A jury on Thursday found a Surrey mother guilty of conspiring to hire two hitmen to murder her ex-husband.
The verdict by the B.C. Supreme Court jury in the trial of Liza Joylene Belcourt and her two co-accused, David Dean Laidlaw and Jordan Joseph Doiron, came after less than a day of deliberations.
Following a five-week trial, the jury found each accused guilty of one count of conspiring to murder Belcourt’s former common-law husband, Rick Noniewicz.
Court heard that the motive for the plot was that Belcourt was locked in a lengthy battle with Noniewicz over custody of their young son and did not want him to have any part in the boy’s life.
“The first thing that goes through my mind is my little boy,” an emotional Noniewicz said outside court. “I honestly don’t really know what to say. I’m glad it’s over, this part is over.”
Noniewicz said that he wished to thank the police for saving his life and Crown counsels Sandra Dworkin and David Sim for the work they put into the case.
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Prosecutors told the jury that in August 2009, Belcourt hired Laidlaw and Doiron to carry out the murder.
The alleged murder plot was discovered by police while they were intercepting the communications of Laidlaw and Doiron.
“You’ve got that MAC-10 that whispers,” Laidlaw asks Doiron on one of the wiretaps. “What kind of price to put one’s lights out?”
Prosecutors told the jury that the reference to a “MAC-10 that whispers” was to a submachine gun with a silencer.
The “price to put one’s lights out” was a reference to the murder plot, they argued.
The Crown told the jury that Belcourt had recently received a $23,000 ICBC settlement and offered to pay the men $20,000 to commit murder.
On Sept. 4, 2009, Vancouver police approached Belcourt and told her that they were aware of the conspiracy and that if her husband was killed, they would blame her, court heard.
Minutes after the officer left her home, Belcourt was on the phone to Laidlaw telling him that police knew “all about it,” the jury heard.
Belcourt’s lawyer argued that there was no evidence of a murder plot and questioned the alleged motive for murder, saying if there was a plan, it was a plan for a beating, not a murder.
The case was put over to Nov. 30 to fix a date for sentencing. At the request of defence counsel, B.C. Supreme Court Madam Justice Janice Dillon ordered pre-sentencing reports be prepared for Doiron and Laidlaw.
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