By Chad Ingram

Published Jan. 10, 2019

The murder trial of one-time Minden resident Garry Handlen was wrapping up in B.C. Supreme Court this week. 

Handlen,
who was living on Minden’s Anson Street at the time, was arrested in
November of 2014, in connection to the killings of two British Columbia
girls in the 1970s. 

The trial, which
began in late October, centred on the murder of Monika Jack, a
12-year-old girl who went missing near Merritt, B.C. in May of 1978, and
whose remains were found by foresters some 17 years later, in June of
1995. 

The trial involved the showing of
a video of Handlen taken by undercover police officers, and according
to Global News, that video shows Handlen saying, “I think I strangled
her, but I’m not sure,” after describing grabbing a girl off her
bicycle. 

“I just grabbed her,” Global
reports Handlen as saying in the video. “Threw her bike in the lake,
grabbed her, took her in the camper and went up the hill.”

A
spokesperson for the B.C. Supreme Court told the Times that legal
counsel was making their final submissions this week, with the judge
expected to give his charge to the jury on Wednesday, Jan. 9. 

Handlen pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder.