Jury trial for accused killer
The man facing murder charges in relation to a 2009 double homicide in Knouff Lake has elected judge and jury for his trial.
Roy Frederick Fraser entered not-guilty pleas and made the election at an arraignment hearing on Thursday, March 10.
The 53-year-old is facing one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in connection to the deaths of Kenneth Yaretz and Damien Marks.
The bodies of Yaretz, 24, and Marks, 31, were discovered in May of 2009 in a shallow grave on a Knouff Lake property owned by Fraser.
Fraser turned himself in to police in Burnaby on October 25, 2010, less than 12 hours after Kamloops Mounties held a press conference announcing they had obtained a Canada-wide warrant for his arrest in connection with the murders.
At the press conference, Mounties described the investigation as “painstaking” and said DNA played a large part in securing charges.
During the course of the investigation, Kamloops RCMP received help from a forensic botanist and a forensic knot-tying expert.
Yaretz and Marks, who were close friends and roommates, disappeared in mid-April of 2009 while apparently moving into a four-plex in Brocklehurst.
Yaretz had a criminal history, including a conviction for trafficking in a controlled substance in 2007, for which he was sentenced to nine months in jail.
He is also alleged to have been an associate of Jayme Russell, who Mounties have identified as the local leader of the Independent Soldiers street gang.
Fraser is slated to return to court on March 31 to fix a date for preliminary inquiry.
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