It was no series of unfortunate coincidences, but the planned and intentional killing of a client by a now ex-Kamloops lawyer, now convicted of first degree murder.
After a lengthy trial that stretched through 2025, Rogelio Butch Dharamdas Bagabuyo was found guilty on Feb. 3, 2026 of the first degree murder of Mohd Abdullah, according to the recently published, 44,000-word decision by Madam Justice Kathleen Ker.
Bagabayo did not contest that he had killed his client, but had argued it was a spontaneous and unplanned event, a claim belied by the lengths he went to to cover up his tracks.
The murder was only discovered after the son of another of Bagabuyo’s clients, looking at the back of a Budget cargo van the lawyer had convinced his father to rent, discovered a tote with the body of Adbullah, garrote still around his neck and wrapped in plastic sheeting.
The investigation would uncover further evidence, including a bloody knife, clothes that appeared partially melted, and a cue card with a to-do list including reminders to leave his phone and watch behind and to “bag everything after.”
Bagabayo’s attempts to dispose of the body were not the only cover-up in play, as the murder itself served to cover up other wrongdoing.
The genesis of a crime
Abdullah had retained Bagabuyo as his lawyer in 2016 during his divorce proceedings, and over the next six years would meet regularly as they worked to deal with various issues and arranged to secret away hundreds of thousands of dollars from being divvied up.
At one point, Adbullah provided a substantial transfer of funds to Bagabuyo to keep it from going to his ex-wife, claiming it was allegedly for legal fees.
Bagabuyo, instead of sheltering that money, used it to pay for his own living expenses and renovations, according to a forensic accountant who unraveled the web of four different corporate and 13 personal accounts the ex-lawyer had. Less than two years after all the funds were transferred, they were gone.
“In short, Mr. Bagabuyo spent the entirety of Mr. Abdullah’s life savings and seemingly had no way of repaying the funds,” wrote Justice Ker.
Among the other matters that Bagabuyo worked on with Abdullah were drafts of his will and the immigration of Abdullah’s new fiancée from Indonesia.
Abdullah’s ex-wife would end up dying before the divorce was finalized, and he went to his lawyer to seek all the money he had given him now that it no longer needed to be sheltered.
Bagabuyo convinced his client that the funds needed to be held further, to protect them from Abdullah’s ex-wife’s estate and children, going so far as to forge a letter purporting to be from a different Kamloops law firm. He would continue to employ delaying tactics over the next two years.
The whole while, Abdullah documented his frustrations and recorded every transaction, including proving cheques for things like setting up shell corporations to supposedly disguise his money coming back to him. That money, too, was spent on Bagabuyo’s living expenses.
“In the end, Mr. Abdullah gave Mr. Bagabuyo over $785,000, a small amount of which was a retainer for the family law proceedings. The vast majority of the money was to be sheltered but returned once the family proceedings concluded,” reads the decision.
“Instead, by March 11, 2022, Mr. Abdullah was embittered, frustrated, and despairing over the delays in the return of his money. The evidence from his friends, Ms. Milanese, Tanya Thompson, and Efran Zahrai; his financial advisor, Murray Redman; and his emails to Mr. Bagabuyo clearly establish and support this fact.”
Suspicious preparations
On March 1, 2022 Bagabuyo sent an email to schedule a meeting at his office on March 11, which Abdullah believed would be to conduct the return of his funds. Later on March 1 the lawyer went to Home Depot and purchased a 45-gallon Husky Tote, paid for with cash. It was the only item he purchased.
Shortly before his security cameras stopped recording, Bugabayo was seen retreiving a square object from his shed and two lengths of black rope that he carried out the side gate, after which he returned empty-handed. The recordings then ceased.
The cameras would be shut down again the day before the murder, when Bagabuyo returned twice more to Home Depot to make several additional purchases: a propane torch kit, plastic sheeting, three pairs of gloves, two packages of plastic push pins, and a torch extension hose on the first visit, and another tote, identical to the one purchased on March 1, during a second visit.
Those items contributed to Justice Ker’s finding that Abdullah’s death was planned in advance.
On March 11, Abdullah and Bagabuyo met at the lawyer’s office. The last sighting of Abdullah alive was on security camera footage just blocks from the office, from which he would not emerge alive. Over the next couple of hours, the lawyer would begin his efforts to cover up his killing.
