Canada - Pair turn informants, guilty in homicide cases

OFF THE WIRE
Paul Cherry
 montrealgazette.com

Two brothers from Nova Scotia became police informants late last year and have supplied information involving three Montreal-area homicides.
Robert William Simpson, 48, and his brother Shawn Timothy Simpson, 45, appeared before Superior Court Justice André Vincent Tuesday morning at the Montreal courthouse and entered guilty pleas to three counts of first-degree murder.
According to the court documents filed when they pleaded guilty, both men have agreed to testify in other cases related to the three murders.
They admitted to taking part in the Jan. 24, 2010, deaths of Kirk Murray and Antonio Onesi. The men were shot to death while they waited outside a car in the parking lot of a McDonald’s restaurant. The brothers were arrested months after the double-murder along with Jeffrey Albert Lynds, 42, a former member of a Hells Angels chapter in Nova Scotia. Police sources have told The Gazette in the past the slayings probably were tied to a drug deal that went bad.
The brothers also pleaded guilty to a murder they had yet to be charged with until Tuesday. The victim, Mark Stewart, disappeared from the South Shore in February 2010 and his body was later found months later.
According to documents filed in court, the brothers began making statements about all three murders in November and took polygraph tests on Nov. 16. The Montreal police have paid more than $7,000 and $5,000 to cover the cost of the older brother and younger brother’s meals and medication since Nov. 2. Their contracts call for further payments down the road. For example, they will be paid monthly instalments of $50 each for the duration of their detention. They will also be paid $3,500 for “the expenses of an academic formation or post-secondary studies.”
Both men were sentenced to life sentences and are eligible for parole after they serve at least 25 years.
Sabin Ouellet, the prosecutor who handled the guilty pleas, told Vincent that the murders were ordered by someone else, but he held back on naming the person.
But it has become apparent someone has been providing the police with evidence involving Lynds. In December, the former Hells Angel, was named, but not charged as being responsible for a long unsolved murder in Nova Scotia.
pcherry@montrealgazette.com
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