Convicted killer William Sandeson will get back a laptop containing a Bitcoin wallet that has been valued at anywhere from $8,000 to more than $200,000 after a Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge found the Crown failed to prove the cryptocurrency was connected to the 2015 murder of Taylor Samson.
Justice John Bodurtha handed down the decision Tuesday in Halifax Supreme Court, ordering that the laptop be returned to Sandeson’s family. He also ruled that Sandeson will not get back the $5,000 in cash seized from his apartment because it was connected to the offence.
Sandeson, who appeared virtually at Tuesday’s hearing, filed a notice of motion in April seeking the return of personal items seized following his arrest and the search of his apartment in 2015.
Among them was the laptop containing a digital Bitcoin wallet. Sandeson has previously said the cryptocurrency was worth between $8,000 and $10,000, while a lawyer representing Samson’s family in a separate wrongful death lawsuit has said it could be worth more than $200,000 today.
The cryptocurrency had previously been at the centre of that wrongful death lawsuit.
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But Bodurtha found the Crown did not meet its burden of proving a connection between the Bitcoin and Samson’s murder.
“The potential use of the cryptocurrency as part of the drug transaction is hypothetical,” Bodurtha said Tuesday. “There was no evidence that the respondent actually intended to use it in the transaction.”
“The Crown cites no evidence of actual dealing with the Bitcoin in connection with the murder,” he added.
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“The Crown has not met its burden to demonstrate the cryptocurrency was used as part of the drug transaction, proceeds of crime, or otherwise tainted by criminality,” he said.
The judge, however, did find that the $5,000 in cash found in Sandeson’s apartment after the murder was “offence-related property.”
Sandeson is serving a life sentence in Quebec for the second-degree murder of Samson. The two were students at Dalhousie University when the killing occurred in 2015. Sandeson had arranged for Samson to come to his apartment to sell him about 18 kilograms of cannabis.
When Samson arrived, Sandeson shot and killed him, keeping the drugs and money. He was convicted of second-degree murder at his first trial, but that conviction was overturned on appeal. He was again found guilty at his second trial in 2023.
During that trial, Sandeson admitted to killing Samson and disposing of his body in the Bay of Fundy.
Samson’s remains have never been recovered.
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