Casino murder trial opens: ROBBED AND BEATEN: B.C. contractor died in Las Vegas in '97

Noted & Quoted in: The Province, pg. A3

The Vancouver Province

Instead, he was robbed, savagely beaten and dumped in a stairwell at the Imperial Palace.

Idiens' body, clothed only in underwear and socks, was found with a plastic bag tied around the head. His right ear was ripped in half.

Thirty-one-year-old Greg Chao--a Burnaby loan shark and professional gambler accused of robbing and killing Idiens to cover his own gambling debts--went on trial last week.

The killing rocked poker-playing cliques in Las Vegas and Burnaby, where both men were known to frequent the Lumberman's Arch Social Club, home to high rollers in B.C.'s poker circles.

"Gambling wasn't going very well for the defendant," prosecutor Pam Weckerly told the jury in opening arguments.

"There were gambling debts--and these weren't debts to Citibank or Bank of America. They were to less-than-savoury individuals."

Chao's parole officer, Douglas Hood, testified that the gambler said he owed $40,000 to individuals Hood believed were of "shady character."

Idiens, on the other hand, was a dutiful 53-year-old father of five who built condominiums, did patio work and "loved the outdoors, camping and fishing," Weckerly said.

"His next-favourite hobby was playing poker. He took it seriously," she said. "He didn't talk or chat away [while playing]. He played like it was a business. He believed there was an honour to the game. You play smart, and you pay off your debts."

Friends have told reporters that Idiens was contemplating giving up his business ventures and turning to poker full time when he was killed. Apparently he was tired of his construction-business ventures going awry.

After arriving in Las Vegas, Idiens met up with an old friend named Phil Barber and the two set out to make some money at the poker tables at The Mirage casino.

"They were pretty serious players," Weckerly said. "They liked to play all the time, six days a week, eight hours a day."

Edwin Barber, a close friend of Idiens, told the Las Vegas Sun that Idiens was one of the best and most studied poker players around, and that Idiens kept a "black book" in which he jotted notes about mannerisms, occupations or other habits of players.

Weckerly told the jury that at some point, Idiens met Chao at the table. The two struck up an acquaintance because they were from B.C., although they did not know one another before meeting in Las Vegas.

The day of the slaying, Idiens was playing poker when he was paged.

Court records obtained by the Asian Pacific Post state Idiens was playing at a $20 to $40 US "Texas hold 'em" table at The Mirage casino--where players buy in for $200--when he received a phone call at about 5 p.m. on Dec. 8, 1997.

"Don Idiens gets up, he walks out the door and he is never seen alive again by his friend, Phil Barber," Weckerly said. "He left $822 in poker chips on the table."

Idiens had earlier borrowed $9,000 in cash from Barber, and told him that he had loaned $1,000 to Chao.

After the phone call, Mirage hotel surveillance video shows Idiens leaving the hotel at 5:17 p.m.

He walked across the street and entered the Imperial Palace Hotel at 5:25 p.m. Surveillance videos from the Imperial show Idiens entering the elevator lobby that leads to the guest rooms.

Idiens' battered, bruised and bloodied body was found by the Imperial housekeeping staff at 9:15 a.m. the next day on a 17th-floor fire escape stairwell.

Chao's room was nearby on the 18th floor.

"He was beaten in the head severely...On one side of his head, his ear was nearly severed," Weckerly said. "There was also a bag over his head, a white towel next to him. He had no other clothing [than his underwear.] Not a watch. Nothing."

Surveillance video, she added, showed Chao coming and going from the hotel at times consistent with the timing of the murder.

Housekeeper Donna Smith told police that on the morning of Dec. 9, Chao had left room number 18136 and asked her to clean it.

Smith testified in court that Chao left the room "like a bat flying out of there."

When she entered the room, she found a dark brown stain all over the bathroom tiles.

Police found blood traces in the bathroom. A chemical test also showed blood on the walls, and underneath a carpet. A DNA analysis showed the blood was Idiens'.

Weckerly said gambling records pulled from The Mirage showed that before the killing, Chao lost nearly $4,800 playing poker.

Shortly after the slaying, Chao bought into a poker game with about $5,800.

Weckerly said that Chao checked into the Imperial Palace under an alias, Yen or Yan Chang--believed to be the name of his Vancouver girlfriend--and that when he checked out, he insisted a hotel employee allow him to pay his $930 bill in cash in order to avoid leaving a credit-card record.

Shortly after the killing, Chao returned to Burnaby and was on probation for an extortion conviction when he was arrested in connection with the Idiens case.

According to police, Chao was a parolee who once threatened to kill a Canadian car salesman's two daughters if he did not hand over $50,000. He was arrested while picking up a briefcase with $20,000 in it, a crime prompted as part of an attempt to pay off gambling debts, police said.

He was extradited to Las Vegas after a long legal battle that ended only when U.S. authorities agreed not to seek the death penalty.

Defence attorney Tim O'Brien, a public defender representing Chao, said in opening arguments before Judge Nancy Saitta that police were too quick to judge and that they had arrested the wrong man.

"Greg Chao is not a killer," O'Brien said. "Greg Chao is innocent."

O'Brien said Chao had met Idiens and let him borrow his hotel room for a meeting, but Chao did not participate in the meeting and never saw Idiens again.

If convicted, Chao could face life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, or a minimum period of parole ineligibility of 20 years.

Opening statements began Thursday. The trial is expected to last as long as two weeks.