I’m told Steven Gareau’s new murder trial is scheduled for Sept. 3 in friendly Halifax, where he was convicted in the 2000 Hells Angels contract killing of Steve Simmons. Anyway, Gareau, now 57, won a new trial after filing a handwritten appeal from his prison cell. The Appeal Court of Nova Scotia agreed that the trial judge made a fatal error by letting the jury consider, let alone hear, that accomplices had already been sent to prison for the murder.
There were several other grounds but that was a big one. It should also be noted that the prized RCMP informant who testified that he didn’t know for sure if Gareau (Nepean) actually knew about the murder plot.
The informant should know. After all, he was the getaway driver who later buried the smoking gun. It was his insurance card when the police came calling. His charge was dropped and he went to work as an informant, like he had done for the Mounties, off and on, across 20 years.
It paid off for police and prosecutors who won convictions against all of the accused men.
Gareau’s retrial in Halifax is going to be quite the show, with the RCMP informant returning to court to testify again at his onetime friend’s murder trial. The informant met with police and prosecutors in Ottawa a few weeks ago to start going over the old wiretaps and court transcripts.
We’ll leave the trial for the appeal court in wonderful Halifax.
Until then, I’ll be combing Ottawa hotels looking for the informant’s hotel bill. I understand he ordered the cheese cake.
And it is hard to find sympathy for Steven Gareau, for this is not his first killing rap. Back in the 1980s, you might well remember the night he killed his friend with an axe over drugs.
