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Three men have been found guilty of first-degree murder in the 2022 killing of an Abbotsford couple.
Arnold and Joanne De Jong were found dead in their Abbotsford home on Arcadian Way, a rural area in the north of the city, on May 9, 2022.
Nearly four years to the day, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Brenda Brown ruled Friday that Gurkaran Singh, Abhijeet Singh and Khushveer Toor each played a willing and integral role in the couple’s murder.
“I find each accused was a willing, knowledgeable and integral participant in the murders,” said Brown.
She agreed with Crown prosecutors that the murders were motivated by financial gain.
Throughout the course of the trial, prosecutors told the court the men jointly plotted to rob and kill the couple, and stole credit cards, cheques and a power washer from the home
The three worked together for a cleaning company owned by Abhijeet Singh, which had done work at the couples’ home on more than one occasion.
Family and friends packed the courtroom, and three overflow rooms, as they listened to Brown’s verdict.
When the trial started, the three men, all in their 20s, pleaded not guilty to two counts each of first-degree murder.
The court heard the De Jongs were found dead in separate bedrooms, with Arnold on a bed with his entire head and face wrapped in duct tape, and Joanne on a bed with blood around her. Their hands and feet were bound by rope.
Investigators uncovered a large trove of circumstantial evidence linking the three men to the deaths, which the Crown alleged supported the case for high-level murder charges.
Crown prosecutor William Dorsey, during his closing submissions in March, told Justice Brown that the men worked together to plan the murders and take the De Jongs’ money.
Defence lawyers disputed that the killings were planned, telling the court during their closing submissions that the circumstantial evidence does not prove premeditated murder.
They described what happened as a robbery gone wrong. Brown, in her ruling, rejected that argument.
Brown said the Crown portrayed the murders as “not the work of one of the accused or two accused,” rather as committed by all three as a team.
She said the prosecution argued that “no matter who in fact inflicted the mortal injuries” the three men shared “equal culpability.”
The three men, prosecutors told the trial, “hastily” fled from B.C. after the killings, with phone data evidence showing Abhijeet Singh conducted “exceptionally damning” internet searches after reading news articles about the deaths, making queries about how murderers are punished in Canada.
Prosecutors also laid out how DNA from all three men was found. Some was at the crime scene, some on rope used to tie up Arnold De Jong and some on a metal baseball bat found in the suspects’ vehicle.
Sandra Barthel, one of the De Jongs’ daughters, described the feeling of hearing the judge’s ruling.
“[It] felt like my heart was going to come out of my chest,” she said. “I think there was joy in that, knowing that the judge saw this for what it was and that she was able to act upon it.”
The court heard the De Jongs spent the day with family the day before they were found dead.
“They had so many things about them that were so special to us that we miss every day,” said Kimberley Coleman, Barthel’s sister. “It’s so bittersweet that, you know, we have this first-degree conviction for all three suspects on both counts, but yet we still grieve.”
Sentencing for Toor, Gurkaran Singh and Abhijeet Singh is scheduled for May 28.
