Before Sandy Charlie vanished on Christmas Eve 1999, he had testified in an assault trial of the man now charged with killing him.
Rob Smith is standing trial in B.C. Supreme Court on one count each of manslaughter and interference with a dead body.
The body of Charlie, 48, was unearthed accidentally in 2011 by an excavator doing work outside a Lytton home.
Sandy Charlie
Smith was arrested in August 2012 at the conclusion of a four-month RCMP Mr. Big sting.
In a Kamloops courtroom on Wednesday, Feb. 19, a jury watched an hour-long video recording of Smith’s 2007 interview with RCMP cold-case homicide detectives.
The interview, which took place at a police station in Abbotsford, where Smith was living at the time, included pointed accusations by RCMP Cpl. Ian MacLellan about what happened to Charlie.
“I just told you, I don’t know — he disappeared,” Smith said.
“No, I don’t know anything about the disappearance. And, yes, all of us were concerned. He was a good friend of ours.”
MacLellan told Smith repeatedly that a number of Lytton residents had told police he and Charlie fought the night of Charlie’s disappearance.
“Rob, I think you know where Sandy Charlie is,” MacLellan said.
“And I don’t,” Smith replied.
“Whoever you talked to, they better get their story straight.”
In the interview, Smith told MacLellan he and Charlie had been drinking buddies in Lytton prior to the disappearance.
MacLellan later pressed Smith on a previous incident — in which Charlie was a witness in a domestic-assault case involving Smith and his former girlfriend, Gloria Oates — and whether it was enough to cause a physical altercation.
“Of course not,” Smith replied.
“We went to court and it was done and done.”
MacLellan also asked Smith about Nolan Cleghorn — Charlie’s son, who died while searching for his father a month after his disappearance — which brought some of Charlie’s family members seated in the courtroom to tears.
In the interview, Smith acknowledged having heard about Cleghorn’s death.
At the time of the interview, court has heard, Smith was a suspect in Charlie’s disappearance, but investigators did not have sufficient evidence to make an arrest.
That changed when Charlie’s body was found on Oates’ property in 2011.
Court has previously heard Oates offered information about the incident to police in 2005, when the investigation was at a standstill.
The trial is slated to last three weeks.
Oates is expected to take the stand today (Feb. 20).
