(KIM ANDERSON / iNFOnews.ca)

A BC man is currently on trial in a Kamloops courtroom after implicating himself in two Kootenay killings that police and coroners had already determined were accidents.

Mitchell Earl McIntyre allegedly told health care workers he was responsible for killing a friend and his landlord's girlfriend in February 2022. Neither death was suspected to be criminal upon investigations by the BC Coroners Service and only one has so far resulted in a criminal charge.

That's according to a recently published BC Supreme Court decision, which ruled on the admissibility of certain evidence to be used in the trial. McIntyre is facing a charge of second second degree murder, accused of killing Julia Howe with a gunshot to the head at a home in Creston.

He was arrested less than two months after the killing and is currently in custody as the trial continues. He appeared for his ongoing judge-alone trial in a Kamloops courtroom on Monday, Nov. 18.

When Howe's body was found in a pool of blood on a bathroom floor on Feb. 6, 2022, the gunshot wound that killed her wasn't immediately found. Justice Paul Riley said it's a "most unusual feature of this case" that both the attending police officer and a coroner believed it was a fall that killed her. It was two days later that an autopsy revealed she was killed with a gunshot, according to the decision.

On Nov. 18, a Kamloops courtroom heard that a medical examiner found the .22 calibre bullet was found in the soft tissue toward the back of her head.

The second alleged victim, David Clearer, was found in his Kimberley home by his adult son, 95 minutes away from Creston. Like Howe, there was no sign of a struggle and a coroner ruled it to be an accident. Despite a "small wound" near an ear, Creamer's adult son, a police officer and a coroner all believed Creamer had fallen and hit his head.

Two days later, Creamer's body was cremated and "literally no forensic evidence was gathered," Riley said in his decision.

The investigation into Creamer's death as a homicide didn't start until more than a month later when RCMP major crime investigators got access to McIntyre's medical records. He told doctors and social workers at the East Kootenay Regional Hospital that he had killed two people.

A day after allegedly killing Howe, McIntyre turned himself in to the Cranbrook RCMP detachment to tell officers he "needed to be arrested," but he wouldn't say what, if anything, he did, according to the decision. Officers told him repeatedly they couldn't arrest him without a reason until he asserted he was unstable and a danger to himself and others.

He was then apprehended under the Mental Health Act and taken to the hospital.

During two stays at the psychiatric ward in less than a month, doctors found no clinical signs of mental illness. McIntyre persisted that he had harmed someone and thought he would do it again, even mentioning a list of people he intended to harm, according to the decision. 

After hearing from the doctors who treated him, Riley said McIntyre was merely staying in the hospital to "put off the legal consequences he might have been facing."

In the days after Howe's death and while McIntyre was in the hospital, police seized McIntyre's Hyundai Elantra, where they found a .22 calibre handgun. Police stayed in constant communication with hospital staff, keeping tabs on whether McIntyre would be released and pressing for information. Doctors refused to provide information, telling police that it required a court order to pass along medical records.

On March 9, during McIntyre's second stay at the hospital, police got that court order, which was when they discovered a connection to Creamer.

Sgt. Jason Smart, a Kelowna-based homicide investigator, testified that he felt hospital staff "stonewalled" police from getting information, especially with relation to Creamer and a supposed list of people McIntyre planned to target. His frustration wasn't solely because of hospital staff, though. It was also the initial investigations into Creamer's death by RCMP, coroners and paramedics that contributed to the delay in getting information, according to the decision.

Riley's decision came in July, but it was published Nov. 5. It ruled on what, between McIntyre's statements to police and hospital staff, could be used as evidence for the trial. 

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