Accused killer admits on tape he planned murders of parents, sister

Emotional, recorded messages made by his family finally broke Jason Klaus and led to his confession.

A video of the final police interview with Klaus was played Tuesday in a Red Deer courtroom.

Klaus is on trial for first-degree murder in the Dec. 8, 2013 killingsof his mother, father and sister. His friend and associate, Joshua Frank, is being tried at the same time on the same charges.

Police have previously told Court of Queen's Bench Justice Eric Macklin they believe Sandra, Gordon and Monica Klaus were shot in the head before the family's Castor-area farmhouse was set ablaze to destroy evidence.

The final police interview with Klaus began at 10:23 p.m. on Aug. 16, 2014. Klaus had already spent most of the day in an interrogation room at the Red Deer RCMP detachment with Staff Sgt. Mike McCauley.

Klaus was inching slowly closer towards the truth.

Then McCauley playeda videotaped message from Klaus's grandfather.

"This is your Pappy. The RCMP would like for you to tell them the truth. What happened? If you could do that for us, we'd like to know, Jason. Only you can tell us."

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Next, McCauley played amessage fromKlaus's cousin. The young man begged Klaus to tell RCMP the truth about the murders.

A clearly emotional Klaus asked for a five-minute break to walk around and think.

As he left the interview room, he told McCauley, "I'm not a bad person."

The confession

When he returned to the interview room, Klaus admitted he and Frank came up with a plan a week before the murders. The plan was hatched because Klaus was worried he was about to get into trouble with his father.

"Well, like, I had forged a couple cheques from Dad to get money," Klaus said. "That's why. That's what Josh knew."

Klaus said the fraudulent cheques amounted to "five to six thousand dollars."

He said he just wanted some extra cash, even though his father gave him money and paid his bills.

"I just wanted a bit extra just to have some for just, you know, taking girls out or, you know, just have money to cover," he said.

When he told Frank about his fears,Klaus said his friend "offered to take care of things."

Klaus said Frank wasn't hard to convince.

"I didn't really take that seriously," Klaus told McCauley, "but I thought it was maybe one option, but I didn't really think it would happen."

The week before the murders, Klaus gave Frank his unregistered pistol, he said in a previous interview with police.

Phone records showed the two men had 28 telephone conversations in the week leading up to the crime.

"What was the deal you guys had made?" McCauley asked during the videotaped interview.

"Just some cash sometime down the road. Might have been 20,000 or 25,000 maybe eventually," Klaus told the investigator.

"You'd get the farm and you'd get the money and your debts and everything would be cleared up?" McCauley asked.

"No, not necessarily that, but no, it wasn't about getting the money or getting the farm. I didn't want that, it wasn't worth, it wasn't that, what it was to me," Klaus answered.

"What was it then?"

"I don't know what it was. I really don't. I really don't know what the hell I was thinking."

Klaus asked if charges would be dropped

Despite admitting his role in the crime, Klaus insisted he was nowhere near the farm or inside the farmhouse when his parents and sister were shot in cold blood, and the fire was started.

McCauley revealed Frank told RCMP he was the one who committed the murders.

That led to Klaus asking if that meant murder charges against him would get dropped.

McCauley was incredulous.

"Are you kidding me?" he asked.

"You get charged with murder if you're part of the planning. You get charged with murder if you're there. You get charged with murder if you're a driver. You get charged with murder if you're part of the conspiracy. You know that, right?

"So just because he pulled the trigger, you know as well as I do that you can be just knee deep in it all."

The staff sergeant was unequivocal.

"You are going to jail for a long, long time," he told Klaus. "You're going tobe convicted of murdering your family."

'It wasn't meant to be like this'

Klaus said he was two miles down the road when the murders happened. He claimed he had last-minute second thoughts.

"I did try to back out of it the last minute but it was too late," Klaus said. "He started the fire already."

"The fire, the thing was, was his call."

"Josh says you were there in the house," McCauley told Klaus.

Klaus denied it and tried to rationalize the role he played.

"You know, I can blame the booze or maybe some drugs or whatever that put me in my mind frame that way," Klaus said.

"I'm not a bad person. Like I say, I tried to stop it at the last minute. My family meant everything to me and I know they're not coming back."

"It wasn't meant to be like this."

Joshua Frank tapes are next

After watching videotaped interviews with Jason Klaus for the past week, his lawyer, Allan Fay, did not challenge their admissibility, calling them excellent police work.

Macklin admitted all of the videotaped interviews into evidence.

A similar voir dire or trial within a trial begins Wednesday. The Crown willbeginto play video of RCMP interviews with Frank.