‘It defies logic’: Court finds killing of university lecturer was planned, not spontaneous
A former Kamloops, B.C., lawyer who stole nearly $800,000 from his client, then killed him and smuggled his body out of a downtown office building in a plastic tote, has been convicted of first-degree murder.
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Kathleen Ker ruled that Rogelio (Butch) Bagabuyo’s 2022 killing of Mohd Abdullah, a lecturer at Thompson Rivers University, was both planned and deliberate.
Ker said “it defies logic, common sense and human experience” that the stabbing could have been a spontaneous act, according to a CBC report.
Lawyer spends $780,000 of client’s money
The court heard Abdullah hired Bagabuyo in 2016 and the pair conspired to hide money from Abdullah’s wife during their separation, but the lawyer went on to spend more than $780,000 of those funds.
The judge called Bagabuyo a “fraudster” who told his former client “what he wanted to hear” to make it seem like he would eventually return the funds, but that was a “complete fabrication” because he had spent all the money, according to CTV News.
Bagabuyo was given the automatic sentence for first-degree murder: life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
When asked if he wanted to address the court before sentencing, he shook his head, according to the CBC report.
Money scheme unravelled before killing
At trial, prosecutors said Bagabuyo’s motive was financial, arguing he methodically planned the March 11, 2022 killing after realizing he could not keep deceiving Abdullah about the missing money.
The Crown told the court that Bagabuyo and Abdullah had arranged to shield the lecturer’s money from his estranged wife, but when Abdullah began pressing for its return, the lawyer knew “the jig” was up, says the CBC.
Crown counsel argued Bagabuyo spent more than a week preparing, including emailing Abdullah on March 1 to set up the meeting, writing a to-do list on a cue card and buying what Ker described as a “decoy tote” in the days before the killing.
Bagabuyo admitted killing Abdullah, says the CBC, but claimed it was manslaughter, with his lawyer telling the court the death was “unexpected.”
Ker rejected that version, saying the only rational conclusion from the evidence was that “Bagabuyo planned to kill Mr. Abdullah and undertook a number of preparatory steps in the days preceding the meeting of March 11.”
“These steps were both carefully thought out and considered over a number of days,” Ker said.
A French man who was labelled "HR killer" went on trial in 2023 for his alleged killing of three women, including two HR professionals, in 2021.
'Precision and skill' with murder
Ker said the evidence showed that, after the killing, Bagabuyo wrapped Abdullah’s body in plastic sheeting, put a homemade garrote around his neck, placed him in a large plastic bin and secured it with ratchet straps, says the CBC report.
She outlined a series of steps Bagabuyo had to complete in roughly two hours between Abdullah being seen walking toward the office and the then-lawyer leaving with a tote and multiple garbage bags, says the report.
“It further defies logic, common sense and human experience that Mr. Bagabuyo could have accomplished all of the steps enumerated above with precision and skill in such a short amount of time,” Ker said.
Ker said that tight timeline, combined with the absence of defensive wounds on Bagabuyo when he was arrested, supported “the conclusion that a spontaneous, unplanned confrontation did not occur in this case.”
Back in 2015, two television journalists were shot and killed in Virginia while conducting a live interview, and authorities said the suspect appeared to be a disgruntled current or former employee of the TV station.
Arrest, conviction of lawyer
Abdullah’s body was discovered inside the tote on March 17, 2022, by the grandson of a friend whom Bagabuyo had asked to rent a van and help find a place to bury the bin, according to the judgment reported by CBC.
Bagabuyo was arrested the next day and initially charged with indignity to human remains before being charged more than a year later with first-degree murder.
He had been out on bail since July 12, 2023, but was taken back into custody immediately after his conviction.
The B.C. Law Society previously confirmed Bagabuyo is no longer a lawyer, according to CTV News.