“As noted previously, there is no issue that Mr. Bagabuyo killed Mr. Abdullah,” Justice Ker wrote. “Mr. Bagabuyo further admits that Mr. Abdullah’s death occurred in his law office on March 11, 2022, when the two men met, ostensibly to finalize the return of Mr. Abdullah’s funds. There is no issue that Mr. Bagabuyo slashed Mr. Abdullah’s face, stabbed his client two times in the neck, seven times in the chest and once in the abdomen.
“However, it is the speed with which the overall sequence of events occurred, from 3:13 p.m. to 5:20 p.m., coupled with the absence of any defensive wounds on Mr. Bagabuyo when arrested, that largely serves to make implausible the proposed defence inference that there was an unplanned and spontaneous confrontation between the two men.”
The attempted cover-up
Just two hours after the last sighting of Abdullah, Bagabuyo left his office, carrying three half-filled garbage bags and a tote to his car.
The next day, he purchased a new propane tank, and the day after that, on March 13, he went to the Princess Auto hardware store and picked up several items, including a hacksaw and additional blades for it, a hatchet, a tarp, a package of paracord, multiple sets of gloves and a cargo carrier with a hitch attachment.
On the store CCTV, he picked out several items but did not purchase them, including a shovel and bolt cutters.
On March 14, the RCMP received a missing persons report about Abdullah. The RCMP found out Bagabuyo was Abdullah’s laywer, and reached out to him. The lawyer said they had met, that Abdullah told Bagabuyo they would be in again on March 21, and that he was planning to go out of town.
Bagabuyo stopped at the home of his former neighbours, friends, and clients, the Rautenbauchs.
“While out for coffee, Mr. Bagabuyo explained to Mr. Rautenbauch that he had a lot of heavy stuff to get rid of and he wanted Mr. Rautenbauch to rent a van for him so that he could dispose of the items,” reads the decision. “Mr. Rautenbauch considered Mr. Bagabuyo a good friend and did not question him on what exactly he was trying to get rid of but agreed to rent a van for Mr. Bagabuyo.”
The two then left and picked up a Budget rental van, with Rautenbauch putting it under just his name. The van was loaded up with items, including the tote holding Abdullah’s body, numerous plastic garbage bags, cloth shopping bags that contained many items, blue nitrile gloves, a shovel, and a package of saw blades, alongside other things.
Rautenbauch drove the van to his home, and the two met up the next day to look for a place to dispose of the items, which they were unable to do, despite travelling as far as Cache Creek and Sun Peaks before calling it quits. They planned to meet again to try and find a different spot on another day.
The RCMP again spoke with Bagabuyo, during which he again said he expected to see Abdullah the next week, and after which he sent what Justice Ker described as a “shocking” email to Abdullah’s account.
“Mr. Bagabuyo included in the email his ‘recollection’ that Mr. Abdullah was away until Monday, a request that Mr. Abdullah contact the police and let them know he was alright, and the following comment: ‘I trust you are well,’” wrote Ker. “Of course, this email could only have been designed to throw the RCMP off their investigation as Mr. Abdullah, as Mr. Bagabuyo very well knew, had been dead for nearly six days at that point.”
The cover-up unravels
Rautenbauch’s grandson, concerned about why the cargo van had been rented and believing it contained something illegal, went out to investigate. He opened up the tote, saw a human foot, and immediately called the police.
Instead of immediately seeking out Bagabuyo to arrest him, the police let the planned meeting between Rautenbauch and Bagabuyo go ahead, without Rautenbauch’s presence.
The lawyer drove to the pre-arranged meeting spot, waited several minutes, and drove past the Rautenbauch residence, then drove on to a nearby Tim Hortons restaurant, where he was arrested.
When Bagabuyo was searched, a number of documents in a small white plastic shopping or garbage bag were found, concealed in the sleeve of his coat, which he claimed were client documents and thus protected under solicitor-client privilege. They were thus handed over to independent counsel for review, who eventually released them to the police.
The documents contained files from Abdullah related to questions for the March 11 meeting, and then copies of bank drafts Abdullah had provided since 2016, print-outs of emails setting up meetings, Abdullah’s various concerns, and so on.
