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Hey, it's Nancy. Before we begin today, I just wanted to let you know that you can listen to Crime Beat early and ad-free on Amazon Music, included with Prime. On January 16, 2006, Jack Beauchamp drove downtown, parked his SUV in a parkade, then entered his high-rise office building through the second-story skywalk, carrying a coffee and a briefcase.
The president of Moorbank Financial, a commercial mortgage lending company, took the elevator up to the 12th floor, and at 7:50 a.m., he swiped his security card to enter his office. Minutes later, Jack Beauchamp was dead, shot multiple times by an unknown suspect.
It really only took minutes before staff from the company were saying that the victim had had some conflict with somebody over the last few months. I'm Nancy Hixt, a senior crime reporter for Global News. Today on Crime Beat, I share how investigators unraveled this shocking murder mystery. This is the conclusion of The Deadly Contract.
Police often refer to the first 48 hours after a homicide as the most critical. Following the brazen early morning shooting of Jack Beauchamp in his downtown Calgary office, investigators were extremely busy with a gunman on the loose. One of Jack's clients, Robert Deere, was considered a suspect.
The two men had been in a heated conflict over an outstanding commitment fee for a loan. Deere was arrested hours after the murder, but released the following day charged only with criminal harassment in connection to emails he sent to Jack. At that time, Superintendent Cliff O'Brien was a detective with the Calgary Police Homicide Unit.
Early in the investigation, he was tasked with reviewing CCTV of the office building and the surrounding area. The veteran officer was convinced it would provide insight into who was responsible for the murder. Everybody thought I was going to see Bob Deere and I did not. Even went back and looked at the lobby video a couple times in case there was some disguise used and I missed him.
but Bob Deere was not seen on the video at all. I contacted the primary investigator and said, "I don't know if Bob Deere is involved, but I know that he was not in this building. He did not appear on any cameras in this building." He went over the video several times to make sure he didn't miss anything. At 7:53, there's somebody that came in. Keeping in mind that it's dark outside, they came into the building wearing sunglasses.
They had a coat on and gloves on and they were carrying a bag. And this individual went onto the elevator and disappeared out of camera view. But they acted different than everybody else. When you're watching these crowded people coming in and going out,
You know, they were all acting a certain way and you had this individual that just seemed very suspicious. The fact that he's wearing sunglasses, the fact that he doesn't start to take off his gloves or undo his coat or, you know, start to prepare to stay. And perhaps what was even more troubling is four minutes later, you see that same individual leave the elevator and leave the building. So he had only been in there for four minutes. He
When he left, had his same gloves on, still had his sunglasses on. And that really stood out. You don't have to be a homicide detective to go, that looks weird. And it really did stand out from everybody else. When O'Brien took a closer look, he saw the same man in the sunglasses get off the elevator and walk right past the female executive from Moorbank as she got on the elevator.
Minutes later, she found Jack Beauchamp in medical distress and called 911. I was pretty sure that I had caught the killer on camera. I think the challenge for us is, is this individual that showed up looking suspicious for four minutes in the building right at the same time that Jack was killed, is that person related to Bob Deere? Still looking for answers, he went back to the CCTV recordings.
I remember seeing what looked like a Hummer driving on the street just outside the building and it would have been right around the same time that Jack Beauchamp showed up to work.
And again, it's grainy and you don't get to see lots of details, but there weren't lots of Hummers driving around. And certainly in the couple hours I was watching video, that was the only one that I saw. And it drove right in front of the building. And just the camera angle wasn't meant to pick it up. It just kind of picked it up between the doors. The vehicle stood out because O'Brien knew Robert Deere drove a Hummer. It's the vehicle he was arrested in on the day of the homicide.
The hummer on the street outside the building at the same time Jack shows up is obviously significant for us. But again, that's all circumstantial. Police released CCTV of the vehicle. What we're hoping for is the release of this new information and the video will peak
witnesses memory and that they may have seen this vehicle driving through this location at that time of the homicide and be able to identify for us the number and description of occupants that were in that vehicle. So that's really the key is who is this individual? That's what we needed to try to find out. Police released another photo to the public. This one was a screen grab from the CCTV of the new suspect.
The new suspect was obviously not Robert Deere.
But given a Hummer similar to his was seen near the crime scene, police continued to search for a connection. We start looking at associates that the police might know about that Bob Deere would know. Again, we don't know if he's involved or not, we just know that he wasn't the shooter.
As police diligently dug through their files, their hard work paid off and they were able to identify the new suspect from an unrelated traffic stop months earlier. In September the year before, there were two really switched on patrol officers, experienced patrol officers that did a traffic stop on a vehicle.
