A former Prince George woman not only had a relationship with Cody Alan Legebokoff but was a friend of one of his alleged murder victims, the court heard Monday.
Nakheita Cunningham said she knew Natasha Lynn Montgomery from growing up in Quesnel where their mothers played on the same softball team.
After she broke her back in a car accident, Cunningham moved from Williams Lake to Prince George to live with her mother sometime in 2009 and stayed in this city until November 2010. By that time her mother had moved to Edmonton and Cunningham followed her there.
In Prince George, Cunningham and Montgomery first ran into each other at a house in the VLA where they were doing crack cocaine and crystal methamphetamine and remained familiar with each other because they were both prostitutes working on Queensway, the court heard.
Cunningham said she first met Legebokoff one day while at a friend's barbecue at a house on Carney Street. It just so happened a barbecue was also being held in a house across the street where Legebokoff was living. The parties came together and they exchanged phone numbers.
Legebokoff later called her up to buy psychedelic mushrooms but Cunningham said it was really just a ploy to get her over to the house and they started hanging out with each other.
"It started becoming more like a relationship," Cunningham said.
Legebokoff did buy drugs off her a second time but Cunningham said she never saw him use them. By that time, she said Legebokoff made her feel comfortable and things progressed from there.
"We'd go for drives and we'd just lay there and relax and he would hold me," Cunningham said.
However, she already had a boyfriend, although he could be abusive. In those situations, she would call Legebokoff to come get her or call the police.
They would also go four-by-fouring in Legebokoff's pickup truck. A favourite spot was LC Gunn Park where they would make their own trails. With the help of an aerial photograph of the area where the body of Cynthia France Maas, 35, was found in October 2010, Cunningham gave a vivid description of the routes she and Legebokoff would take.
Cunningham told the court she brought Montgomery over to Legebokoff's house during a summer afternoon but the three decided to leave because the three girls living upstairs were not into the same level of drugs they were doing.
Legebokoff took them in his truck out to a spot just east of Prince George Correctional Centre where he and Cunningham liked to go so she could let her pet dog run. They drove down a hill, took a right and stopped at an "old mill" before the train tracks.
They pulled down the tailgate and while Cunningham and Montgomery respectively consumed crack cocaine and crystal methamphetamine, Legebokoff had a few drinks.
Cunningham said she remembered it was summer because it was hot out and Montgomery had shaved her head.
When they ran out of drugs, they drove back into town where Montgomery was dropped off at a drug house on Quince Street and Cunningham was dropped off at a nearby convenience store.
Under cross examination, defence lawyer Jim Heller noted inconsistencies in her testimony when a statement she gave police in June 2013, notably that the trio's get together east of PGRCC occurred shortly before Montgomery, whose body has never been found, went missing in September 2010 and not before.
Cunningham replied she had been away from the city for some time and memories of what actually happened came back when she returned to Prince George and said her testimony adhered to a second statement she gave to police on Sunday.
"It was hard for me to take the parts and put things together," Cunningham said.
Cunningham said the last time she saw Montgomery was shortly after her release from PGRCC and agreed with Heller she saw her get into the pickup truck of someone she thought was threatening and dangerous.
In an apparent confusion over names, Cunningham first told police the man's name was Cody but gave another name to the court on Monday.
Testimony was also heard Monday from Montgomery's boyfriend and Jill Stacey Stuchenko's fiancee.
Montgomery's boyfriend, Brian Godwin, said he knew her since she was about 12 years old and they began dating by the time she was 17 or 18 years old and when he was about 20 years old.
He said they had been living together in Quesnel, where they were the parents of two children for four or five years when she developed a serious drug problem centred on crack cocaine and the relationship broke up.
However, Montgomery stayed in close contact with the childen, usually calling them every second day. "She loved them more than anything in the world," Godwin said at one point.
A week after her release, Godwin said she called and told him she wanted to come back home to Quesnel. Because he couldn't get a ride, Godwin wired her enough money to pay for a bus ticket.
"She was crying on the phone that she really wanted to come home and see the children," Godwin said.
Montgomery was 23 years old when she went missing and her body has never been found.
Leonard Kinney testified that he was Stuchenko's fiancee. He admitted he had twice been convicted of assaulting her, but testified the relationship was back on better terms just before she went missing in October 2009.
Stuchenko's body was found in a shallow grave in a gravel pit off Otway Road, near Foothills Boulevard, on Oct. 20, 2009.
Kinney said they were the parents of two children and their fights were over her drug habit and because she was selling her sexual services to pay for drugs.
"I was against drugs, I wanted us to be a family," Kinney said.
When he learned Stuchenko had been reported missing and a story with her picture and story had been published in the newspaper, Kinney said he went to the Prince George RCMP detachment with some more photos.
And he then made some missing person posters with Stuchenko's picture on them and posted them around the city.
Kinney said he last saw her about a week-and-a-half before she was reported missing. She was standing on Queensway and he pulled over to ask her what she was doing.
"It looked like she was working, but she was waiting for a date or a ride," Kinney said. "
Legebokoff is also accused of first degree murder in the death of Loren Donn Leslie, whose body was found near a gravel pit north of Vanderhoof in late November 2010. Legebokoff was arrested a short distance away from the scene.