“Timestamps on the documents, coupled with the admissions, lead to the inescapable rational inference that Mr. Abdullah printed all these documents and took them with him to his March 11 meeting with Mr. Bagabuyo,” wrote Ker. “Once at that meeting on March 11, 2022, Mr. Bagabuyo took the documents, either from Mr. Abdullah’s hands or from his possessions, with the intention of disposing of them when he disposed of Mr. Abdullah’s body. This is what he intended to do on March 18, 2022, when he arrived to meet Mr. Rautenbauch to continue the search for a place to dispose of the Tote and the other items in the Van. I can reach no other rational conclusion on this facet of the evidence.”
The painstaking investigation
The court was provided with hundreds of photos, almost two hundred exhibits of evidence, expert reports, and more to lay out the evidence Crown believe proved Bagabuyo’s preparation and intent to kill before going into the meeting with Abdullah.
After the lawyer was arrested, the cargo van was taken to an auto shop, where it underwent a two-day almost “archeological” examination, with layer-by-layer photo documentation of all the contents, including partially melted bags containing clothes, gloves with flecks of red staining them, a bottle of peroxide, and bloodstained plastic sheeting. In one bag was also found a kitchen utility knife, stained with blood. Another bag had a towel in it, with Bagabuyo’s name on the tag.
Despite one of the pushpins being found at the office, as well as in the bags in the van, there was a lack of evidence indicating how exactly they had been used.
“However, it is the absence of any evidence of any pushpin holes in the office walls or in the plastic sheeting in the garbage bags in the Van, that causes me to question whether the inference that Mr. Bagabuyo had set up an area in his office as a ‘plastic-wrapped kill room’, like the main protagonist in the TV series Dexter, is supportable,” wrote Justice Ker.
At Bagabuyo’s home, the most notable item found was a hand-written cue card with a “to-do list” that was found near the door. The list, according to the decision, contained the following phrases with preceding bullet points:
* Bag Everything After
* Dont Bring Phone & Watch
* Turn GPS Off
* Throw Garbage Out
* Close doors so not visible [Written above this was a three-word phrase that was indecipherable, but the last two were “Vic Street.” Bagabuyo’s office was located on Victoria Street in Kamloops.]
* Location Services Off
In Bagabuyo’s shed was found the decoy tote, containing legal files, but lacking the sheet of paper attached to its lid that indicated the contents were confidential.
Also in the shed, and the more important piece of evidence, was a piece of wood, which matched the handles of the garrote found wrapped around Abdullah’s neck.
No reasonable doubt of murder
Justice Ker noted that based on the admissions from Bagabuyo alone, he had committed at the very least the crime of manslaughter when he killed Abdullah.
But it was the totality of the evidence presented that convinced her that the lawyer had gone into the meeting with his client that day intending to kill him.
Laying out her reasons, she listed the 10 stab wounds and one slash Abdullah had received in short order, the garrote around his neck that had to be placed there before he was wrapped in plastic and put in the tote, the lack of defensive injuries on Bagabuyo when he was arrested, and the two-hour timeframe in which the lawyer cleaned up and removed his client’s body.
“Respectfully, it defies logic, common sense, and human experience that Mr. Bagabuyo’s stabbing of Mr. Abdullah was simply a reactionary response to a spontaneous attack or confrontation that occurred out of the blue,” wrote Justice Ker. “Were this so, and were this rational inference available on the evidence, it further defies logic, common sense, and human experience that Mr. Bagabuyo could have accomplished all of the steps enumerated above, with precision and skill, in such a limited time frame.”
The Justice noted that the only reasonable explanation for the garrote’s presence was that it was placed around Abdullah’s neck prior to him being placed in the tote, which meant that Bagabuyo would have had to have brought it to the meeting.
Defence’s argument that all of the circumstantial evidence did not show any intent to kill, making Bagabuyo out to be the “victim of an unusually large number of very unfortunate coincidences,” was considered and rejected by the Justice.
“Rarely are the numerous events in a circumstantial case confined to territory with clearly marked boundaries; rather they most often consist of a constellation of characteristics. As in astronomy, it is when you view the stars together that the constellation plainly appears,” wrote Justice Ker.
“And so, it is the force of the unusual number of circumstances pre-dating the commission of the offence, when considered cumulatively together, within the context of the evidence as a whole, viewed through the lens of logic, common sense, and human experience that points to the opposite conclusion to what the defence contends.”
Justice Ker leveled a verdict of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt that Bagabuyo had committed first-degree murder.
That charge and conviction carries an automatic life sentence, with no chance of parole for 25 years.