Man handed two guilty verdicts for two unrelated slayings

A jury has found a Winnipeg man guilty of two unrelated murders three days apart.

Kurtis Joseph Dilallo was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the killings of Carl George Wescoupe and Lee James Boulette in 2023.

Jurors deliberated approximately five hours before delivering their verdict early Thursday evening. Dilallo, 42, was convicted of two additional counts of aggravated assault involving two other men who were injured during the fatal attacks. He will be sentenced at a later date to mandatory life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Jurors heard testimony that Wescoupe had come into possession of a large quantity of methamphetamine on Jan. 29 and had been selling it to other residents at the Manwin Hotel, when a man prosecutors alleged was Dilallo and two other men, collectively armed with a machete and sawed-off shotgun stormed into Wescoupe’s room and demanded he return the drugs.

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

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

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

Three days later, Boulette was playing dice in his Selkirk Avenue rooming house suite with longtime friend Elliott Miran, when Dilallo and several other men barged in.

Miran testified 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.

Shawn Robert Murdock, 34, a co-accused in Wescoupe’s killing, pleaded guilty last summer to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 10 years.

Another accused in Wescoupe’s killing, Jordan Elvin McFadyen, 30, had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received the same sentence as Murdock.

Murdock was also charged with second-degree murder in Boulette’s killing, but the charge was later stayed.

“Although the Crown would likely have been able to establish his presence at the (rooming house)… proving anything beyond presence would have been an uphill battle,” Crown attorney Amy Wood told court at Murdock’s sentencing.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca