By Mark Nielsen
PRINCE GEORGE - The man facing several charges related to the death of his stepson in Prince George a dozen years ago told an undercover police officer posing as a crime boss that the boy had overdosed on drugs supplied to him through his biological father, the court heard Friday.
Former Oliver resident Lloyd William Cook has pleaded not guilty to one count each of manslaughter, criminal negligence causing death, unlawful confinement and interference with a dead body in the January 2000 death of Adam Scott Williams-Dudoward in Prince George.
In October 2004, Adam's mother, Judy Elaina Williams, went to RCMP with her story and helped police uncover the boy's body, buried in a shallow grave in a wooded area south of Miworth. And starting in April 2008, Cook was the target of a near yearlong undercover operation, known as a Mr. Big sting, in which officers posing as organized criminals take the suspect through a progression of tasks and scenarios designed to gain his trust.
The culmination is a meeting with the crime boss, or Mr. Big, in which the target is urged to provide the full details about his alleged crime so he can help make the problem go away. On Friday, the court saw a video of such a meeting in which Cook was urged to tell his story.
Cook admitted leaving Adam in a bedroom after his hands and feet had been bound because he had been misbehaving. But he maintained his death was due to consuming a baggy containing yellow pills and that his younger brother had snuck them into the home earlier that evening after the biological father had passed them onto him while he had been playing out in the back yard.
Cook said he and Williams were sitting in the living room when they heard Adam's cry for help and went into the bedroom to find the boy going into convulsions with yellow phlegm coming out of his mouth.
"He said 'I'm going to die, I'm going to die,'" Cook said in the video.
"I said 'what are you talking about?' And he said 'well, I took some pills.' I said, 'how'd you get the pills?' and he said '(his younger brother) gave them to me.' That's what he told me and then the next thing you know, he died."
Cook said he tried unsuccessfully to revive Adam with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
The undercover officer told Cook he did not believe the story, particularly the part about a baggy full of pills exploding in the boy's stomach so soon after he allegedly consumed them. But Cook stuck with the story, adding that Adam told him to call for an ambulance to which he replied there was nothing he could do.
Cook also alleged Adam and his biological father had previously tried to frame him for a break and enter by stealing a pair of his boots and then leaving prints at a crime scene. But Adam then went to the RCMP with his story, Cook asserted, saying he was being intimidated by his father to set him up.
After Adam died, Cook said his body was then put into the back of his pickup truck, where it stayed for a couple of weeks, and was then moved to the trunk of a car before it was buried in a shallow grave. The undercover officer said he believed that part of Cook's story but not his claim about the pills and eventually told Cook he could no longer work for him.
The B.C. Supreme Court trial before Justice Glen Parrett continues Monday.