ANATOMY OF A MURDER

Trial Exposed City's Dark Underbelly Of Drugs, Violence

A man wearing a dark hoodie walked across the front courtyard of the
Chelsea apartments, buzzed apartment 1011, then stepped back into the
shadows and waited. A light-coloured scarf covered his face. A small
yellow towel disguised a gun in his left hand.

It was just before 11 p.m. on Dec. 28, 2004. Five minutes later, Adan
Merino pushed open the lobby door of the View Street highrise and walked
outside.

The gunman dropped the towel and stepped forward. The first gunshot
shattered the glass of the door. The second hit Merino in the neck.

He began to roll to the ground, trying to spin away from the shooter. But
the gunman kept firing as Merino fell. A second bullet pierced his back. A
third entered his left shoulder.

The killer escaped, slipping through the breezeway to a getaway car on
Fort Street.

The attack lasted five seconds.

The 9-1-1 lines lit up. The alert tone blared.

"Shots fired," radioed the dispatcher.

Sgt. Grant Hamilton arrived at the highrise near the corner of View and
Quadra streets 30 seconds after the first call came in. He got out of his
car and drew his sidearm. People were yelling from the balconies above.

Hamilton saw Merino at the front of the building on his knees, blood
spurting out of his neck. Merino swayed back and forth, then fell face
down on the ground.

Const. Wade Murray rushed to Merino's side. He used his fingers to plug
the holes in Merino's neck and chest, where the bullet exited. Holding
Merino in his arms, he told him help was on the way. But Merino was having
trouble breathing and collapsed again on the ground.

"Who shot you?" Murray asked.

Merino replied, "No, no."

"Who shot you?" Murray asked again and again.

Merino never answered the question.

In the ambulance, he asked Murray if he was going to die.

"I told him 'No,' " the officer said four years later in court.

But he did at 3:55 a.m., the victim of a planned and deliberate murder.

Daniel Christopher Myles Aitken was arrested and charged with the
first-degree murder of Merino in July 2006. His three-month trial in B.C.
Supreme Court, which ended in his conviction yesterday, has exposed
Victoria's hidden underbelly, a world of drugs, guns and violence.

The trial put Aitken's criminal past under the jury's microscope.

First, they learned he was a drug dealer.

Then, halfway through the trial, they heard Aitken had been convicted of
manslaughter in 1995 for shooting drug dealer Samir Shamoon in View
Towers, a problem-plagued downtown highrise.

What the jury wasn't told is that Aitken, 33, is also charged with
first-degree murder in the death of Alex McLean, 29, whose body was found
in an Esquimalt park in October 2003. Lex, as he was known to his friends,
had been shot to death. He had a history of violence that included five
assault convictions, including an unprovoked assault on local hockey
player Carey Ernewein. His friends said when McLean mixed with criminals,
he was "the muscle."

The jury also never learned that Aitken was arrested but never charged in
the disappearance of Marilynn Neill, said to be the girlfriend of his best
friend, Matthew Poole.

The 30-year-old Colwood woman, a mother of two, disappeared in February
2003, the day before she was to appear in Victoria provincial court for
possession of heroin.

The Greater Victoria homicide unit released the information about Aitken's
two-first degree murder charges at a press conference in July 2006.

Aitken, Poole and two other men were charged with 42 offences, including
an arson and a break-in at the B.C. Vital Statistics office, which
attracted national attention and raised fears of identity theft when more
than 1,000 blank documents were stolen.

The jury was also never given the details of the Shamoon killing. At the
1995 trial, Aitken was a young-looking 19.

He testified he bought a gun for protection in case he ran into someone to
whom he had sold bad cocaine. He feared revenge because he'd stabbed one
of Shamoon's dealers.

On Jan. 2, 1995, Aitken, Poole and Poole's brother were visiting a friend
at View Towers when Shamoon came to the door of the friend's apartment.
Aitken and Shamoon had an argument.

Shamoon swung a kitchen knife at him, Aitken later testified, and Aitken
shot him in the chest with a .32-calibre handgun.

Poole was charged but not convicted of being an accessory to murder. The
Crown said he helped Aitken escape in a stolen van.

Merino's world was also filled with violence. Every day in court, his
father, Luis, sat through testimony that painted the 30-year-old former
defensive all-star with the Vancouver Island Sharks as violent, jealous
and paranoid, a drug dealer who also worked as an enforcer for drug debts.

