Suspect in 30-year-old double homicide to make another bid at release pending trial
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Cold-case double-murder suspect Stuart Douglass MacGregor will make a second bid for freedom pending trial.
An agent for MacGregor’s lawyer, Rebecca Snukal, appeared in Calgary Court of King’s Bench Friday to set a half-day bail review for April 26.
Defence counsel Michael Bates, appearing on Snukal’s behalf, told Justice Rosemary Nation that MacGregor is already scheduled to stand trial.
MacGregor, 54, was arrested last Nov. 17, in connection with the July 11, 1994, shooting deaths of Calgarians Barry Buchart and Trevor Deakins.
The two men were fatally shot in the southeast basement suite they shared where Buchart also sold drugs.
In February, Snukal scheduled a three-week jury trial on behalf of her client to begin Feb. 10, 2025, just two weeks after MacGregor’s initial application for judicial interim release was denied.
Justice Melanie Gaston ruled the lawyer had not established sufficient grounds for her client’s release at that time.
Snukal set the trial down after she waived her client’s right to a preliminary inquiry in January, paving the way for an expedited hearing before a jury.
MacGregor, also known by the surname Surridge, faces two counts of first-degree murder in the shooting deaths.
Just weeks after MacGregor’s arrest, Justice Keith Yamauchi convicted Leonard Brian Cochrane in connections with the slayings, rejecting his claim he was victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Leonard, who was arrested in 2020 after police used investigative genetic genealogy to determine DNA found at the crime scene was his, had claimed he was there to buy drugs from Buchart when two masked intruders attacked.
Yamauchi rejected that claim and found Cochrane was one of the two gunmen who stormed into the basement suite and shot the two occupants.
Cochrane was handed an automatic life sentence without parole for a minimum 25 years on the two first-degree murder convictions.
X: @KMartinCourts
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