It has nothing to do with Bob Deere, it's just a traffic stop many months before, or several months before this homicide. And the driver, they arrest the driver, ultimately arrest the driver for whatever they arrest the driver for.
and there were some occupants, passengers in the vehicle. And the police officer said to the driver, "Do you want us to tow your vehicle or do you want one of your friends, one of the passengers to drive the vehicle?" And the driver said, "Yeah, you can give the vehicle to one of the passengers." Officers documented every step of their interactions that day.
but here you have two really good police officers that take that information put it into essentially a street check and it gets filed and never did they think that really it would ever come back to probably to to help in a case like this in a homicide but when we're looking through it what we found was one of the passengers who had provided his driver's license
When he was asked, "Where do you work?" He said that he works for a company up in Edmonton. And when we searched that company, we see that that company is actually a numbered company that belongs to Bob Deere. And our very first connection between this individual and Bob Deere was actually this street check that had been done in September the year before.
It's a great example of the type of seemingly unrelated information that comes to light during a murder investigation that can result in a break in a case. The passenger identified himself as Muhammad Karim,
Investigators learned in April of 2005, Robert Deere hired Kareem off Cash Corner, an area in downtown Calgary where people look for work and wait for contractors to come by to hire them on the spot for short-term labor. After that first day of work, Deere kept Kareem on with his landscaping company for several months. And beyond that, they became friends.
Both men, Robert Deer and Mohamed Karim, were now considered possible suspects in Jack Beauchamp's death. Not long after his arrest and subsequent release, police got a warrant to search Deer's home, along with his vehicle, the Silver Hummer. What they found was further confirmation of the connection between the two men.
We go into the residence and one of the things that we see early on is on a small table is a Greyhound receipt, a Greyhound ticket. There's a name printed on the ticket which is M. Ali.
So for the people searching the residence, that may have not meant anything at the time, but at the same time back in the office while we're doing all of the searches, we do find that this individual's name is Muhammad Ali Karim, who is the one that worked as a landscaper for Bob Deer. So to us, when we start comparing notes, like there's something to this.
Cliff O'Brien went to the Greyhound Bus Depot in search of further evidence and ended up back in front of surveillance monitors. When I met with security and we looked through the video,
What we did see is somebody that looked like Bob Deere and somebody that looked very much like this suspicious person that had been in the lobby of Jack's building that morning. So my thinking was if somebody took a Greyhound bus into the city, they may take a Greyhound bus out of the city. So what I noticed was at 10:13 in the morning,
That suspicious person that we had seen in the lobby for those four minutes, he had a full beard and mustache. And the person that I saw on video walking with, who looked like Bob Deere coming in at 10.13, did not have facial hair. Back at Deere's house, as the Forensic Crime Scenes Unit meticulously combed each room, they found evidence that explained what O'Brien saw on CCTV.
In one of the bathroom sinks, there was a significant amount of what looked like facial hair. And there was a package of razors that had been opened and there were some razors missing from it. And so it appeared that somebody was perhaps altering their appearance, but certainly shaving a fairly significant amount of facial hair. The crime scenes unit also found a possible connection to the murder weapon. They found a gun safe.
When they were able to get into the gun safe, they located some .22 caliber ammunition. They never did locate a .22 caliber gun though, but they did find ammunition. The ammunition was sent away for comparison to the casings found at the Moore Bank office.
Still inside Deer's home, investigators also found another receipt with a long list of items from Walmart dated January 15th, the day before Jack Beauchamp was killed. Those items included a leather handbag, it included some gloves, it included sunglasses.
It wasn't lost on us that those items on that receipt certainly seemed to be the items that the individual was wearing in the lobby. That suspicious person that was only there for four minutes. Detectives went to the Walmart, where they recovered CCTV showing two men who appeared to be Robert Deere and Muhammad Kareem. Then, during the search of Deere's Hummer, police found yet another receipt
This one was from London Drugs. Officers went to that business and once again, they found surveillance video that showed the two men together. So before the homicide, we have the Greyhound bus station where they are seen together on video. We have them at the Walmart where they're seen together on video purchasing items. And we see them at the London Drugs where at the London Drugs, they're purchasing drugs
what looked like rubbing alcohol and they're purchasing latex gloves. The next step was to get a warrant to search Mohamed Karim's home. At that time, he was living in Edmonton. When we were in the residence, we were able to find clothing that matched the clothing that he had worn when he walked into the building, into Jack Beauchamp's building. But we're definitely getting a very good picture of what took place.
