Call it the case of the mysterious blood spots.
It could be a red herring — literally — or it may be a crucial piece of forensic evidence in a triple murder trial.
All the evidence has now been presented at the Red Deer trial of Jason Klaus and Joshua Frank.
The two men are charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths four years ago of Klaus’s parents, Gordon and Sandra, and his sister, Monica. They were shot to death on Dec. 8, 2013, before their Castor, Alta.-area farmhouse was burned to the ground.
Two of the final witnesses called to testify by Frank’s defence team focused on spots of blood on freshly fallen snow outside the Klaus’s burning farmhouse.
RCMP Cpl. Joany Paradis testified “a frozen red substance located on the driveway” was first discovered by a firefighter, who placed an orange cone over the spot to preserve the evidence.
The red substance was originally discovered by a firefighter who placed an orange cone over the spot to preserve the evidence. (RCMP )
Paradis said the “red substance” was located five metres away from the family dog that had been shot and killed outside the farmhouse.
Forensic investigators took a swab of the sample, and waited to see if they could get a match.
DNA Analysis
Jason Klaus first met an undercover RCMP officer posing as an organized crime boss in February 2014, nearly three months after his parents and sister were murdered.
The meeting took place at a truck stop restaurant in west Edmonton. Klaus must have had something to drink because — unbeknownst to him following the meeting — the Mountie seized a plastic straw used by Klaus.
RCMP DNA expert Robert Schimpf testified he later swabbed both ends of the plastic straw, then compared his findings to the red substance found months earlier in the snow.
Said Schimpf: “We were able to get a match to the blood.”
He testified there was a one in 68 trillion chance the blood was from someone other than Jason Klaus.
In June, 2014, Klaus obeyed a court order to provide a DNA sample. The test result was identical. It was an exact match to the straw sample; again, there was a one in 68 trillion chance the blood was from someone other than Klaus.
Under cross-examination by Klaus’s lawyer, Schimpf admitted he had no way of knowing when the blood was deposited.
During the RCMP investigation, Klaus said he could not recall having any injury around the time of his family’s deaths that would result in leaving his blood on the snow.
Jason Klaus insists he was nowhere near the farmhouse the night his family was murdered. But his blood was found on freshly fallen snow outside the house. (Alberta Outdoorsmen Magazine )
He insisted to police and repeated on the witness stand that he was nowhere near his family’s farmhouse when they were murdered.
It’s expected Frank’s lawyers will focus on the blood spots during closing arguments Wednesday, because the forensic evidence potentially puts Klaus at the scene of the crime.