Crown and defence lawyers in a case involving conspiracy to commit three murders and a kidnapping told a B.C. Supreme Court judge Jan. 28 that the accused should be jailed 10 years.
Sylvester Raju pleaded guilty Oct. 15 to his part in plots to kill a Vancouver couple and a man in Surrey as well as planning the kidnapping and torture of another man, Crown prosecutor Mike Barrenger told Justice Ronald Tindale.
The judge heard a police investigation began when police saw a stolen vehicle in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside on Jan. 1, 2022. The police followed.
Eventually, the vehicle was stopped at 12th Avenue and Commercial Drive with three men, including Cory Grosskleg, who had ammunition in his pockets.
A 9-mm pistol was found nearby and a jerry can for gasoline was in the vehicle. Barrenger said such cans are carried in order to burn crime vehicles after killings.
Police got a search warrant for one of the men’s phones and found a $50 electronic fund transfer from Raju.
Eight days later, members of the Vancouver Police Department's technical crime unit discovered the use of an encrypted messaging app called Signal. The app commonly used by criminal groups, the court heard.
What the police found was a trove of messages — more than 3,000 in all — relating to the various conspiracies.
As this was happening, Raju was on parole and living in a transition house in Regina. Vancouver officers went to Regina, arrested Raju and seized his phone.
Soon, police learned of another man allegedly involved in the conspiracy. Gavin Leznoff pleaded guilty in B.C. Supreme Court Jan. 6 to two counts of conspiracy to murder.
Count one alleged Leznoff had conspired with Raju and Grosskleg in Vancouver and elsewhere between December 2021 and January 2022 to murder two people. Those people were not named in court.
Count two alleged Leznoff had conspired with Raju and Grosskleg in Surrey and elsewhere to murder an unknown Surrey male.
In the Vancouver murder conspiracy, Barrenger alleged the men intended to kill a couple living on the 3200-block of Vancouver’s East 49th Avenue. Some of the men had gone as far as to put a tracking device on the couple’s car and had mistakenly staked out the residence’s laneway house believing they lived there on the night they intended to kill them.
“I need you to smoke the rats,” Raju messaged. “Both have to go.”
Barrenger said the laneway was empty at the time. The vehicle they used to stake out the laneway was the one police spotted as stolen.
The second alleged conspiracy targeted an unknown male in Surrey. The planners had a precise address and vehicle descriptions. Again, they had a tracker on a vehicle.
The intention was grab the victim, stuff him in a trunk and take him to an isolated location and “waterboard” him while recording what happened.
“It would be made to look like a music video,” Barrenger said.
Raju appeared to think doing the various crimes would mean they group would get more business.
“What we’re forming is a family,” he messaged. “Loyalty not royalty.”
