Within days of the deaths of Jason Klaus’ parents and sister, Brady Flett knew the supposedly grief-stricken son was somehow involved.
Flett, though, did not see Klaus as a killer at first, despite details he kept dropping pointing to their deaths as murder.
“What I wanted to believe was maybe he owed some bad people a whole lot of money, and they ended up taking out his family for that reason,” says Flett, who was Monica’s boss and friend at Stettler’s Vortex Production Services.
“Never did I want to believe that he would do that.”
Gordon, Sandra, and Monica Klaus were shot and killed in their beds in the early morning hours of Dec. 8, 2013. Their farmhouse, just outside Castor, was burned to the ground to destroy evidence.
Two of the bodies were found in the family’s burned-out farmhouse near Castor. Sandra’s body was never found, but police believe she also died in the house.
The family dog was also killed, and its corpse left in the yard. The dead dog immediately raised suspicions with police who began investigating.
But it would be eight months and thousands of hours of police work before Jason Klaus and his accomplice, Joshua Frank, were arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
Flett was not surprised.
Within a few weeks of the fire and after a number of disturbing conversations with Klaus, Flett was convinced the son was directly responsible. On Jan. 15, he volunteered to become a police informer and encouraged Klaus to open up.
He went to police after Klaus confided in him, telling him bizarre stories of ghosts providing details of the crime including the kind of gun used, where it was dumped and the use of aviation fuel to start the fire that destroyed the Klaus farmhouse just outside Castor.
On one occasion, standing with Flett in the debris-filled basement of the remains of his family home, Klaus performed a chilling pantomime.
Pointing his finger like a gun, he mimicked how his parents Gordon and Sandra and sister Monica had been shot as they lay in their beds in December 2013.
“When we were in the basement he showed a pile of anger,” recalls Flett. “That’s the time where I had no doubt in my mind this was done out of a pile of anger.”
From mid-January to the arrest of Klaus and accomplice Joshua Frank on Aug. 15, every conversation and phone call Flett had with Klaus was secretly recorded by police. The evidence he gathered built the case against Klaus and led to the RCMP making the decision to try to ensnare him in a Mr. Big undercover operation, which ran for four months beginning in April 2014.
Police informant was a lonely role and he could not breathe a word until his testimony was completed in the trial that ran for six weeks last October and November.
“It was a long four years because my wife is the only person who knew anything of my involvement. My kids didn’t know. Nobody at work knew because I couldn’t share a word with anybody.”
It was especially hard on his wife Norma.
“There were times I’d be gone from 2 o’clock in the afternoon to three in the morning and there was zero communication I could have with her.”
Norma feared for their own children and five grandchildren. She even looked at moving to another country, to get far away from Klaus and Frank.
Flett said he was fully aware of the peril if Klaus had found out his role.
“If you can take out your own family, taking out my family wouldn’t have been a big issue.
“I didn’t care because I would have been dead. I’m a believer in once you’re dead, it really don’t matter.”
Norma’s fears were heightened when Klaus’ and Frank’s lawyers went before a judge last August to have their charges stayed on the grounds the case took too long to go to trial. She was terrified the two would walk free.
After 11 tense days, a judge dismissed the lawyers’ applications and the trial went ahead last fall. The two were convicted and sentenced last month to life in prison with no parole for 25 years.
Testifying in court, Flett was asked why he got involved.
“For Monica,” he said simply.
Flett says he thinks about his executive assistant and close friend every day still. A photo of her and her beloved dog Patches hangs in Vortex’s lobby in Stettler.
“Monica sat side by side with me for 10 years. There’s nothing I did that Monica didn’t know of and there was nothing that I needed done that Monica didn’t take care of.”
In a sign of the amount of respect the company’s staff had for her, Vortex staff turned out in force for her funeral, travelling from as far as Grande Prairie and Fort St. John, B.C. — a nine-hour drive.
“She was an easy person to like,” he says. “She always had a smile on her face even when I’d be rude to her,” he said, chuckling.
“It would be 35 below and she’d walk in and have a smile on her face and I’d give her (crap). She would just laugh.
“She had a beautiful heart.”
Brother Jason was invited as her date to numerous company Christmas parties and other gatherings. If there were problems with her brother, she didn’t say.
“She never, ever spoke a negative word about her brother.”
Jason Klaus and Joshua Frank were both convicted and sentenced to life in prison earlier this year. Both appealed their sentences.
Crown prosecutors have also appealed. They want the men’s parole eligibility increased to 75 years so there is no chance of them ever getting out of prison.
Flett says that’s what they deserve.
pcowley@reddeeradvocate.com
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