Greg Fertuck details fatal confrontation with wife Sheree in secretly-recorded meeting with fake crime boss
CBC
Greg Fertuck told an undercover police officer on hidden camera that he shot his wife Sheree twice with a .22 calibre rifle, once in the shoulder and then in the back of the head, during a confrontation at a gravel pit near Kenaston, Sask. six years ago.
"I snapped and then I shot her," he said in a secretly-recorded conversation with the officer.
The veteran officer was posing as the head of a criminal syndicate at the time. Two hours of the three-hour conversation was played Monday at Fertuck's first-degree murder trial at Court of Queen's Bench in Saskatoon.
Sheree Fertuck disappeared on Dec. 7, 2015.
The 51-year-old mother of three went missing after heading to work at the gravel pit near the small town south of Saskatoon. Her truck, jacket and cellphone were found there on Dec. 8, and she has not been seen or heard from since.
Although Greg told undercover police that he shot her and dumped her body in the country, he later changed that story and pleaded not guilty.
Police elicited the admission by posing as criminals in a technique known as a Mr. Big sting. The damning disclosure came during a meeting June 21, 2019 in a seventh floor suite at the James Hotel in downtown Saskatoon.
None of the officers involved in the operation, called Project Fisten, can be named because of a court-ordered publication ban.
Justice Richard Danyliuk is presiding over the judge-alone trial and he has yet to determine the admissibility of the evidence from the sting.
On Monday, the beginning of the seventh week of the trial, the officer who played Mr. Big took the witness box and answered questions from prosecutor Cory Bliss to set up the hidden recording.
The officer who portrayed Mr. Big is a 20-year veteran of the RCMP who has played every role in previous "major crime techniques," which is how RCMP describe Mr. Big stings.
Under questioning by Bliss, he said the undercover officers involved in the 136 scripted interactions with Fertuck were all well aware of the expectations set out by the Supreme Court when it comes to the stings.
"We will not risk losing this technique because of poor conduct on our part," he said.
Bliss asked how the officer responded to charges that police use "trickery and deceit" to get a suspect to admit to a serious crime.
More than 1,000 Maritime Electric customers are without power after high winds blew across the Island Friday night into Saturday.
The Supreme Court of Canada is deliberating a case that could shape the way sentences are handed down in cases where both the offender and victim are Indigenous, which some Nunavut lawyers say could have ramifications for the Inuit-majority territory.
A man barricaded in a former church in Welland, Ont., was taken into custody early Saturday, nearly 24 hours into a standoff that began over a fence dispute.
Peel police are investigating after a Friday night shooting in Mississauga left one person dead, police said.
Another busy construction season has come to an end in London, and the city is already looking ahead to next spring when a slew of new projects are expected to begin.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has begun to lay out publicly what he sees as boundaries when dealing with China, as his government wades into a new relationship with the economic giant.
Ferry crossings are cancelled and over a thousand households are left without power Saturday morning, due to high winds and severe weather conditions.
Tens of thousands of Nova Scotia Power customers are waking up without power on Saturday morning after high winds and rain hit the province on Friday night.
Statistics Canada is reporting a population decrease last quarter for New Brunswick — its largest quarterly decline since the 1970s, according to an economic development consultant.
Residents clapped, danced, sang and cried in the Anishinaabe community of Kitcisakik this week when the lights were finally turned on for the first time.
A man is suing three members of a Winnipeg family and a real estate broker he alleges used his intellectual disability to financially exploit him through property deals in Canada and India, leaving him out hundreds of thousands of dollars.
When Stephanie Gamble watched her mother model the first dress she made, smiling wide and walking an imaginary runway, she knew that was what she wanted to keep doing in her life.
'Tis the season for cuddling on the couch with a cup of hot chocolate and watching holiday movies. And for people in B.C.'s Interior, that can increasingly mean seeing their home communities on display.