ALEXANDER LaGlace told an undercover police officer that he killed his girlfriend Tammy Cordone by stabbing her in the chest with a knife 10 to 15 times.
LaGlace made the confession on March 25, 2010 as he was riding in a wiretapped car with an undercover officer posing as a crime boss.
On Thursday, audiotapes of those wiretaps were played in B.C. Supreme Court, where LaGlace, 47, is on trial for second-degree murder before Justice Terry Schultes.
LaGlace said on the tape it happened in May of 2009. "I was living with a woman. She was stabbed to death," he said.
". . . It happened in the park in the middle of nowhere. Lighthouse Park. We were living in the park," he said.
LaGlace told the undercover officer there was no evidence. "I scrubbed it off. Everything's wiped down," he said. He said he took all of the woman's possessions "all of her ID, cellphones" and removed them.
The undercover officer asked LaGlace if the woman was stabbed in the chest. "Yes," said LaGlace. "I don't know how many times. Probably 10 or 15 times," he said.
LaGlace said he thought about cutting up the woman and throwing her in the ocean but decided against it because "everything was going to start floating after a while."
"Was it a big knife?" the undercover officer asked.
"No," said LaGlace. "It was a small folding knife."
He told the officer he took a bus to a park on Indian land in North Vancouver where he got rid of the knife. "It's either gone or it's hidden in the trees. . . ." he said. "I don't know where it is."
"You threw it there yourself?" asked the officer.
"Yes," said LaGlace.
"No one knows nothing. You're the first one I ever told this to," LaGlace said moments later.
"What was her name?" the officer asked him.
"Tammy Cordone," said LaGlace.
LaGlace made the confession about six weeks into a "Mr. Big" undercover operation where one police officer posing as a crime boss pretended to recruit LaGlace into a criminal organization.
The day before, LaGlace had called the "boss" on his cellphone while he was drunk late at night and talked incoherently about how when he got bored "people disappear into the spirit world."
"I'm a killer," he said on the wiretapped phone conversation. "Just kidding . . . I like messing with people's minds."
In another call he told the undercover officer he "just wants to kill someone again."
In the undercover operation, the "crime boss" paid LaGlace cash to carry out various tasks, from delivering goods to a storage locker, to mapping possible smuggling routes across the Canada-U.S. border. The "crime boss" undercover officer told LaGlace he was working on a big deal that would bring in lots of money and he'd like LaGlace to be part of that, as a trusted member of his crew. He said afterwards everyone would go on vacation to Mexico.
LaGlace told the officer he'd love to come "if he doesn't end up killing."
"It was an odd statement and it was made out of the blue," said the officer, who has been on the witness stand for most of the week. He said he didn't ask LaGlace to elaborate.
The officer - whose identity is protected by a publication ban - said before the undercover operation began, he was told that police had been doing surveillance on LaGlace as part of a murder investigation, but was given no details. He was told LaGlace had been diagnosed with both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, was addicted to street drugs and alcohol, and often carried knives with him.
Cordone's body was found in a tent in West Vancouver's Lighthouse Park on May 19, 2009 after LaGlace made a middle-of-the-night 9-1-1 call to police, telling them he had returned to their campsite and found her dead.
Earlier in the trial, prosecutor Nicole Gregoire played the audiotape of that 9-1-1 call, where LaGlace told an operator he'd discovered his wife dead in a flat, emotionless voice.
A pathologist determined Cordone died after being stabbed 18 times.
Police who first arrived at the scene found no signs of struggle in the tent.
Police detained LaGlace that day. But after an unsuccessful attempt to get a confession, he was released.
The trial continues.
