Jury convicts Saskatchewan couple of conspiring to murder their spouses

PRINCE ALBERT, Sask.—Two lovers who were accused of plotting to kill their spouses in Saskatchewan have been found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder.

The jury in Prince Albert took close to 30 hours before convicting Curtis Vey and Angela Nicholson on Sunday.

Crown prosecutor Lori O’Connor had argued that the pair planned to kill Vey’s wife, Brigitte, in a house fire, and Nicholson’s husband, Jim Taylor by drugging him and then making him disappear.

Court heard earlier in the trial that Brigitte Vey hid an iPod under the kitchen table at their farmhouse and secretly recorded her husband and Nicholson hatching the plan on July 1, 2013.

O’Connor said based on that conversation, both of the accused met the threshold for conspiracy to commit murder.

But Vey and Nicholson’s lawyers told court their clients weren’t serious about killing their spouses and didn’t have any intention of doing so.

In the scratchy recording, Angela Nicholson shows up and chats with Curtis Vey about her birthday, and mentions the flowers that he gave her for Valentine’s Day, her pending divorce and his work on the farm.

Then the lengthy conversation shifts to their spouses.

“It could be a number of days before anybody’s suspicious he’s gone,” Vey is heard saying. “Is there going to be really anybody who really is worried about him?”

Nicholson and her husband had been married for 30 years at the time, but were separated. She’s heard talking about getting into his house.

“If I go in there, if I turn over, say the coffee table, and I open the cupboards, and I’d go upstairs and I’d pull dresser drawers out and make it look like they’re rummaging through for something. That’s going to make them suspicious, is it not?” she wonders.

“Just make sure you got gloves on,” Vey whispers.

A few minutes later, Vey wonders about a fire at his house.

“The bottom line is that’s how, you know, it’s set up to be an accident, right?” he says. “Do you know what I mean? Like, the house burns down.”

Both Vey and Nicholson were each convicted of two counts of conspiracy to commit murder—one for their own spouse and a separate count for the other’s.

Under cross-examination, Brigitte Vey acknowledged that her husband had never hurt her in the past and she had never been concerned for her safety.

Court also heard a conversation Nicholson had with an undercover police officer who was in a cell with her after she was arrested July 6, 2013. Nicholson said she researched how to set a grease fire, but was too “chicken” to do it.

Nicholson told her cellmate that her marriage to Taylor crumbled because of his alleged alcoholism, addiction to cocaine and a gambling habit that lost the couple $100,000. She said Taylor was emotionally abusive and prevented her from finishing their divorce proceedings, which started in 2009.

Nicholson admitted she and Vey talked about doing something to their spouses, but added they would never act on it.

“You know what, when the time came closer, that’s probably all it would have been, just talk. You say things out of anger, but nothing that you intend to do,” Nicholson said.

“I can’t even kill a frickin’ mouse,” she said.

Vey’s lawyer, Aaron Fox, said that while the pair did talk and there was discussion, there was no actual agreement or intention to murder their spouses.

“It looks like a plan but it was just a discussion, that’s all it was,” said Fox.

Fox and Nicholson’s lawyer Ron Piche both said they were disappointed with the verdict.

Vey and Nicholson are to be sentenced Sept. 2.