B.C.’s highest court has dismissed the appeal of a Kamloops man who stabbed his roommate to death four years ago following a fight over money.
Dennis Adolph, 49, was found dead on Jan. 26, 2016, in a suite at the 4 Seasons motel in Valleyview.
Gordon Camille, 69, was sentenced to six years in a federal penitentiary following a 2018 manslaughter conviction in connection with Adolph’s death.
Adolph died of blood loss, having been stabbed once in the abdomen. At trial, court heard the deceased’s blood-alcohol level at the time of his death was 0.40 — five times the legal limit to drive and potentially deadly on its own, according to the doctor who performed the autopsy on Adolph’s body.
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Camille was arrested hours after Adolph’s body was found. He told police the two had been arguing about money, but he did not admit to stabbing Adolph. A knife found in the suite had Adolph’s blood on the blade and Camille’s DNA on the handle.
Camille appealed his conviction, arguing the trial judge failed to properly consider accidental or deliberate self-harm — that Adolph stabbed himself.
In a decision dated Monday, Jan. 27, a three-judge B.C. Court of Appeal panel dismissed Camille’s appeal.
“In my view, the trial judge’s reasons, when read as a whole, do not contain any errors and the verdict was reasonable and supported by the evidence,” B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Elizabeth Bennett wrote in the decision.
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Camille has a lengthy criminal record, including another manslaughter conviction in 1984. In that case, he drunkenly shot his spouse while she sat in an outhouse.
He also served time for two separate stabbings in Kamloops — one in 1998 and the other in 2009.
