Through the trial’s final stretch, jurors heard Thomas Louis Bodechon tell two stories about what happened on Oct. 18. He told police he killed Kade Neapetung by accident, but in court he said the killer was another man.
In the bowels of Saskatoon police headquarters, Thomas Louis Bodechon sat in a small, featureless room.
Initially, his story matched his surroundings.
“It wasn’t me,” he told Sgt. Candace Benko on the morning of Oct. 26, 2021.
The veteran Regina cop made the trip north to speak with the man who, the day before, crawled out of a burning garage and toward arresting officers.
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Bodechon’s words to Benko referred to the Oct. 18, 2021 killing of 29-year-old Kade Luke Neapetung.
The officer had heard the words before, in other rooms, from other mouths, about other cases. Sometimes the words were the truth.
Years later, Bodechon would make the same assertion. He pleaded not guilty to a charge of first-degree murder on March 24, 2025, the day his ongoing jury trial began in Regina’s Court of Kings Bench.
By then, he’d come full circle.
Benko made sure Bodechon knew anything he told her could be used as evidence. He knew about the electric ears and electric eyes fixated on him, recording. By then, he’d already spoken with a lawyer.
“You must’ve heard about the murder,” Benko said.
“Everyone’s trying to blame me for it,” Bodechon responded.
It wasn’t long before he got off his chair and sprawled out on the ground. He was tired, he told Benko, who didn’t believe that he was. She’d later opine in front of the jury that his behaviour was consistent with “avoidance.”
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The officer tried many different lines of questioning with Bodechon. It went on and on, with Bodechon’s demeanour fluctuating between lethargic and irate. And while he told her some things that interested her and her colleagues, he continued to distance himself from Neapetung and the killing, which he repeatedly denied having a hand in.
This would change.
Benko eventually left the room to speak with fellow officers and a psychologist. She was replaced in the interview room by Sgt. Jonathan Golden, also a veteran cop.
Bodechon had struck a camera in the room, causing the audio quality to be badly affected. And a lengthy portion of the video interview Golden conducted was later played twice for jurors, who had difficulty hearing it.
Golden, who’d written notes about the interview knowing the audio was compromised, later summarized in court what he felt was relevant. He testified Bodechon told him he’d gone to Neapetung’s house to “straighten him out.” Bodechon said he’d “tripped” as Neapetung was walking into the living room and the gun went off causing a load of birdshot to hit the now-deceased man in the back, according to Golden.
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The officer said Bodechon told him the gun was the same one seized from the Saskatoon garage where he’d been arrested.
The latter part of Golden’s interview was heard via audio collected on a cellphone, which was used to supplement the audio from the damaged camera. It could be heard clearly in court.
As Golden showed Bodechon a photo of Neapetung’s back, which featured a pattern of holes where the birdshot pellets bored into him, Bodechon remarked: “Caught a bird.”
He then suggested Neapetung caused his own death by standing in the wrong spot.
“What a f—king ugly face,” Bodechon said when shown a photo of the dead man’s face.
The officer reminded the young man that a judge and jury might some day watch the video of his police statement.
“Yes, if they watch it, yes, I am sorry for f—kin’ shootin’ him, but I didn’t do it on purpose,” he responded, suggesting he’d seen dead bodies too often to cry about it.
After prosecutors David Belanger and Nathanial Scipioni closed their case, defence lawyer Bhavan Jaggi told jurors there was “more to it.”
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His client would take the stand and the defence lawyer said he was “more than confident” that jurors would not believe the Crown had proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt once all the evidence was heard.
Bodechon, now 22 years old, took the stand and, between questions from his lawyer and prosecutors, relayed a decidedly different story than he’d told police.
On Oct. 16, 2021 (two days before the killing), he’d been at the home of his friends Taylor Hawkes and Jean Atherton on Regina’s Rae Street. A “native” man had shown up. Bodechon testified it wasn’t the first time he’d seen the man, but he didn’t know him.
Bodechon would later say the man went by the nickname 2short. He had a “rough” face and was in his 20s or 30s, he had a bag with him and in it was a shotgun, Bodechon testified.
2short asked him to hold on to the bag, Bodechon said, as he had some business to attend to elsewhere and he didn’t want it laying around in a house where everyone was smoking meth making theft a possibility. Bodechon said he agreed to help the man by holding the bag because “I’m a nice guy.”
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He further stated 2short had asked him for ammunition, which he didn’t have, so he asked around the house.
The accused man said his then-girlfriend Keleisha Jackson asked him and another man named Chris to help her retrieve some of her things from Neapetung’s home nearby on Angus Street. He took the bag with the shotgun along, he said.