But Luis, a Victoria artist, remembers his youngest son as a creative
child who struggled with dyslexia and didn't do well in school. Merino
attended Sir James Douglas, then Central High, but dropped out.

"He could do many things better than his brothers," Luis recalled. "He
loved sports, played soccer and football and liked swimming and surfing.
He was very healthy."

He was also handsome, a star football player who worked at the Fairfield
Thrifty Foods store and lived with Jill, his "wonderful" girlfriend, for
five or six years.

His behaviour changed in his early 20s, however, when Merino was diagnosed
with bipolar disorder. He met old friends who were into drugs. He began
using and selling drugs himself.

"He was a wonderful person, even in the despair of his illness, he was a
great person," Luis said. "He was still loved by his friends and Jill and
his brothers. But some people took advantage of his illness."

In 2000, Merino met Tabatha Green. Their relationship was tumultuous. The
court heard that she was a drug addict and worked as an escort. In 2003,
Merino beat Green so badly she almost died. Their son, now seven, lives
with a relative on Vancouver Island.

"Adan had his dark moments," his mother said. "But he was a loyal friend,
a loyal son and a loyal father. If he had not become bipolar, he would
never have met Tabatha, never gone to jail and he wouldn't have been
victimized.

"If they hadn't had a son, he wouldn't have stayed with her."

Aitken and Merino barely knew each other. Their connection was Green. Both
Aitken and Poole had sex with her and supplied her with heroin. Her drug
dealers, "Danny and Matt," were on the speed dial of her cellphone.

In the days before his death, Merino had become even more jealous and
unpredictable. He was under financial stress from drug debts. At one
point, as he and Green walked along the sidewalk, Merino punched a
pedestrian so hard he knocked his teeth out.

Many people wanted Merino dead, argued Aitken's lawyer Peter Firestone.
Former addict Sean Higgins, who bought cocaine and heroin almost daily
from Merino, had been harassed by the former football player and was
scared of him. Merino had snatched a chain from his neck. He had shown up
at Higgins's house banging on the door.

Firestone suggested Higgins tried to trade Merino handguns for cocaine.

"That's a lie," Higgins bristled.

Crown Counsel Peter Juk argued it was Aitken, not Higgins, who was angry
enough with Merino to kill him. On Christmas Eve, Aitken met Green at the
Bay Centre to give her dope. The two walked together to meet Merino. When
Merino saw them, he flipped out and accused Aitken of sleeping with her. A
shocked Aitken turned beet-red and told Merino, "I'm not touching your
woman."

Aitken was infuriated by this public humiliation, Juk said. Aitken left
the mall and immediately called Poole three times. The Crown alleged
that's when Aitken began plotting the murder. Phone records showed the two
friends talked 79 times in the four days leading up to Merino's killing.

Firestone insisted Aitken had no motive to kill Merino, however. They were
not in business together. There was no money owing. There was no romantic
relationship with Green. More telling, there was no forensic evidence
directly linking Aitken to the killing.

That lack of direct evidence made identification the main issue at trial.
Merino's killing was captured on security cameras outside the Chelsea.
Eighteen hours before the shooting, Aitken was seen on the Chelsea's
security camera walking around the building. He said later in court he was
delivering heroin to a dope-sick Green. He denied he was casing the
apartment building.

Juk urged the jury to compare the images of the shooter with the video of
Aitken walking around the Chelsea at 4:22 a.m. on Dec. 28, 2004.

"Consider the height, the build, the shape of face, the hair colour, the
heavy brows, the position of the eyes, the manner of walking and the
position of the feet."

This trial, like many murder trials, had a quirky side. The "position of
the feet" became a key point of contention. The eyewitness account of
Chelsea resident Bernard Gaudet, who saw someone running from the crime
scene with a "strange or awkward gait," sent police on the hunt for a
suspect who walked like Charlie Chaplin.

The Crown even called London podiatrist Haydn Kelly to compare the way the
shooter walked with the way Aitken walked. Kelly testified there was a
strong likeness between the two, pointing out the shooter's feet were very
"abducted," or drawn away from the midline of the body.

The witness, particularly galling to the defence, charged almost $80,000
for his report, expenses and testimony. Firestone was so critical of
Kelly's methods and fees that, in the end, Juk told the jury not to put
too much weight on his evidence. During his testimony, the jury watched a
video of Aitken pacing barefoot like a caged animal in his jail cell on
the day of his arrest.

