A Calgary man who killed his girlfriend and is on trial for the murder of her young daughter took undercover officers in the middle of the night to a remote, snow-covered area where they were buried.
Robert Leeming, who is 36, has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Jasmine Lovett and not guilty to second-degree murder in the death of 22-month-old Aliyah Sanderson.
The mother and toddler were reported missing in April of 2019 after they didn’t show up for a family dinner.
Court heard this week that Leeming was befriended by two undercover officers, who told him they had retrieved a bag of evidence from a nosy neighbour.
They offered to help him with his problems — including removing the bodies of Lovett and her daughter, who were in a shallow grave under a pile of mulch and branches in a day-use area west of Calgary.
One of the officers testified that Leeming knew exactly where the bodies were.
The officer said they went to the area in the early morning of May 6, 2019, and walked a short distance on foot.
“I said, ‘OK, where to?’ And (Leeming) goes, ‘You’re looking at it.’ And he points down. And underneath and against my left foot were branches and a pile,” said the officer.
“(Leeming) goes and he grabs a branch and lifts it up as if to prove what’s underneath all these branches. As he does that, I see a small bit of blue that I believe to be the moving blankets.”
Investigators previously testified that the mother and child were doused in gasoline and wrapped in blue blankets before they were covered in dirt, mulch and branches.
The trial also heard that Lovett had skull fractures and was shot in the head. Aliyah died of blunt force head trauma.
The officer said Leeming boasted about steps he had taken to hinder a possible police investigation — including hiding wads of raw bacon around his house to throw off cadaver dogs and filling the back of his car with mulch.
“Well, mulch is death, right? So it smells like death,” Leeming told the officers in a tape recording played in court.
“You cleaned that car up good?” asked the undercover officer.
“Oh, yeah,” he replied.
The officer said Leeming also expressed relief that his 2014 Mercedes seized by police was an older model.
“It’s funny ’cause they were telling me the Mercedes, they pretty much can hook up to the computer in the car and know exactly where I’ve been,” Leeming said with a laugh.
“It’s too old a car. If it was an ’18, then I’d be in jail.”
The prosecution was expected to wrap up its case Friday.