We are confident that Muhammad Karim is involved in this and very possibly the shooter, very likely the shooter. Investigators now believed this was a case of murder for hire. Yeah, it's almost unbelievable that, you know, you have a business conflict with somebody and where you go to is hiring somebody to kill him.
Despite all of the evidence gathered by police, months passed with no charges laid in Jack Beauchamp's murder. It's all still circumstantial and, you know, we're putting the pieces of the puzzle together, but it's taken some time. In the meantime, Muhammad Karim moved to Vancouver, British Columbia.
That's when he became the target of a covert investigative strategy. What we wanted to do with the undercover operation is to find out what happened, to find out from Karim what took place, how did it even take place, how did he even know about Jack Beauchamp, what was his connection with Bob Deere. We just wanted the truth.
Obviously for courts, but even for Jack's family, it's important that we get what took place and why it took place. The operation lasted several weeks as officers gained Kareem's trust. Investigators used the pretense that they were looking for a new recruit for their fictitious criminal organization.
You'll recognize this technique from previous episodes of Crime Beat. It's an investigative strategy commonly used by police to garner a confession, known as a Mr. Big Sting operation. In this case, Kareem was told he might be the right person and was set up to participate in a number of staged events.
As a part of this operation, Kareem had to come clean to prove himself to his new friends, the undercover officers. And that's when he admitted his involvement in Jack Beauchamp's death. Here's an excerpt of that conversation. So I got in there, the door was open, I called and I said, Jack Beauchamp?
Then he came like this. "How can I help you, sir?" "Good morning." So I looked, kinda surprised, you know, I looked pretty scary with the gloves and the glasses, you know. I'm like, "Hey, good morning, sir. My name is Mike. A buddy of mine sent me here to talk business with you." He's like, "Where was your friend?" I said,
it's a French guy called Denise and he's like, Denise, Denise. I'm like, it doesn't matter but anyways, I would like to talk to you about some money lending for a real estate project and stuff. So he goes, okay, but...
Like, do you have an appointment? Have you called me before? I'm like, yeah, I called actually before and I left a message with one of your employees here. I don't know if they did the message. He's like, I don't know. I'm like, okay, can we see each other? I was planning to go with him in the office and then once he turns his back, I'm just going to take him out. But he said, no, you need an appointment, sir. I'm sorry, I'm really kind of busy. I managed to get him back to the office by asking him for a card, a business card.
Kareem repeated several times to the undercover officers that the killing was not intentional. He said he only wanted to scare Jack Beauchamp, so he would leave his friend, Robert Deere, alone.
Just over three months after Jack Beauchamp was killed, at the end of April 2006,
both Robert Deer and Mohamed Karim were arrested and charged with murder. The pair was transported to arrest processing together, and their conversation was recorded. Listen, I got set up by some undercovers, brother. Really? They're telling me you're ratting me up. And I told them that's crap. That's crap. All the information they got is crap.
They got that video clear. It was an undercover man. These undercovers got me. If they are the undercovers or if it's a trick from the police, I'm not sure here. Okay? Mm-hmm.
At one point, Deer told Kareem he believed police were monitoring their conversation. We made one big circle just so that they could listen to us and now we're right back where we started. Oh, I know, man. I don't care. I don't care. I mean, I'm trying to help you and you're trying to help me because we're friends, you know? We're in the same boat for nothing.
So, of course we're going to help each other, man. It's us against them, right? Well, I'm just saying nothing. About a year and a half after the arrests, in September of 2007, a jury trial got underway. Robert Deere and Mohamed Karim were both accused of first-degree murder in the alleged murder-for-hire case.
A property on this street is at the center of this case. The prosecution says Robert Deer had borrowed more than a million dollars from Jack Beauchamp to build a duplex here. But the big problem started when that duplex deal fell apart and Deer still owed Beauchamp money. Suzanne Kendall became the lead prosecutor in the case. She's currently the chief crown for regional prosecutions for Alberta justice.
But back in 2007, she was the assistant chief crown in Calgary.
It was the theory of the Crown that Mr. Deere had arranged for his employee in the landscaping company to come to Calgary and to put an end to the dispute he was having with Jack Beauchamp about the commitment fee. And it was our theory that he did that by providing Kareem with a gun and having him shoot Beauchamp.
that this had been planned by the two of them and was premeditated. Family, friends, and colleagues of Jack Beauchamp filled the courtroom as details of the case were presented. I was there as the incredibly graphic video of the Moore Bank office taken by crime scenes investigators was shown to jurors. Jack Beauchamp lying in a pool of his own blood after being gunned down at his office.
