Accused killer seeks bail
The man facing a pair of murder charges in relation to the double homicide of two Kamloops men nearly three years ago is trying to get out of jail pending his trial.
The lawyer representing Roy Frederick Fraser made the application in B.C. Supreme Court in Kamloops this morning (Jan. 16).
Fraser, 54, stands accused of killing Kenneth Yaretz and Damien Marks in the spring of 2009.
Yaretz, 24, and Marks, 31, went missing in mid-April of that year. Their bodies were discovered in a shallow grave on Fraser's Knouff Lake property a month later.
Fraser was initially arrested in May of 2009 on suspicion of possession of stolen property, while Kamloops RCMP executed the search warrant at his property which eventually led to the discovery of the bodies.
Fraser was released without charge five days later, promptly re-arrested and then released again.
It wasn't until October 2010 — 17 months after the bodies were discovered — that Kamloops Mounties held a press conference to announce two murder charges against Fraser and the issuance of a Canada-wide warrant for his arrest.
He turned himself in to police in Burnaby 12 hours later and has been in custody since.
Last week, Fraser's preliminary inquiry was held in Kamloops provincial court. It was originally slated to run two weeks, but wrapped up after just one week.
He was committed for trial in B.C. Supreme Court.
Submissions at the preliminary inquiry and the bail hearing are shielded by a court-ordered publication ban.
Not much can be reported about the case other than what police revealed at the press conference announcing charges against Fraser.
At the time, Mounties described their investigation as "painstaking" and said DNA played a large part in securing charges.
Yaretz and Marks were believed to have been close friends and roommates.
While Marks had no criminal history, Yaretz was a convicted drug dealer with ties to the Independent Soldiers street gang and its one-time Kamloops leader, Jayme Russell.
Court documents filed at the Kamloops Law Courts in 2008 stated Yaretz was in a vehicle with Russell that summer when it was pulled over by police.
Fraser also has a criminal record, having received a two-year federal prison sentence after being convicted in 1999 on a number of drug charges in Saskatchewan.
In that instance, police in Saskatoon found Fraser with $120,000 worth of marijuana and hashish he was trying to sell.
After serving four months of that sentence, Fraser was released on parole and moved to the Kamloops area.
The bail hearing in B.C. Supreme Court is expected to last a number of days.
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