A six-man, six-woman jury will spend the next six to eight weeks hearing the Crown prosecution's case against a man who has admitted to helping dispose of the body of a murder victim but denies actually killing him.
James David Junior Charlie faces one count of first-degree murder in the January 2012 death of Fribjon Bjornson. Charlie pleaded not guilty to the charge but did plead guilty to one count of indignity to a body prior to jury selection Monday at the Prince George courthouse.
The disappearance of the 28-year-old father of two young children turned into a homicide investigation when his severed head was found in an abandoned home on the Nak'azdli Reserve just south of Fort St. James.
In an opening statement, Crown prosecutor Richard Fernyhough outlined what he expects the jury will hear from the witnesses expected to testify, painting a grisly picture in the process.
He said Charlie, his sister Theresa Charlie and two friends, Wesley Duncan and Jesse Bird, lived in a home at #3 Lower Road on the reserve from where they sold illicit drugs and alcohol.
Bjornson worked as a log processor and owned his own machine. But he was struggling with a drug problem at the time and, during the early morning of January 12, 2012 he stopped at a convenience store in Vanderhoof and then drove to the home to buy drugs.
Bird met him at the door, the jury was told, and let Bjornson in.. During the course of the sale, Duncan came down from upstairs and prevented Bjornson from leaving. Charlie, Duncan, Bird and a third man, whose name is protected by a court-ordered publication ban, dragged Bjornson downstairs and the four assaulted him in the basement.
At some point, Theresa Charlie and two friends, showed up to get alcohol from her brother. She went down into the basement and found a bloodied Bjornson lying on the floor with the four men standing over him.
She spotted Bjornson's wallet on the floor beside him, picked it up, took out the money and split it with the assailants. Charlie then told her to leave the house and the beating continued, the court heard, until Bjornson was unconscious.
A decision to kill Bjornson was made, the court was told, and Charlie cut a wire from the basement rafters and gave it to Duncan who used it to strangle Bjornson to death.
Charlie then took the truck Bjornson was driving and abandoned it at an apartment building on the reserve and walked back to the home.
At some point, Bjornson's body was wrapped in a blanket and dragged through a window into the back yard where it was put on a small, circular sled and pulled to the shore of Stuart Lake where, for about a week, it was left by a dilapidated shed covered in snow.
The Charlies, Bird and Duncan then attempted to clean up the scene by sopping up the blood and burning the evidence in a furnace stove in the basement, taking a "considerable amount of time."
Charlie then began looking for a snowmobile to buy to help get rid of Bjornson's body. By Jan. 19, 2012, he had bought one and early the next day, he and Bird rode it to where the body had been left, tied it to the back of the snowmobile and rode to the junction of the Necoslie River and Stuart River.
Charlie rode back to the home where Bjornson was killed and retrieved an old metal splitting maul and then back to where he had left Bird with the body. They used the maul to chop Bjornson's head from his body.
The head wrapped in a blanket and left behind, the body was towed up the Necoslie River and buried it in a log jam between two logs. They returned down river and retrieved the head and blanket and hid them in the basement of an abandoned house, #5 Lower Road, next to their home.
In the following days, Bjornson's family reported the disappearance and posters went up in the Fort St. James area. Acting on a tip, police found Bjornson's severed head on Feb. 1, 2012.
On the basis of the same tip, they also secured #3 Lower Road and found Bjornson's blood throughout the basement. Six days later, the splitting maul was found in the back yard of #5 Lower Road in the snow and Bjornson's DNA was subsequently found on the item.
In June 2013, police launched an undercover operation targeting Bird. In the so-called Mr. Big operation, police posed as members of an organized crime group with the goal of gaining enough trust to elicit a confession or at least a truthful account of the suspect's role in the crime.
It typically culminates in an interview with the "crime boss" where the suspect is told he can join the organization, but only if he tells everything he knows about the crime under investigation to the crime boss can "clean things up."
Police orchestrated 67 scenarios in which Bird carried out various tasks for them, the crime boss interview was conducted on Oct. 1, 2013. Two days later, Bird conducted a re-enactment before several undercover officers at the scenes of the crime and a later search uncovered a femur and patella from Bjornson's body.
Two days after the re-enactment, officers located the accused as well as Theresa Charlie and Duncan and taken into an undercover vehicle to discuss the crime with Bird and the officers on the pretext that the officers posing as criminals would get rid of any evidence left behind.
Charlie was ultimately arrested in November 2013.
Fernyhough cautioned his remarks are not evidence but only what he expects the evidence to be presented over the course of the trial will show. He also told jury members they need only decide with whether or not Charlie is guilty and need not concern themselves with the roles of the other four.
According to an agreed statement of facts read into the record, Bjornson had purchased drugs from Charlie at least once before and a few days before his death, he had been paid $2,500 for his work at a site just north of Fort St. James.
The Crown is expected to call 37 witnesses, including Bird, Duncan and Theresa Charlie.
