AFTER A DAUGHTER'S LONG CRUSADE, 7 MURDER CHARGES IN DRUG CASE

Trying to Exonerate Killer Father, Tami Morrisroe Went Undercover

Tami Morrisroe, a former Richmond woman who allegedly infiltrated a
criminal organization in a bid to help her imprisoned father helped lead
police to an alleged underworld hitman who now has been charged with seven
drug-related slayings in 1995 and 1996.

Robert (Bobby) Bruce Moyes, 47, was charged with the double murder of a
Burnaby couple, Eugene Uyeyama, 35, and his wife Michele, 30, who were
killed in their home before it was set on fire in December 1995.

Moyes, who is already serving a life sentence, was also charged Tuesday
with the first-degree murder of five people killed at a rural Abbotsford
farmhouse in September 1996: Raymond Graves, 70, and his wife Sonto Graves,
56, their son David Kernail Sangha, 37, and family friends Daryl Brian
Klassen, 30 and his wife Teresa Klassen, 30.

Police say more arrests are imminent within the next week.

The charges came after a 20-month joint investigation that began in January
2001. It was conducted by Abbotsford police, the RCMP, Vancouver police and
the Organized Crime Agency of B.C.

"It was a very extensive and complex investigation," RCMP media liaison
Constable Danielle Efford said.

She said the murder investigation stemmed from a drug investigation into
organized crime and the large-scale importation and distribution of cocaine
with "national and international implications."

It is believed the criminal organization had links to the Cali cocaine
cartel in Columbia.

Efford would not comment when asked if police were stepping up security
around Tami Morrisroe, who went into the witness program in 1996 after she
allegedly infiltrated a criminal organization.

Morrisroe said earlier she became involved with the organization to prove
the innocence of her father, Sid Morrisroe, who is serving a life sentence
for the 1983 murder of Penthouse nightclub owner Joe Philliponi.

Sid Morrisroe said Wednesday that Tami called him earlier in the day. He
said he is worried about her safety now that murder charges have been laid.

"I always worry about her, but I think she'll be all right," he said in an
interview. "The Mounties are keeping a pretty close watch on her . . . it's
pretty dangerous."

He added: "How many kids would stand by their father all these years?"

Tami Morrisroe spent years fighting to prove her father's innocence.

At one point, she chained herself to the office door of then justice
minister Allan Rock to protest the justice department's refusal to declare
her father innocent and release him from prison after an investigation by
justice department lawyers.

Even after she entered the witness protection program, she confronted Rock
at a public meeting and questioned his decision not to reopen her father's
case.

The information she gathered during the RCMP undercover operation has never
been made public and still is in the hands of the RCMP.

While visiting her father at Ferndale prison in the mid-1990s, Tami
Morrisroe met another prisoner, Sal Ciancio, who allegedly told her that
her father had been framed. Ciancio allegedly said he knew who was behind
the frame-up.

According to Tami, Ciancio said that he had insider knowledge because he
was related by marriage to the Philliponi family. (The Philliponis maintain
Sid Morrisroe was properly convicted for being involved in the plan to kill
Joe Philliponi, who was shot in the head by Scott Forsyth.)

Once Ciancio was released from prison, Tami met with him in a restaurant
and used a hidden tape-recorder to get him to repeat his allegations about
her father being framed.

She claims that Ciancio got her involved with a criminal organization,
where she spent months counting out millions of dollars in drug money.

Eventually, fearing for her life, she turned to the RCMP for help.

The police enlisted her as an undercover agent. RCMP electronic
surveillance experts planted a secret hidden microphone and transmitter in
her purse.

As the investigation progressed, police secretly installed wiretaps on
dozens of phones and placed listening devices in Morrisroe's car and other
vehicles used by members of the criminal organization.

During her months of work as an undercover police agent, Tami repeatedly
asked Ciancio and his buddies what they knew about her father being framed.

But what caught the interest of police was Ciancio talking to his cohorts,
who bragged about being involved in eight murders, including the five at
the Abbotsford farmhouse, the Uyeyama murders and the murder of former
world-class skier Terry Watts, who was found dead in the trunk of a rental
car in Vancouver on Aug. 9, 1996.

Watts had apparently owed a drug debt and had moved out of the country for
many years, fearing retaliation. He was allegedly lured back on a false
promise that the debt would be forgotten.

The Abbotsford murders also allegedly stemmed from a dispute about money.
Raymond and Sonto Graves and their son had criminal records for drug offences.

Raymond and Sonto Graves had also been charged with the attempted murder of
Balbit Singh Sidhu, who had been shot at Cultus Lake. At their bail
hearing, it was revealed that the couple might have been cheated out of
$28,000 by Sidhu.

The couple were supposed to be alone when the murder contract on their
lives was executed. Sonto Graves' son from a previous marriage was
unexpectedly there, so he had to be killed. And Daryl Klassen, who had
connections to the cocaine trade, also unexpectedly arrived with his wife,
so they were killed as well.

At the time of the Abbotsford murders, Moyes had been released on day
parole from a life sentence for robbery imposed in 1987.

Moyes, originally from the Victoria area, has a lengthy criminal record
that includes two attempted murders, two prison escapes and several robberies.

Moyes had served time in Ferndale minimum-security prison in Mission with
Ciancio and Sid Morrisroe. After Moyes was released from prison, he shared
a home in Coquitlam with Ciancio.

It was there that Tami said she met Moyes and asked him seemingly innocent
questions about the Abbotsford murders. Moyes allegedly bragged that he was
well paid for his work as a hired killer.