"Both feet are very abducted," Kelly said.

Height was also an issue.

FBI scientist Richard Vorder Bruegge, who analyzes people's height from
the way they appear on video, told police the shooter was five-foot four
inches tall, plus or minus one-and-a-half inches. In the video taken the
morning of the shooting, Aitken appeared to be five-foot five-inches tall,
plus or minus one-and-a-half inches, said Vorder Bruegge.

In March 2006, police called a press conference and released a still image
of the shooter to the media, describing the shooter as five-foot
five-inches tall. When Aitken saw the story in the paper, he asked his
girlfriend Ah-na Kim to measure him, according to a wiretap conversation
played for the jury. He also complained to another friend that he doesn't
walk like Charlie Chaplin, but, "I look enough like the [expletive] dude
[suspect] that it's a [expletive] headache."

Other wacky evidence came from Christopher Palmer, who was a little drunk
and off-balance as he left a party about 30 minutes after Merino was shot.
He stepped in dog feces and went around the corner to wipe his feet on the
grass. There, on the sidewalk on Chambers Street, was the murder weapon.
Palmer put it in a bag and walked to the truck where his two friends were
waiting for him. The three men played with the semi-automatic pistol for a
while, wondering whether it was real and whether they should keep it. The
next day, they brought the gun to the Victoria police station after
hearing about the murder on the radio.

Many facts put before the jury were not in dispute.

Poole's DNA was found on the yellow towel discarded by the gunman at the
scene of the crime. Its significance was a point of contention, however.
The defence argued that Poole's DNA did not connect Aitken to the crime.
Aitken told the jury the last time he saw the yellow towel was at Poole's
apartment two days before the murder. He went there to sell rifle
ammunition to Dwight Dowding, a friend who is now deceased. Dowding
wrapped the ammunition in the yellow towel, then asked Aitken for some .45
calibre ammunition, he said.

Juk called Aitken's evidence a complete fabrication.

"He knows where the towel came from but he doesn't remember his own
whereabouts on the night of the murder," said Juk, who said Poole's DNA at
the scene was the next best thing to Aitken's DNA.

The ammunition used to kill Merino was the same make and calibre as
ammunition found in Aitken's apartment during a search by police in 2002.
It was also the same kind found in a garage rented by Poole and searched
by police in 2006.

But the ammunition was very common, a firearms expert testified.

There was no dispute that Aitken had killed someone. In May 2006, RCMP
Const. Phil MacDonald visited Kim because he believed she knew something.
He asked her "to think about the children of the families they left
behind."

Later, in a wiretap recorded by the RCMP on May 22, 2006, Aitken told Kim
that Merino was a "deadbeat." "Neither of them could take care of that kid
.. That kid's parent being dead, as far as I'm concerned, was his
responsibility. He's a [expletive] creep that got himself done."

Aitken continued: "As far as I'm concerned like, you take that fat
[expletive] piece of shit that I [expletive] shot. I'm not [expletive], as
far as I'm concerned, he's responsible for getting himself done."

On the stand, Aitken said he had switched topics. He was talking about
Merino when he referred to the "creep that got himself done," but to
Shamoon when he talked about the man he shot, said Aitken, who also
testified he had no reason to think Shamoon had children.

The jury didn't believe him.

Even though Aitken knew he was a suspect in Merino's death, he never came
up with an alibi -- he wasn't required to, Firestone pointed out. Aitken
testified on the night of Merino's murder, he was out and about, at home
or at his girlfriend's.

The wiretaps showed Aitken's growing panic as investigators closed in on
him. He applied for a passport and talked with Kim about going to Korea to
teach. Aitken explained he was worried he would be arrested for conspiracy
to traffic drugs, not for murder.

"I always have that fear in the back of my head of just waking up tomorrow
in handcuffs," Aitken told Kim on March 31, 2006.

That fear became real on July 28, 2006.

For the past three months, Aitken has walked into the B.C. Supreme Court
in handcuffs and leg shackles. He has sat in the prisoner's box quietly
taking notes and conferring with his defence lawyers, Firestone and Jeremy
Mills.

Yesterday, he was sentenced to life with no possibility of parole for 25
years. Next month, he goes to court to set a trial date to face murder
charges in the death of Alex McLean.