‘Vile, disgusting degrading’: drug dealer killed, dismembered man in case of mistaken identity By: Dean Pritchard Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, Apr. 26, 2023

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This article was published 26/04/2023 (906 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg man whose charred and dismembered remains were found outside the city was attacked with a machete and left to die in a bathtub after he was mistaken for someone else at a North End drug house, a court has heard.

Kenneth Andrew Edwards, 30, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the Feb. 10, 2022 killing of 26-year-old Brandon Brust and was sentenced earlier this month to life in prison.

“The whole circumstances are nothing short of vile, disgusting and degrading,” provincial court Judge Kusham Sharma said at an April 3 sentencing hearing.

“This may have initially been a quick act without a lot of planning… but what occurs later was all about planning and deliberation,” she said.

Edwards was originally charged with second-degree murder but agreed to admit to the lesser charge in a plea bargain that will allow him to apply for parole after serving seven years in prison.

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According to an agreed statement of facts provided to court, Brust arrived at the Pritchard Avenue house with his girlfriend looking to buy drugs when a man who answered the door confused Brust with someone who owed him money and punched him about the head.

Edwards, who lived at and dealt drugs out of the house, heard the commotion and with the other man forced Brust into an upstairs bathroom. When Brust tried to run downstairs, Edwards sliced his upper body with a machete.

“Brust fell to the floor,” Crown attorney Jennifer Comack said, reading from the agreed statement of facts. “Brust was placed in the bathtub in the bathroom by Edwards. It is agreed everything happened very quickly.”

The second man had left by this time and was not charged in the attack.

Brust’s girlfriend, who had been outside waiting in his car, was brought into the house and saw Brust in the bathtub with a stab wound to his stomach, a black eye and busted lip.

“Brust was crying and begging for his life.”–Crown attorney Jennifer Comack

“Brust was crying and begging for his life,” Comack said. His girlfriend pleaded with several people in the house, all of whom had been using drugs, to take Brust to the hospital, but they offered no help.

Brust was left to die in the bathtub. Edwards then used a machete and hacksaw to dismember his body, wrapped the parts in garbage bags and placed them in a suitcase.

Edwards told Brust’s girlfriend to clean up the blood in the bathtub and three days later recruited another woman, Billie Kozub, to arrange a ride for him to dispose of Brust’s remains. Later that same day, a still unidentified man drove Edwards to the RM of Woodlands where he disposed of the suitcase and set it on fire.

On Feb. 14, 2022, Winnipeg police, responding to a tip about human remains in a bathtub, arrested Edwards and another woman at the house on unrelated charges.

During questioning by police, the woman disclosed some of the details of Brust’s killing. Edwards was charged with murder a month later.

On March 20, 2022, a man called Stonewall RCMP after his dogs brought a torso and skull back to his RM of Woodlands home. Police later found the burnt suitcase and more body parts.

Brust’s identity was confirmed through dental records. A pathologist could not determine the cause of death due to the state of the remains.

“This was because the remains were dismembered and burned, but also because certain parts of Brust’s body were missing,” including his hands, Comack said.

Brust, 26, struggled with drug addiction for years, his sisters told court, describing their younger brother as a man who “could light up a room with his smile, laughter and humour.”

Dawn Brust said family members had made arrangements to get Brust into a treatment program, with his father Wally Brust planning to pick him up in Winnipeg two days after his death.

“My heart was so full of hope,” Dawn Brust wrote in a victim impact statement provided to court. “I missed my brother so much and who he used to be. Now I will never know what he would have done or would have said, and it haunts me. There will always be a voice in the back of my mind that reminds me I missed my opportunity, that I should have done something sooner.”

Wally Brust died of a heart attack in January.

“Brandon’s death has left a hole in our family in more ways than anyone will ever know.”–Sister Dianna Miketon

“I honestly think the stress and heartbreak of the loss of Brandon was the cause of his heart attack and death,” said Brandon’s sister Dianna Miketon.

“Brandon’s death has left a hole in our family in more ways than anyone will ever know,” she said.

Earlier this week, Kozub, 39, pleaded guilty to accessory to manslaughter after the fact for her role in disposing of Brust’s remains, and was sentenced to one year in jail. She also pleaded guilty to an unrelated count of aggravated assault, for which she was sentenced to an additional three years in prison.

Court heard four days after Brust was killed, Edwards accused a woman in the house of stealing from him and ordered Kozub to cut off her pinky finger with a pair of dog clippers.

Questioned by police, Kozub admitted cutting off the woman’s finger, saying she feared Edwards and that “it was her pinky or my ass.”

Prosecutor Vanessa Gama said the Crown would have recommended a sentence of up to eight years for the aggravated assault, were it not for Kozub’s guilty plea and the element of duress.

“Mr. Edwards was the enforcer… He wanted to demonstrate to everyone in that house that if you stole from him the consequences would be swift and severe,” Gama said.

Charges against two other women initially arrested in connection to Brust’s killing were previously stayed.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca

Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter

Dean Pritchard is courts reporter for the Free Press. He has covered the justice system since 1999, working for the Brandon Sun and Winnipeg Sun before joining the Free Press in 2019. Read more about Dean.

Every piece of reporting Dean produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.