A man convicted of killing an Indigenous girl along the Highway of Tears in 1978 has lost his appeal.
In 2019, the BC Supreme Court found Garry Taylor Handlen guilty of murdering 12 year-old Monica Jack off the Highway near Merritt.
Police initially suspected Handlen’s involvement in Jack’s disappearance early on, but were unable to build a case against him.
But, through an undercover operation which began in 2014, police were eventually able to coax a confession out of Handlen, leading to his conviction.
He would later file an appeal on the basis that confessions gathered during such undercover stings are usually deemed inadmissible in court.
But, today the BC Court of Appeals decided to uphold the 2019 conviction, saying that while the evidence was accepted in error, Handlen failed to show that the error overrided the conviction.
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