RCMP recruited murder victim Monica Klaus’s boss to secretly record meetings with suspect Jason Klaus.
Brady Flett, co-owner of Stettler’s Vortex Production Systems, agreed to help police after meeting with Klaus a number of times after the murders of sister Monica and parents Gordon and Sandra on Dec. 8, 2013.
At first, Flett and the company were focused on offering support to Klaus after the tragedy, going as far as giving him $10,000.
They met a few more times, including a memorable Dec. 30 meeting when Klaus told him the spirit of his sister and their parents had appeared to him to tell him they were OK and they were with his grandparents.
Klaus also showed him three seemingly innocuous text messages he got from Monica on his flip phone after her death, all dated Jan. 1, 2010, which he interpreted as clues.
His sister identified her killer as a friend of Klaus’s and told him he must stay away from him.
Klaus and his friend Joshua Frank are on trial in Red Deer Court of Queen’s Bench on three counts of first-degree murder.
Flett said he tried to convince Klaus to take the information to police numerous times in their conversation, suggesting he could do it anonymously.
Klaus steadfastly refused, saying it would be a “death sentence” for him. The killer had already told him two weeks earlier he could kill anyone and would bury the body using a backhoe.
After that unsettling meeting, Flett wrote down what had happened and immediately phoned the RCMP investigator he had met earlier while police were gathering background information on Monica.
Soon after, he was asked if he would help in the investigation by recording future meetings with Klaus and he immediately agreed.
Crown prosecutor asked Flett why he agreed to become an RCMP agent.
“For Monica,” he said.
In a Jan. 15, 2014 secretly recorded meeting, Klaus repeated stories he had told several others about visits from his sister’s spirit, who passed on details of how she and their parents were shot to death and their Castor-area farmhouse burned to the ground.
Klaus also spoke of a visit to the ruined home by a fire investigator, insurance representative and a mysterious “black lady” who resembled the Aunt Jemima of pancake syrup fame. The woman went to a side of the basement and picked something out of the debris, saying this is what they had to look for.
She walked to a coal pile and told the small group that was where the first drop of gas fell that was used to start the fire.
The woman also gave a detailed description of where the murder weapon and an ammunition clip would be eventually found.
“Wow, she knows a lot,” said Flett, to encourage Klaus to keep talking.
“She said you will never see me again or hear from me again,” said Klaus.
In a testimony heard earlier in the day, Klaus’s aunt, Marilyn Thomson said her nephew told her about being visited by his sister’s spirit and how she told him what happened.
In spring 2014, Klaus gave her two cellphones for safekeeping, which she put in her basement. On those phones he told her, there was a conversation that Klaus had secretly recorded with Frank that included his full confession to the murders and the fire.
Thomson told him he should take that information to the police right away.
But he refused, saying “Josh would kill him.”
Thomson said she never turned the phones on, and a few weeks later concerned for her family’s safety, insisted he take them or she would throw them out. When he still would not take them to police she threw them out at work. She later told police about them.
After Klaus’s arrest, he called Thomson from the Remand Centre several times. He insisted his arrest was a “misunderstanding” and he had nothing to do with the deaths of his parents and sister.
The trial continues on Thursday.
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