Family of murder-for-hire victim seeks damages from ex-boyfriend

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This article was published 24/07/2017 (2994 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The family of a murdered Manitoba woman has filed a lawsuit claiming the man they believe planned her death destroyed incriminating evidence and is benefiting financially from the killing.

Kaila Tran’s family is seeking damages from her former boyfriend, Drake Moslenko, whom they believe orchestrated Tran’s slaying — despite the fact a first-degree murder charge against him was dropped three years ago.

Tran, 27, was ambushed and stabbed 31 times outside her St. Vital apartment building in June 2012.

The drug dealer who killed her, Treyvonne Willis, was convicted of first-degree murder after a jury trial in 2015. He confessed, but claimed another man put him up to it.

Moslenko was also charged with first-degree murder, but the charge against him was dropped in 2014.

After Willis’s trial, Tran’s family found out about a second videotaped statement Willis gave to police, in which he claimed Kaila’s boyfriend was the mastermind. That admission prompted her family to seek permission from the province’s highest court to go ahead with the civil suit against Moslenko, even though the two-year time limit for taking such legal action had passed.

In a statement of claim filed in court July 20, Kaila’s sister, Tiffany Tran, on behalf of her estate, alleges Moslenko “planned and conspired” to arrange Kaila’s murder, paid or coerced Willis to carry it out and “hid, altered or destroyed evidence” that could have implicated him.

Moslenko was listed as a beneficiary on Tran’s life insurance policy. After her death, he was paid by one insurer, the claim says, accusing him of receiving a “financial windfall by reason of the murder of Kaila.”

The couple had been together since 2009, but before she was killed, Tran was planning on ending the relationship and moving to Calgary, the claim says. It seeks damages under the Fatal Accidents Act and the Trustee Act and also accuses Moslenko of wrongfully claiming to be Kaila’s common-law spouse and delaying matters of her estate.

The allegations in the statement of claim haven’t been proven and no statement of defence has been filed.

In a previous interview with the Free Press, the Tran family’s lawyer, Jamie Kagan, said the family aims to stop Moslenko from getting any future life insurance payouts and wants to force him to answer questions about what happened leading up to her murder.

katie.may@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @thatkatiemay