Friend of alleged Canadian hitman fundraising to pay Thai lawyer

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A friend of an Alberta man alleged to have flown to Thailand last year to kill a former B.C. gangster is raising funds online for the ex-soldier’s overseas lawyer.

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Stewart Staudinger, a rancher in Sylvan Lake, told Postmedia News on Monday that he started fundraising for Matthew Dupre to ensure his friend had adequate legal representation in Thailand.

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Dupre, 38, agreed to be extradited last month after being charged in Thailand with the Feb. 4, 2022, murder of UN gangster Jimi (Slice) Sandhu.

Staudinger said Dupre went to Bangkok voluntarily before exhausting the appeal process because he didn’t want to languish in a Canadian jail while fighting the case for years.

“When I talked to Matt, he was just like, `Well, if I spend 10 years in prison — I’ve got a baby that was born 18 hours before I was arrested — I can’t miss my family and my life for that length of time fighting this,’ ” Staudinger recalled. “He says, `I just have to go and clear my name as soon as I can.’ And that was his attitude.”

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Staudinger, like Dupre, is a former member of the Canadian Armed Forces who served overseas. He said he met Dupre through the local community and that he is a trustworthy and loyal friend.

“He’s not the sort of person to walk away from his friends and colleagues. He’s obviously — as you can tell from his resume — a sort of guy who is willing to risk his neck for others,” Staudinger said. “To me, someone like that deserves to have someone in their corner, ensuring that at the very least they receive a just hearing, wherever they have to deal with it.”

So far, the campaign on the Christian website GiveSendGo has raised more than $7,000 of the $100,000 goal. Staudinger’s post on the site criticizes the way the RCMP arrested Dupre the same day as his daughter was born and questioned his wife while she was in a vulnerable state after the birth.

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He also claimed someone from the Thai Attorney-General’s Office told one of Dupre’s lawyers he could “make the case ‘go away’ for $1 million US.”

Asked about the corruption allegation, Staudinger said he had been told that second-hand and suggested Postmedia talk to Dupre’s Red Deer lawyer Maurice Collard. Collard said in an email that his client instructed him not to comment to Postmedia.

He did say, however, that he wasn’t the lawyer mentioned and had no “first-hand knowledge of this allegation.”

Staudinger said that Dupre’s defence “and everything else that he’s having to deal with in Thailand is going to cost a fairly large amount of money.”

“To try and ensure that he has anything like justice is going to cost them a fair amount of money. So my goal was just to help them achieve that so that at the very least, they have a fighting chance of getting justice.”

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He said the evidence laid out in the record of the case provided to Canada for extradition “comes across as circumstantial.”

Postmedia travelled to Thailand to take a closer look at the murder of Sandhu last December. The evidence cited by police there includes surveillance video from around Phuket showing the suspects, car rental and hotel records, as well as DNA and fingerprints.

Dupre and his former army buddy, Gene Lahrkamp of Trail, arrived together at Phuket International Airport on Dec. 18, 2021. Staudinger said online that it was a “last chance” visit before Dupre’s new baby arrived. Both returned to Canada Feb. 8 and within days were identified as murder suspects. Lahrkamp disappeared and died in a plane crash in Ontario in April 2022.

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