Father disappointed in Cook ruling

The biological father of a teenage boy who died under mysterious circumstances in a Prince George mobile home 13 year ago says he's disappointed the stepfather was not found guilty of the two more serious charges he was facing.

Lloyd William Cook was found guilty Friday of unlawful confinement and interference with a dead body but not guilty of manslaughter and criminal negligence causing death in the January 2000 death of Adam Scott Williams-Dudoward and burial of his body outside city limits.

However, Wayne Dudoward conceded there was a lack of evidence and no one other than Cook and the boy's mother, Judy Elaina Williams, will know the true story.

"I just hoped they would see through all of Judy's lies and Lloyd's lies and somehow find him guilty and sentence him to the max," Dudoward said Friday outside the Prince George courthouse after the verdict was issued. Sentencing has been deferred to a later date.

During the trial, Dudoward said the last time he saw Adam was some months before he died when he looked out the window of his home and saw Cook in his car revving his engine with the boy sitting in the back seat, with a "really uncomfortable look on his face."

It was part of a series of "head games" Dudoward said Cook was playing with him over that time.

On Friday, Dudoward said he continued to try to keep in touch with Adam but was rebuffed by Cook and Williams who would claim he wasn't home. Asked if that made him suspicious, Dudoward said he wondered but "I didn't want to drift into any morbid thoughts."

He said Adam was a "good natured child" who was getting a "little rebellious" like most teens and maybe had fallen in with a bad crowd.

During an undercover police operation, Cook had attempted to pin the blame for Adam's death on Dudoward, telling an officer posing as a crime boss that the boy swallowed a baggy full of yellow pills supplied by Dudoward just before he died.

The couple also claimed Adam was saying he was molesting his younger brother - an allegation he denied during the trial - and Dudoward suggested that was out of character and that Cook and Williams were just covering their own tracks to stay out of jail.

Dudoward labeled Cook a "coward" for failing to show up for the verdict. Cook was deemed an absconder earlier this week and the outcome was issued in his absence.

"I believe there is a warm place in hell for him," Dudoward said.