Welcome to my Crime and Justice blog! I am a 19 year old criminal justice student at the University of Winnipeg. I advocate for prisoners' rights, human rights, equality and criminal justice/prison system reforms.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Robert Kociuk on trial for 1984 Winnipeg murder



- Robert Kociuk, aged 68, plead not guilty to first degree murder on Thursday, February 18th.
- The Crown alleges that he sexually assaulted and murdered Beverley Dyke in 1984, when she was age 48. 
- She had been stabbed 13 times in the stomach  and her body was found near the Winnipeg Airport, nude from the waist down.
- In Ontario in 2004, Kociuk was convicted on two counts of robbing a business and was required to submit his DNA. 
- Winnipeg police obtained the DNA sample and compared it with the semen found on Beverley's body and what do guess? It was a PERFECT match.
- Kociuk denied having sex with her and even knowing her. 
- In 1988, an inmate named Leonard White confessed to killing Beverley while he was serving an 8 year sentence in Saskatchewan for aggravated assault.
- He claimed that he stabbed her to death, while another man he said was named, Ricky Morris, raped her. 
- Ricky Morris did not exist according to police records, therefore, White must be lying. 
- White was an habitual liar and his confession was not taken seriously by police. 
- Kociuk admitted to being near the scene of the killing but claims he was meeting a man that he was buying a gun from to commit a robbery in St.Boniface, which happened the next day, a day after the killing of Beverley.
- Jurors will hear from a witness who recalls seeing a car parked near the murder scene two days before the body was found, saying he saw two people in the vehicle and the vehicle is a match to the car that Kociuk had access to at the time of the murder. 

This should be a very interesting trial indeed and I will definitely be following it.

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