The United Nations gang had a suspect in the Kevin LeClair murder killed in Mexico because they were worried he might turn on them, B.C. Supreme Court heard Wednesday.
Jesse (Egon) Adkins was hiding in Mexico, along with accused killer Cory Vallee, when he started getting restless and wanting to come home, former UN gangster C testified.
“I believe he wanted to come home and see his kid,” said C, whose identity is protected by a sweeping publication ban.
Earlier, C told Justice Janice Dillon that he, Adkins and another UN member were driving with Barzan Tilli-Choli when Tilli-Choli blasted a Porsche owned by the Bacon brothers on May 9, 2008.
Jonathan Barber, a stereo installer who had just picked up the Porsche, was killed instantly.
And C testified that Adkins and Vallee confessed to him that they were the hit men that gunned down LeClair, a Bacon associate, in a Langley plaza on Feb. 6, 2009.
Vallee is charged with conspiracy to kill the Bacons, as well as first-degree murder in the LeClair shooting.
C said Adkins and Vallee were smuggled into Mexico through a Los Angeles cartel contact of Khamla Wong, a respected UN gang elder now in prison in Thailand.
But after several months, Adkins was getting edgy and making derogatory comments about the UN, C said.
He testified that he tried to tell Adkins to stay put.
“I told him – it’s not a smart idea.
Give it some time. Maybe in the future after the UN 8 case is done, we’ll see what happens with that and then assess from there,” C said.
“I told him the smartest thing to do is to stay there.”
But there was concern that Adkins’instability could lead to him flipping on the gang, C said.
“Kham discussed it with the Mexicans that Jesse might be a problem and the Mexicans said that they’re going to take care of it,” C said.
He said he understood that to mean “that Jesse would get killed.”
Asked by prosecutor Helen James how he felt about Adkins’murder, C said: “I had mixed emotions about it. I liked Jesse but at the same time, the way he was acting – he was seriously saying the words he was saying like ‘f—the crew’and ‘I am coming back no matter what,’it seemed worrisome that he may have turned into a rat,” C said.
He said he later learned from both Vallee, who was still in Mexico, and Wong that Adkins was “killed in Mexico by the Mexican cartel people.”
Adkins’body has never been found.
After Adkins was killed, C got even closer to Vallee communicating through encrypted BlackBerry messages.
“We would talk all the time, multiple times in a week, sometimes every day. We would talk about family, kids, what we’re up to, business,” C testified.
When Vallee was arrested in Mexico in 2014 and brought back to Canada, C put money in his canteen account at the pre-trial jail every month until last summer, he testified. The money came from a senior UN member named Versace, who has continued to provide the cash for a number of gangsters awaiting trial or convicted.
C said the UN wanted “to take care of the guys in prison so they stay happy.”
“Unhappy people tend to turn,” he said.
C said he and other UN members were increasingly broke, having trouble making drug deals and getting less support from senior members like Versace who were out of the country.
That’s one reason he decided to co-operate with police last year after getting caught with 80,000 fentanyl pills and a gun.
“I wanted out of the life. I was sick of it,” he said.
He said he signed a deal with the RCMP to get paid $400,000 to work as an agent in two investigations.
He has received about half the money so far.
The money is not in exchange for his testimony against his former friend, C said.
But he testified that he did sign a separate immunity agreement meaning he won’t face charges for a litany of crimes committed while in the UN, as long as he testifies truthfully.
– Kim Bolan is a a reporter with the Vancouver Sun. Read more Sun stories HERE.
