Accused killer central figure in ultra-violent, blood-soaked ‘two-part series’ in Winnipeg’s core

Minutes after leaving his Manwin Hotel room with $20 he borrowed from his brother, Carl George Wescoupe returned with a “big bag” of crystal methamphetamine.

Carl likely stole the drugs, his brother Jamie Wescoupe testified last week, and in short order was selling them to other hotel residents who visited his room on Jan. 29, 2023.

The sales boom was short-lived. Jamie, who jurors heard has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, said he was getting high when, minutes later, three men armed with a machete and shotgun stormed into the room.

The men demanded Carl return their drugs, as one of them sliced him with the machete, Jamie said.

“He gave (the drugs) back… but they kept hitting him with the machete again… lots of times,” Jamie said.

Carl, 40, died from his wounds. The man with the shotgun blasted Jamie in both legs before he and the two other men fled the hotel in a taxi.

“I ran to Health Sciences Centre right after that and told them about Carl and passed out,” Jamie said.

Kurtis Joseph Dilallo, one of Wescoupe’s alleged killers, is on trial charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Dilallo, 42, is accused of killing a second man, 40-year-old Lee James Boulette, in an unrelated attack three days later.

Prosecutor Amy Wood outlined the Crown’s case for jurors last week in an opening address she compared to a plot summary on the back cover of a novel.

“It’s a two-part series,” with Kurtis Dilallo as the “common denominator,” Wood said.

“Unfortunately, neither of these stories culminates in a satisfactory ending — each is a tragedy.”

Elliott Miran, who lived in the same Selkirk Avenue rooming house as Boulette — they were longtime friends — testified last week he and Boulette were playing dice in Miran’s suite Feb. 2 when Dilallo and several other men stormed in. One of the men discharged bear spray in the room as two men held Miran on the floor and told him to “watch.”

Miran said two men and Dilallo wrestled with Boulette before he managed to free himself and tried to run to a window. Dilallo, armed with a sawed-off shotgun, shot Boulette in “what looked like the face,” Miran told jurors.

Miran said he threw himself over a stairwell and was stabbed in the shoulder before he escaped and made his way to hospital.

Court heard Miran and Jamie Wescoupe are related by marriage and shared a hospital room for several days as they recovered from their injuries.

The trial continues.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca