Closing arguments heard in Regina murder trial of Thomas Bodechon

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As jurors looked across a Regina courtroom Tuesday, they saw a man behind glass.

The image Thomas Louis Bodechon presented in the prisoner’s box — his neutral gaze from beneath a conservative but fashionable haircut, his dark button-up shirt, tattoos peeking out beyond his collar and cuffs — offered jurors nothing of relevance with regard to the decision they would soon have to make.

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Rather, it is the evidence they’ve heard throughout a trial spanning more than three weeks that they must consider in determining his fate.

Bodechon, 22, is charged with first-degree murder in the Oct. 18, 2021 death of 29-year-old Kade Luke Neapetung. He pleaded not guilty when his trial began in the Court of King’s Bench on March 24.

On Tuesday, lawyers from opposite sides of the case presented jurors with arguments about the evidence that offered vastly contrasting views of the man on trial.

Is he a lying backshooter whose love for a woman and hatred for a man who wanted her too caused him to plot and kill? This was the picture painted by Crown prosecutor Nathanial Scipioni, who argued that Bodechon is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

Or is he a man whose involvement with drugs, gangs and a woman placed him near a killing he did not commit? Defence lawyer Bhavan Jaggi’s submissions offered this view, as he told jurors an innocent man is in their hands.

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What’s not in dispute

By all accounts, Bodechon was in a romantic relationship with Keleisha Jackson, a woman who lived with Neapetung part time in October of 2021.

Court heard Neapetung had feelings for Jackson, which were not reciprocal and their friendship soured. Jackson enlisted Bodechon and another man named Chris to help her collect her belongings from the now-deceased man’s home on Oct. 16, 2021.

Two days later, Neapetung was fatally shot in the back while inside his Angus Street home. A previous stab wound on his arm was already beginning to heal when he died.

Bodechon, whom police viewed as a suspect early on, was arrested from a burning garage in Saskatoon about a week later, on Oct. 25, 2021. In the garage, police found a shotgun in a backpack, along with Bodechon’s laptop.

Near the end of a lengthy police interview, during which Bodechon repeatedly denied the killing, he eventually told an officer he’d gone to Neapetung’s house to confront him. He “tripped” and accidentally shot Neapetung in the back, he told the officer.

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A Venn diagram of a killing

At trial, jurors heard conflicting narratives with significant overlap.

Crown witnesses Taylor Hawkes and Jean Atherton told court that Bodechon showed up at their home with a shotgun, looking for shells. Bodechon said he planned to shoot Neapetung and returned later the same day to tell them he had, the witnesses testified.

In Bodechon’s version of the events, the shotgun belonged to a Regina gang member he called 2short. He held on to it for 2short on Oct. 16 and asked for shells on the man’s behalf before returning it to him later that day and lending him his laptop. 2short, he testified, later came to visit him in Saskatoon, admitting he’d done the killing and leaving his bag containing the gun and computer in the garage on Oct. 25, before it was surrounded by police.

Bodechon testified that he lied to police when he informed them he’d shot Neapetung, telling court that specific details he offered to investigators had been relayed to him by 2short.

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At the time, Bodechon wanted to go back to his cell and he didn’t want to “snitch,” Jaggi submitted, repeating his client’s testimony.

But 2short, in the words of Scipioni, was a “fantasy” and the version of events implicating him was “fantasyland.”

“Thomas Bodechon invents 2short as a scapegoat. A scapegoat that he can conveniently pin everything on and it’s a way he can conveniently explain every detail he knows about Kade’s murder.”

There was no evidence Bodechon was present at Neapetung’s house on the date of the killing, Jaggi argued. His client testified he was at the home of Hawkes and Atherton, roughly a block from Neapetung’s residence, at the time of the shooting.

Hawkes and Atherton also testified they’d seen a “native” man with Bodechon on the day they both saw the accused man with a shotgun. However, Jaggi referenced “conflicting evidence” as to whether this was on Oct. 16 or Oct. 18 — the day of the killing.

Surveillance footage showed two men fleeing from behind Neapetung’s home at the relevant time on Oct. 18, according to police testimony.

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“What happened, we have no idea,” Jaggi argued. “We cannot say what happened on that day.”

On motivation, planning and destruction of evidence

Neapetung’s now-deceased uncle, Norman Schneider, was in the home when the shooting occurred. He told police the man who shot his nephew was the same one who’d stabbed Neapetung two days prior when the group came to collect Jackson’s things. The man who fired the shot accused Neapetung of calling the cops on him, Schneider said.

When police arrived at Neapetung’s house on Oct. 16, Bodechon was nowhere to be found — he fled because he was the one who stabbed Neapetung in the arm, Scipioni submitted.

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There is no evidence Bodechon stabbed Neapetung, argued Jaggi. And there was no motive for him to kill a man he’d just met Oct. 16, 2021.

Text messages sent by Bodechon, in which he discussed planning to kill a man who’d bear-maced his girlfriend, were put into evidence. But the defence lawyer said the Crown’s theory about the killing being planned went up in smoke when it was revealed those texts referred to Jackson’s “baby dad,” who was not Neapetung.

Scipioni reminded jurors about how Bodechon tore up a photo of Neapetung’s face during his police interview and that the accused man told officers: “I don’t want to talk about that f—king faggot.”

“Hard to fake that,” Scipioni remarked.

The prosecutor suggested Neapetung had disrespected Jackson when he called her names and threatened to throw out her belongings. Bodechon’s hatred was at a “fever pitch” after the Oct. 16 incident and his belief that Neapetung “ratted him out” to police for the stabbing “fuelled the fire,” Scipioni argued. Then he asked for ammunition and announced his plans, the prosecutor said.

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He fled Regina for Saskatoon after the killing and later lit a fire in the garage where he was arrested in order to destroy the evidence, according to the Crown’s theory.

Jaggi reminded jurors that forensic testing couldn’t match the gun to the crime scene.

On fabrication

Recorded calls Bodechon made from jail to his brother and to a friend, in which he discussed with them what they would say in court, were played for the jury. Scipioni suggested this was evidence of fabrication. Their testimony included details about Bodechon’s whereabouts on the day of the killing.

Jaggi submitted his client had simply asked these people to come to court to tell the truth.

“Where does he say, ‘tell the truth?’” Scipioni wondered.

Multiple possibilities or a straightforward path

If jurors believed his client, Jaggi told them they should find Bodechon not guilty. However, he spoke of “alternate possibilities” jurors should also consider.

If they find his client was at Neapetung’s house at the time of the killing, did he fire the shot? Did he trip? Can he be linked to the surveillance video and who was the other man? Was he at the home of Hawkes and Atherton, as he said he was, or was he en route to Saskatoon when the killing happened?

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“This is not a game of maybe or probably,” said Jaggi. “We have to think that it’s beyond a reasonable doubt. If you have a single doubt, you have to acquit my client.”

Scipioni suggested the evidence that Bodechon committed first-degree murder was “overwhelming” and argued that the case was not complex, but straightforward.

“Any reasonable doubt is a fantasy,” he said.

The arguments were lengthy and touched on aspects of the evidence not reflected in this article. Jurors were given final instructions and began deliberation Wednesday afternoon.

bharder@postmedia.com

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