A Castor-area man accused of murdering his parents and sister denied in a police interview that he was the killer and said his sister’s spirit had visited to reassure him.
RCMP major crimes investigator Sgt. Rob Kropp told Jason Klaus, on Jan. 7, 2014, his parents death on Dec. 8, 2013, was being investigated as a homicide, and he was a suspect. He asked Klaus point blank whether he killed his parents and sister.
“No, I did not,” he told Kropp early into a 3 1/2-hour interview at the Stettler detachment.
“I don’t know how they died or were murdered or anything else,” he said.
“I can’t express to you how much I miss my family. Nobody understands that,” he said.
“I’m not a cold-blooded killer. If I shoot a deer and it doesn’t die right away that bugs me.”
Later, in the sometimes rambling interview, Klaus said his sister Monica’s spirit had visited him twice since her remains and those of their father Gordon were found in her parents’ burned-out home on a farm near Castor. Their mother, Sandra, is also believed to have been in the home, but her remains were never identified.
Klaus said his sister told him the three didn’t feel the fire and his mother, crying and horrified, had watched him standing in their lane as the house burned.
“I wish you could feel 10 seconds of my pain,” Klaus told Kropp. “For someone to accuse me of this is horrifying.”
Klaus said he suspected to hear again from his sister and had a feeling she would give him more information about the crime.
“She will come.”
Klaus was told as a suspect, he did not have to talk to police.
”You can walk out the this door if you choose to do so and not talk to me anymore,” Kropp told him.
However, Klaus continued to talk and showed Kropp what he believed may be fragments of bone and a bullet found in the ruins of the family home on a farm near Castor. They could be clues that could help lead investigators to his family’s killer, he suggested.
Klaus denied he did not get along with his family. There were times when he made have butted heads with his parents, Gordon and Sandra Klaus, and his sister Monica sometimes did not like his girlfriends.
“There was never a time I would not want them in my life for any reason.”
Klaus and a friend, Joshua Frank, 32, have been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and arson in connection with the deaths of Klaus’s parents and sister. Frank has also been charged with killing the family dog.
Their trial in Red Deer Court of Queen’s Bench began Monday. So far, the proceedings have involved replaying audio and audio-visual police interviews with Klaus in the days and weeks following the fatal fire.
They form evidence in a voir dire — often described as a trial within a trial — to determine the admissibility and “voluntariness” of statements the accused gave police. It will be up to Justice Eric Macklin to decide if the recordings can be admitted as evidence.
In one interview, Klaus told police a group of four hunters from Utah or Idaho had been on the family farm in September and had been shown the prized deer head, which was worth $150,000 to $200,000, he said.
Klaus said while he didn’t “want to go there” he wondered if the hunters could have had something to do with the deaths of his parents and sister.
During another meeting with Kropp, Klaus passed on that he heard nearby neighbours had seen flames at his parents’ farm about 5 or 5:30 a.m. but had not called 911.
The fire was reported some time after 7 a.m.
“There’s something fishy there that they didn’t call 911,” Klaus said.
He also told the RCMP investigator that a jerrycan full of aviation fuel that he kept for his snowmobile had mysteriously gone missing from the family farm.
The trial continues Wednesday.