Jack's successor at Moorbank Financial, John Tiberio, spoke to me after the first day of testimony. It's just answering questions that we didn't know what was going on. And that's what we expect the trial to do is to answer the unknowns that we've had for so long.
During the trial, court heard bullets recovered from Jack Beauchamp's body and some of the unfired .22 caliber ammunition found in Deere's house had all been in the same gun. Police also testified about evidence retrieved from Deere's computers. Here again is Calgary Police Superintendent Cliff O'Brien. Our tech crimes people, when they're looking at computers and they're looking at our various devices,
You know, they're very talented in what they can do and there's no doubt in my mind that Bob Deere deleted things thinking that they would never be found. But when our tech crimes people went through, they were able to find an entry where Bob Deere had in his computer to go and practice shooting with Muhammad at a gun club. And he even put a reminder to say, "Don't forget to bring your permit."
So, and that had been deleted, but we were able, the investigators were able to retrieve that. It was our theory that that piece of evidence showed that there was planning by the two to shoot Mr. Beauchamp. As the prosecution presented its case, jurors saw the heated email exchange between Deere and Jack Beauchamp.
Then came the series of CCTV images from London Drugs, Walmart, the Greyhound Bus Depot, and Jack Beauchamp's office building.
Certainly it tells the story of what happened. We know that they go back to Mr. Deere's home. Mr. Kareem changes his appearance. They leave Mr. Deere's home. They stop at a bank machine and get out some money. And eventually Kareem is taken back to the Greyhound terminal. You know, so it sort of completes the story in terms of
what happened on that day. And the jury had to decide what to make of all of that evidence. Both Kareem and Deer testified in their own defense. Kareem admitted he shot Jack Beauchamp and said he aimed at his stomach and legs because he didn't intend to kill him.
He testified that he volunteered to speak to Jack to get him to lay off. But Kareem refused to implicate Robert Deere in any way. He was asked who sent him and he wouldn't answer, but agreed with me in cross-examination that to name Mr. Deere would make him a rat within the jail system. And he didn't want to be seen as a rat within the jail system because it would make his life difficult.
It was suggested during the trial that Karim attempted to extort Deer on at least two occasions by offering a favorable testimony in exchange for money. That was only evidence that came out when both of them testified.
There was evidence about extortion schemes as between the two of them and demands that Mr. Karim was making of Mr. Deer for money in order to provide favorable evidence for him. And of course, the Crown wasn't aware of any of that evidence until Mr. Karim was cross-examined by Mr. Deer's lawyer. We heard that for the first time then.
Robert Deere testified after Kareem and insisted there was never a plan to use violence or harm Jack in any way. Deere said he didn't know Kareem had a gun with him when he went to meet Jack and told court he was surprised and frightened when he learned Kareem had shot him. Both Kareem and Deere had experienced defense counsel. Veteran lawyer Alan Heppner represented Deere.
Deer set Karim up to go have a conversation with Beauchamp about the debt, about the contract, about the money owed by Deer. And from Deer's perspective, it was just, you know, I didn't intend anyone to get shot or killed, but I just wanted him to know that I was serious about not honoring the debt that he said that I owed. After all of the evidence was presented, jurors were asked to decide the fate of Karim and Deer.
They deliberated for several days. Here again is Alan Heppner. It was a circumstantial case. That's why the jury was out for four days on that file. I don't think they, we never knew how they decided or what happened, but it's a long time, certainly for a Canadian jury to be out on a case like this. The jury found both Robert Deere and Mohamed Karim guilty of the first-degree murder of Jack Beauchamp.
Following the verdicts, prosecutor Suzanne Kendall and defense lawyer Alan Heppner spoke to the media outside of court. I think that the jury was very conscientious and diligent. They clearly considered all of the evidence very carefully. They clearly put a lot of work into it and came up with a just verdict. I've just spoken to him and we're just going to let things settle for a day or so and I'll talk to him later tonight and tomorrow and then we'll make some decisions.
Both Deer and Kareem received an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years. Jack Beauchamp's family left court feeling some relief. This was the first and only time Deborah Beauchamp, Jack's widow, spoke to reporters. We're just thrilled with the verdict, but there are clearly no winners in this situation. So many lives have been changed forever by the actions of these two men.
Jack's successor at Moorbank, John Tiberio, also expressed relief.
It's done. So at least now from all of our point of views, we can move on with our lives. This is the last point in the trial and things are finished. It is finished now. But any feeling of closure was short-lived. Both Robert Deere and Mohamed Karim appealed the finding of guilt and won. Alberta's top court overturned both of their convictions.
