There is some closure this morning for the families of Lisa Dudley and her boyfriend Guthrie McKay who were brutally murdered eight years ago.
The fourth person charged in the pair’s deaths, Thomas Robert Bruce Holden, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder. He will be sentenced in January.
Dudley and McKay were shot and left for dead in a Mission home on Sept.18, 2008.
On that day, Mission RCMP responded to a report of shots fired in the area of Shaw Street in Mission. Patrols went out but could not find anything.
Then, on Sept. 22, Mission RCMP were called to a home on Greenwood Drive as two bodies had been found inside a home. Dudley and McKay were the victims of gunshot wounds. McKay was pronounced dead at the scene. Dudley was left paralyzed but was still alive. She died while en route to the hospital.
Archive video: Global News reporter Rumina Daya has details from the investigation from 2012.
Outside the court today, Guthrie McKay’s parents said it’s a relief for the family to know someone else is being held responsible for the murders.
“We had no expectations of anything right from the beginning, so any success we have achieved along the way is a huge elation for us,” McKay’s mother told reporters.
Lisa Dudley father, Mark Surakka, told Global News Holden’s guilty plea is a ‘partial dissolving of their angst,’ but the family still wants an inquiry into the case.
“Back in 2009, we asked for a Coroner’s inquest and it was always denied because of the litigation process, but now they have promised us an inquest,” he says.
Another man involved in the targeted murders, Bruce Main, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in 2011. He was sentenced to eight years in jail in 2013.
Dudley and McKay were running a marijuana grow-op in their home. Main helped out Dudley at the grow-op and was the one who led the killers to the home.
On May 13, 2011 Jack Douglas Woodruff was also charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the case. Ten months after he was charged he plead guilty to both counts and is currently serving a life sentence. Another man involved, Justin Andrew Mackinnon, was also charged with two counts of first-degree murder in 2011 and was sentenced to seven years in jail.
Archive video: The second of three men charged in the double murder of Lisa Dudley and Guthrie McKay in Mission five-years ago entered a guilty plea in court today. Julia Foy reports.
In 2013, Lisa’s mother, Rosemary Surakka, claimed the RCMP failed to properly investigate a shooting that led to her daughter’s death.
A neighbour called 9-1-1 to report that he and another resident heard six gunshots followed by what sounded like crashing and yelling, according to Surakka’s lawsuit. The neighbour also told the 911 operator where in the neighbourhood he believed the sound came from.
But when RCMP officers responded in two separate cars, they drove around the area for a short time and left, without getting out of their vehicles to investigate the reported shooting or talk to the neighbours who called 9-1-1, the lawsuit says.
Dudley was found by a neighbour four days later.
Surakka filed a lawsuit against the RCMP in the fall of 2011, with the court eventually ruling she had the right to sue the force.
One of the RCMP officers involved in the case was docked a day’s pay and received a letter of reprimand. The case also prompted the RCMP to change its policy to require officers to speak directly to a caller who dials 9-1-1.
-With files from Julia Foy, Amy Judd and the Canadian Press
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