While Neapetung was upset and exchanging words with Jackson, Bodechon said he did not get into an altercation with him. He said he stayed outside the home and when some of Jackson’s belongings were brought out, he carried them back to the Rae Street house and did not return to Neapetung’s home after.
2short came back to the Rae Street house and collected his bag with the gun, Bodechon said, later noting he then lent the man his laptop computer to use because he didn’t have a phone.
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On Oct. 18, the day of the killing, he testified he’d been back at Hawkes and Atherton’s home until he left for Saskatoon around 2 p.m. Court previously heard police were already responding to the shooting by then.
He said he’d arrived in Saskatoon between 3 p.m. and 3:30 p.m., after which he was picked up by one of his brothers. He’d stayed at another brother’s home on Rita Crescent, which was where he was arrested from the burning garage about a week later.
It was there 2short had come to visit him again, toting with him the backpack and the gun, testified Bodechon. He told court 2short said the gun was “muddy” and later said the man told him it had been used on Neapetung.
The man left his bag and gun when he went to get food on Oct. 25, 2021 and he never returned, which is why the bag was in the garage at the time of the fire, Bodechon testified.
He’d lied to police during his interview, he acknowledged, saying he felt sick and wanted to return to his cell. Some of what he’d told them was just him repeating what 2short had told him about how the killing went down, he testified.
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The accused man told court both he and 2short were members of street gangs.
He didn’t want to “snitch nobody out,” he testified.
“The only reason why I didn’t say anything — where I come from, like, you rat someone out, the bullet’s coming for you next.”
It was with his hand on the Bible that Bodechon swore to tell the truth.
“Believe in God?” asked Belanger at the outset of his questions, referencing the accused man’s choice to take a religious oath as opposed to a religious affirmation.
“A bit, yeah,” Bodechon said, acknowledging he knew it would be a sin to lie under oath.
It would also make him liable of an offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison, which the prosecutor reminded him.
The exchange set the tone for a lengthy cross-examination. As Belanger tested every aspect of Bodechon’s testimony, the prosecutor made it abundantly clear he felt it was a tale that defied belief.
He established with Bodechon that he’d come to Regina from Alberta to see Jackson, his “queen,” breaching a court order to do so. He also planned to attend a gang meeting in Prince Albert, which he referred to as “church.”
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“That church had nothing to do with the Bible, correct?” Belanger asked.
No, Bodechon replied.
“At least we agree on that.”
They agreed on little else, including the prosecutor’s assertion that he hated Neapetung for how he’d treated Jackson.
“I never did. I didn’t know him,” Bodechon responded.
He denied telling Hawkes and Atherton he’d shot Neapetung, as they previously testified he did. But he acknowledged he was at their home, only a short distance from the crime scene, when the shooting occurred.
The mystery man, 2short — Belanger was very interested in him. The accused man at times added information or offered explanations in response to questions about him.
The prosecutor’s tone was incredulous as he picked at Bodechon’s story about the gun and how it changed hands. He denied it was his, but acknowledged he’d taken a photo of himself with it and sent it around to folks, including his girlfriend.
Belanger was particularly interested in what 2short had allegedly told Bodechon with regard to the killing. The man had a “beef” with Neapetung, Bodechon said.
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What about?
“I didn’t ask,” he testified.
Belanger’s questions displayed his disbelief that Bodechon learned so much from the man about how the killing happened but nothing more about why.
Once Bodechon said he’d relayed all 2short had told him, the prosecutor put it to the accused man that two other people were in the house when Neapetung was shot.
“He didn’t tell you that one of these people was cleaning the house at the back, correct? He didn’t tell you that?”
No, Bodechon responded. But he agreed he told Golden that detail during his police interview.
“Would you agree with me the only way you would’ve known that detail is that you were there on Oct. 18?” Belanger asked.
“But I wasn’t,” Bodechon responded.
While he was in jail before his trial, Bodechon placed some calls.
Some were to his brother. He asked his brother to testify he was in Saskatoon on the day of the killing. Some were to the girlfriend of one of his friends. He asked her to testify he’d left her place with plans to go to Saskatoon on the morning Neapetung died.
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“My brother is going to be saying I was with him on the 18th and that’s the day of the murder, so as long as you guys say the right thing, then you know I’m good, I’m good for the clear,” Bodechon said in a recording of a call to the woman played in court.
He wanted them to keep their stories straight, if called to testify, Bodechon acknowledged.
“You yourself can’t even keep your story straight,” Belanger remarked.
“My story is straight,” Bodechon replied.
Bodechon’s assertion, which he maintained, was that the details he wanted these people to relay in court were the truth.
The testimony of both people aligned with what Bodechon had discussed with them. Both denied being told what to say in court. Both were confronted with the audio recordings of their calls.
The trial is scheduled to continue this week with closing arguments and final instructions to the jury before deliberation.
bharder@postmedia.com
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