A Calgary man on trial accused of strangling his common-law wife then hiding her body was making a plan to run from police, court heard Friday.
Allan Shyback is charged with the second-degree murder of Lisa Mitchell, as well as causing an indignity to a body.
Mitchell, 31, was last seen alive on Oct. 29, 2012.
More than two years later, Shyback opened up to undercover officers in multiple recorded conversations during a police sting operation in Winnipeg.
Court heard the covert police officers became his trusted friends.
So when Shyback received an unexpected call from a detective in December 2014 informing him Mitchell’s case was considered a homicide, he panicked and confided in those new friends.
“I’m gonna wind up behind bars for the rest of my natural life,” Shyback said.
He described a heated argument with Mitchell and said she lunged at him with a knife.
“I pushed back at her… At some point my hands were around her neck. I remember trying to let go, trying to stop. And then she was gone,” Shyback told the officer.
The recorded conversation continued with Shyback explaining he panicked and hid Mitchell’s body in the basement of their Ogden home.
“I boarded a little corner off. Mixed concrete. Poured it into the corner so there was a big kind of corner slab in the corner of the basement that was hidden by a lot of boxes and stuff,” he said.
In the recordings played in court, the 40-year-old said he saw three options open to him.
“One: getting ahold of a lawyer that’s good enough to keep them (police) from being able to search the house…”
“Option two: I don’t know…scorch,” Shyback is heard saying.
“Torch it?” the officer asked.
“It would have to be more than torched. It’d have to be like exploded. Gas leak problem thing,” Shyback said.
“What’s option three?” the officer asked.
“I run,” Shyback said.
In December 2014, police raided the house and discovered Mitchell’s remains.
Investigators found stack of items hiding a cement form.
An excavation of that cement revealed a plastic tub. Inside it was Lisa Mitchell’s body. She was in the fetal position, covered with salt pellets mixed with cat litter.
The trial is scheduled for nine days in front of Justice Rosemary Nation.