It's a little bit complicated, but there was evidence that Mr. Kareem gave that impacted Mr. Deer, and evidence that Mr. Deer gave that impacted Mr. Kareem, and how that came out, the Court of Appeal found was unfair because it didn't allow for proper reply to that evidence. As well, the Court of Appeal was concerned about the fact that
Mr. Karim was allowed to testify and never required to name the person who was involved with him in terms of giving him the gun and asking him to go and see Mr. Beauchamp. And so they found that that was another problem with the case. The Alberta Court of Appeal ordered a new trial for both Karim and Deere, which began more than six years after Jack Beauchamp was killed.
A new trial began today for two men accused of killing a Calgary businessman. It's the second trial for the duo charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Jack Beauchamp. Nancy Hicks is at the Calgary Court Center with the latest. Nancy.
The trial began today with graphic video of the crime scene. Beauchamp lying in a pool of his own blood in his downtown Calgary office. Not looking forward to going through it again. We know the results of the first time and unfortunately for a few
Technicalities, we're back at it again. There is the chance of a different decision this time. It's always a possibility because we're starting over, everything is new. So yeah, that doesn't please us. On May 22nd, 2012, the second trial began. And this time, it was heard before a judge alone. There were different prosecutors and different defense lawyers.
But Suzanne Kendall said the rest of the trial was similar, with the same evidence presented. However, the outcome was completely different from the original jury trial. Justice Hughes found Mr. Kareem guilty of second-degree murder.
And she found that Mr. Deere was only guilty of manslaughter, essentially because she was not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Deere and Mr. Karim had the plan that we had suggested in the first trial to shoot Mr. Beauchamp and wasn't aware of Karim's plan to shoot Mr. Beauchamp.
It was a shocking outcome for Jack Beauchamp's loved ones, including the new president of Moorbank, John Tiberio. It's wrong. The jury was involved last time and the jury convicted it that way. And now, unfortunately, we have it come down with a second degree and a manslaughter.
Robert Deere was sentenced to 16 years in prison. But with two-for-one credit, or double credit, for time already served, he had just four and a half years remaining in his sentence. Two years later, he applied for both full and day parole.
A written decision by the Parole Board of Canada stated Deere needed to further examine the factors that led to the serious offence and stated he needed to develop further insight as to what would lead him to seek this type of response to a poor business deal. The board said the release was premature and he would remain an undue risk to the community
until he was able to demonstrate true understanding and insight into those issues. He appealed that parole board decision, but it was dismissed. He applied for release again in June of 2015 and was again denied.
The board said it could not ignore the nature and gravity of Deere's index offense, and again found that he lacked insight into what caused him to resolve a business deal by having the victim killed. In August of 2015, after serving two-thirds of his sentence, Deere was granted statutory release, as mandated by law.
In total, from the date of his arrest to the day he was released, he spent just over nine years in custody. According to his social media posts, Deer now spends much of his time on the beaches of Mexico. Mohamed Karim was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years. Karim remains in prison. He's been in custody for nearly 18 years.
According to documents obtained by Global News from the Parole Board of Canada, during his time in prison, Kareem has violently assaulted a fellow inmate and has been flagged for disruptive behavior as recently as December of 2022. In June of 2023, Kareem applied for day parole.
The board noted his escorted absences have been going well, but said he has a vindictive temperament and said that shows he's vengeful.
At that time, the board decided Kareem did not meet the criteria for day parole. However, nearly a year later, in April of 2024, the board stated Kareem had made significant progress. They determined the time was right for him to continue his life sentence in an environment other than an institution and granted him day parole for a period of six months.
For Superintendent Cliff O'Brien, Jack Beauchamp's case will always stand out to him because of just how senseless it was. I think for me, it was difficult to watch Jack show up for work that day. He showed up to work that day carrying his coffee, probably like he does every day with his briefcase, and he went there just to go to work.
I know that he didn't really think that somebody was going to come in and kill him. There's a father of three, family person, family man that didn't go home to his family. That shouldn't happen in any of our cities, but certainly not in a downtown office building. That just, it's such a waste.
Crime Beat is written and produced by me, Nancy Hixt, with producer Dila Velasquez. Audio editing and sound design is by Rob Johnston. Special thanks to photographer-editor Danny Lantella for his work on this episode. Thanks to Jesse Wisner, our Crime Beat production assistant. And thanks to Chris Bassett, the VP of Network Content Production and Distribution and Editorial Standards for Global News.
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