Court hears details of sting operation that prompted confession from Jason Klaus

RCMP set up an elaborate undercover operation to coax Jason Klaus into admitting he killed his family.

In the end, he insisted it was Joshua Frank who shot Gordon, Sandra and Monica Klaus to death in the family farmhouse near Castor on Dec. 8, 2013.

Even more, Frank backed up Klaus’s story during a meeting at CrossIron Mills near Calgary the following summer.

Details of how the Mr. Big operation unfolded were heard during a voir dire, a trial within a trial, to determine its admissibility as evidence in the triple murder trial for Klaus and Frank in Red Deer Court of Queen’s Bench.

The undercover operation saw RCMP lure Klaus into what he thought was a criminal organization. The names of the officers involved in the sting are protected under a publication ban.

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Police spent four months building up trust with Klaus by making him an active part of the crime ring. The whole time they drove home one underlying message – if Klaus was honest, the crime organization could make his troubles go away.

Officers who testified Thursday said the operation progressed at a remarkably quick pace thanks largely to Klaus’s enthusiastic participation in the crime organization’s activities. Throughout the course of the sting operation, Klaus was paid more than $13,000 for the work he did for the crime organization.

It started on April 2, 2014 when members made a deal with Jason to store a tractor-trailer unit and other vehicles on the Klaus farm. Once they got to know each other, the crime group gave Klaus a chance to make some cash by helping repossess a car from someone in Red Deer who owed them money. No car was recovered but Klaus was still paid $500.  

Another job saw Klaus travel to Edmonton to help the group collect $10,000 from the same person. In a trip to Grande Prairie, Klaus helped his new friends catch a member of the group suspected of lying to his bosses, and to create blackmail material against a border guard.

To prevent Klaus from becoming suspicious that they weren’t an actual crime ring, RCMP presented a dramatic scenario near Airdrie in which one of the gang members had beaten a prostitute nearly to death. They even had a female officer play the role of the prostitute, putting her in the trunk of a car while appearing unconscious.

The woman was later allowed to leave without any further harm if she promised to keep quiet. Klaus wondered why and was told by his new friends they didn’t want to leave any loose ends.

It was later that night, on June 2, 2014, in a hotel room in Medicine Hat when Klaus confessed that he helped plan the murder of his family.

After saying it was Frank who pulled the trigger on the gun that killed his parents and sister, Klaus said they could pay Frank to disappear, saying, “He’ll do anything for money.”

Nine days later, Klaus recanted his confession in a text message to his supposed friend.

“Hey man, to be perfectly honest I don’t have a clue what happened at my parents’ house,” the late night message read. “[I’m] not going to put you guys at risk… for some reason the heat is on and I didn’t have any part of this.”

However, after more time had passed, Klaus went back to his original story and told it to Mr. Big himself during a meeting in Calgary.

But Mr. Big wasn’t entirely convinced that Klaus’s story was true and asked to meet with Frank. That’s when Klaus arranged a meeting in a parking lot at CrossIron Mills.

The meeting took place on July 19. After being introduced to the group by Klaus, Frank met privately with one of them and confessed to shooting the Klaus family before burning their house to the ground.

Frank went further by taking them to where he threw the murder weapon, a 9 mm pistol, into the Battle River. He also claimed that he still had the lighter used to start the fire along with one of the bullets from the gun.

It was the following day that Klaus and two of the crime organization members bought a metal detector and located vehicle keys Frank said he’d tossed into a ditch on the night of the murders.

A police dive team from B.C. recovered the gun from the river. Klaus and Frank were arrested on Aug. 15, 2014.

The Crown expects to finish presenting its case Friday afternoon.