually got her to do low-level jobs for their purported crime ring.

At the time of the confession, James had indicated an interest in participating in a larger criminal endeavour that was to earn $700,000 for the ring.

The officer asked James how far she was willing to go, asked if she was an A to Z person, with Z meaning she could kill someone.

She said she could do so again if she had to.

"You are an A to Z person," the officer said after hearing the confession.

He asked James if she had left any evidence behind, including a knife.

"I didn't use a knife. I used boxcutters," James said.

The cop expressed surprise that boxcutters would do the job and James said the blade was similar to a surgeon's scalpel. But she agreed they wouldn't go through bone.

She assured the "crime boss" that she was very careful, parking her car some distance from Wakabayashi's house at 6868 Selkirk.

"I walked to her house. I parked my car about five blocks away and I went in and out of the alleyways I didn't go down the main street," she said.

James told the officer that Wakabayashi had split with her husband.

"She divorced her husband so she could screw around with mine," James said.

She told the officer she had a plan to kill Wakabayashi before she went to her house that day, but told her friend she had a new necklace for her.

"She had her back to me," James said, indicating how she pretended to place the necklace around Wakabayashi's throat, but cut it open instead.

"I had gloves on so there was no DNA, she said.

James also cut Wakabayashi's legs, she said, to illicit more information from her about the affair.

"I said if you tell me the truth, I'll call an ambulance which of course I had no intention of doing," James told the officer.

She said she knew Wakabayashi would bleed out "because I cut her along the jugular vein."

"I just left her. I never touched her," she said, describing the area in the victim's master suite where the body was lying.

Before the murder, the two friends had coffee, so on her way out James "washed the cups and wiped everything."

She told the officer that she had never told anyone what she had done, including her own husband.

"I never tell my husband my business," James said. "My mother always told me if you have secrets, keep them to yourself."

James' lawyer Aseem Dosanjh suggested to the officer that some of the details provided with James did not match up exactly with the circumstances of the crime.

On the tape she said she left Wakabayashi's bedroom without going anywhere else within it, yet there was a bloody front-print from a high heel found in the bathroom, Dosanjh noted.

And while James admitted to slitting Wakabayashi's throat and cutting her legs, she made no mention of another wound in the lower chest area, Dosanjh said. The officer agreed.

He also agreed that his purported body-guard, another undercover officer, was a large menacing figure.

The trial continues.