Two of the Abbotsford murders were allegedly committed with a gun and the
three other victims allegedly died from knife wounds.

Tami recalled seeing guns and knives being cleaned with vinegar in Cianco's
kitchen after the murders. Cianco told her the vinegar removed all
fingerprints.

Tami Morrisroe once told The Vancouver Sun that a member of the criminal
organization had given her a gun for safekeeping and that she was later
told to get rid of it.

Tami told that person that she threw the gun off a bridge. But she actually
handed it over to the RCMP, she said. She was horrified when told the gun
had been used in the Abbotsford murders.

She initially made contact with police by pretending to lay claim to
$300,000 in cash that had been seized from hidden compartments in a car
stopped at the Canada-U.S. border. The FBI had spotted the car in
California and alerted Canadian authorities.

Tami Morrisroe recalled earlier that two members of the criminal
organization were waiting in a car parked outside the RCMP detachment,
thinking Tami was asking police for the return of the $300,000. Instead,
she used the opportunity to spill the beans.

Life in the witness protection program has been difficult for Morrisroe,
who previously sued the RCMP for $10 million, claiming a series of mistakes
by police had put her life in jeopardy, as well as the lives of her family,
who also entered the program.

For years, she wondered why murder charges were never laid in the case she
helped investigate for the RCMP.

During an interview earlier this year, she said she was happy and felt her
former life was finally behind her, believing she would never have to testify.

She seemed to be finally settling down and starting a new life with her
family somewhere in North America.

At one point during her work as a police agent, she said, she felt
pressured by Sal Ciancio to marry him because Ciancio believed a wife could
never testify against a spouse.

Tami did marry Ciancio in a hastily-arranged wedding ceremony.

This would later come as a surprise to her then common-law husband, who was
told by police at a White Spot restaurant what his wife had gotten herself
into. He was shocked and also entered the witness protection program.

Police would not explain why it took so long to lay murder charges.

RCMP and the Abbotsford police did say that prior to the two sets of
murders there was already a drug investigation under way after police
seized 270 kilograms of cocaine in September, 1995.

The cocaine, with a street value at the time of between $27 and $30
million, was discovered in two: On the Trans-Canada Highway at McCallum
Road in Abbotsford and in a home in the 2900-block of East Fifth Avenue in
Vancouver.

In the first seizure, on Sept. 24, Chilliwack RCMP stopped a car and found
120 kilograms of cocaine inside the vehicle, which had been rented in
Alberta. Two men from Quebec were charged with possession of a narcotic.
Then, on Sept. 29, the RCMP drug squad found 150 kilograms of cocaine along
with an AR-10 assault rifle in the Vancouver home.

"We had a drug investigation and then two parallel homicides," Abbotsford
Police Constable Shinder Kirk said Wednesday.

"At some point in the investigations we compared notes and realized there
were similarities."

He said a joint investigation team was formed 20 months ago, with Moyes
identified as a suspect in both murder investigations and cocaine
identified as the motive for the murders, he said.

"It [the investigation] is definitely international in scope, but how far
the tentacles reach remains to be seen, because we still have an active
drug investigation."

RCMP Constable Efford added that as the drug investigation "intensified,"
it led police to the murders of the Uyeyamas in Burnaby in December 1995.
The couple, who were considered informers, had apparently talked to police
about protection.

One of the victims of the Abbotsford murders was 30-year-old Daryl Klassen.

One of his three sisters, Brenda Rempel, said Wednesday the family was
surprised to hear of the arrest after so many years.

"The statistics show after 48 hours if there isn't an arrest there isn't
likely going to be one," said Rempel, contacted by phone at her home in
Winkler, Man.

"It was a big surprise and a big relief," she said, adding her brother
never mentioned knowing Moyes.

According to parole board decisions, Moyes is a career criminal who was
actually in prison in connection with an unrelated matter when he was
arrested Tuesday and charged with murder. He will make his first court
appearance today on the murder charges in Abbotsford provincial court.

Moyes' first encounter with the federal prison system came in 1974. Since
then, he has been convicted of 36 crimes, including three counts of
attempted murder, assault, forcible confinement, robbery, using a firearm
during the commission of a robbery and escape from custody.

He received a 15-year sentence in 1975 for robbery. In 1987, he was given a
life sentence for an armed robbery committed a year earlier.

His last conviction was in 1997 for operating a motor vehicle while
disqualified. His criminal history dates back to age 14 and he has spent
most of his adult life behind bars. In a 1993 parole board decision, Moyes
told the board he was frightened he would die in prison if he didn't change
his ways.

In September 2000, Moyes' day parole was revoked. At the time, Moyes called
his parole officer and told him he was afraid to return to a corrections
community residential facility because he believed his life would be in danger.

He later turned himself in and told authorities he wanted to remain in
prison. The parole board revoked his parole, stating he was no longer
"manageable" in the community.

"Emotional instability and substance abuse were considered major factors in
your lengthy and sometimes violent criminal behavior," the parole board
decision dated in October 2000 states.

"Although you had managed to remain in the community for over one year, you
experienced many problems including substance abuse, inappropriate
associations and contacts with the police. You have acknowledged
associating with criminal peers and being involved in petty crimes. Based
on the information received it is reasonable to believe that your previous
pattern of criminal thinking and behavior is continuing."

The parole board has been told Moyes, an admitted heroin user, identifies
strongly with the criminal element in society and accepts violence as a
means of resolving conflict. He came from a disruptive family background
and he uses drugs to escape his problems and has a lack of employment skills.