Gambling partner murder trial hears from girlfriend of accused Calgary man
Vida Smith was last seen on July 21, 2020. Her gambling partner is accused of murder
The girlfriend of a Calgary man accused of murdering his friend and business partner of 30 years testified Tuesday, admitting she lied to police during their investigation.
Chris Lee, 62, is on trial for second-degree murder. On Monday, he admitted to killing Vida Smith and offered to plead guilty to manslaughter, which was rejected by prosecutors.
Smith and Lee, who also goes by Kevin Barton, were blackjack card counters who travelled to India and Australia, gambling together, according to Lee's girlfriend, Winnie Lo.
Lo testified Tuesday, telling jurors she did not know Smith despite the two women's relationships with Lee overlapping by about 20 years.
Prosecutor Shane Parker grilled Lo about contradictions between her statements to police in 2020 and her testimony.
On July 21, 2020, Smith and Lee made arrangements to meet for coffee at a Starbucks in Calgary. They spent about 30 minutes there before security camera footage shows the pair leaving together.
Those are the last known images of Smith. She was never seen or heard from again.
A week later, Lee was on the radar of the Calgary Police Service's homicide unit.
At that time, Lee was living with Winnie Lo in the northwest community of Varsity.
On July 29, when detectives showed up at Lo's home, she told them she hadn't seen Lee in years. In fact, he was in the home at the time.
Lo said she lied "because I didn't know what happened to him, I wanted to ask him."
'I was confused'
In another statement to police about a week later, Lo told detectives that Lee picked her up from her daughter's place on July 25, 2020 — four days after Smith's disappearance — in his white truck. Lee owned a Cadillac Escalade.
Under questioning from Parker, Lo changed her story to say it was her own Nissan Rogue that Lee was driving at the time.
"I believe I was confused," said Lo.
Parker suggested Lo's memory of the 2020 events would have been sharper then than it is now.
"I'm going to suggest the reason you changed the answer from Escalade to your vehicle is you don't want to answer questions about the Escalade," said Parker.
Lo denied the prosecutor's submission.
When asked if she and Lee were still "boyfriend-girlfriend," Lo said "yes."
But under cross-examination from defence lawyer Cory Wilson, Lo said she was "very nervous" when she was questioned by police.
'Trying to be truthful'
Lo agreed with Wilson's suggestion that Lee had driven her thousands of times since 2001 and she never recorded or made a mental note of what vehicle he was driving.
"Were you trying to be truthful during that interview?" asked Wilson.
"Yes," Lo replied.
On the first day of the trial, jurors heard evidence that over the years, mistrust had built between Smith and Lee over big payouts sometimes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Around the time of her death, Smith was struggling financially. The pandemic had closed casinos, and her daughter Neda Power believed her mother wasn't "winning big."
DNA and guns
When they met for coffee, Smith had planned to sell Lee her ex-husband's birth certificate for $10,000.
She was also helping Lee with some kind of blackjack cheating device, according to Power.
After they left the coffee shop on July 21, 2020, Smith and Lee drove away together in the vehicle he'd borrowed from Lo, a Nissan Rogue.
Eight days later, police arrested Lee and seized his Escalade.
Inside, they found five loaded guns, $44,000 in cash, knives and handcuffs with Smith's DNA on them.
A droplet of her blood was also discovered in the trunk of the SUV along with cleaning product residue.
Smith's body has never been found.
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