A Texas murder suspect’s escape to Italy via Toronto could potentially lead to a protracted legal battle over his extradition, in a case that has been a People magazine cover story on newsstands in many North American regions since Friday.
But so far, numerous questions posed by CBC News to Public Safety Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency and airline officials have shed no light on how Lee Gilley, who faces an upcoming trial in Houston, managed to board an Air Canada flight from Canada’s busiest airport to Milan earlier this month.
Gilley, 39, arrived at Milan-Malpensa airport on May 3 and presented a passport and other identification documents from Belgium in the name of Lejeune Jean Luc Olivier, according to an affidavit filed by a U.S. marshal in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He was subsequently arrested by Italian immigration officials and U.S. officials were notified via Interpol a day later.
According to the affidavit, Gilley arrived in Italy on Air Canada Flight 894. This flight departs from Toronto’s Pearson Airport with a stopover in Montreal before continuing to Milan.
Air Canada declined comment on Gilley’s travels in response to CBC News, citing it as a “police matter.”
CBSA relies on the Privacy Act
The unanswered questions about Gilley’s escape are numerous and begin in Texas. Gilley was not detained before trial, even after media reports in mid-April based on court documents revealed that he had allegedly spoken to an unidentified woman online about the possibility of fleeing to Mexico or other countries.
It’s not clear how he got from Texas to Canada, although he took off his GPS ankle monitor on May 1 and was in northern Italy just two days later, according to court documents. He removed his ankle monitor on a Friday evening, but according to a Houston Chronicle report, the judge and attorneys in Gilley’s case were not made aware of the tampering until the following Monday.
Lee Gilley cut off his ankle monitor and fled to Italy weeks before his trial for murdering his pregnant wife (exclusive) https://t.co/FECghBtJxK
-People
It is also unknown whether he presented the Belgian passport or other identification documents at Air Canada kiosks or to Canadian immigration officials, although it is known that he had to surrender his real U.S. passport when he was released on a $1 million U.S. bond in mid-October 2024.
In response to CBC News, Public Safety Canada deferred questions to the Canada Border Services Agency. A spokesman for the CBSA said it could not comment publicly on the Gilley case, citing privacy law. The CBSA said it “works regularly and closely with domestic and international law enforcement partners to jointly support investigations, and we regularly share relevant information on border and national security issues.”
Gilley is charged with the 2024 murder of his pregnant wife Christa. The victim was born Christa Bauer and lived in Ohio, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, where she first met Gilley while attending college. Years later, according to Houston media reports, they got back together and decided to move to Texas in 2014.
Dick DeGeurin (left) is shown alongside client Robert Durst in Los Angeles County Superior Court on December 21, 2016. DeGeurin has represented accused murderer Lee Gilley, but a Texas trial for Gilley originally scheduled for this spring may now be delayed. (Jae C. Hong/Getty Images)
They were raising their two children and preparing for the arrival of a third when Houston police were notified late on Oct. 7, 2024, of a report of a possible suicide at their residence on the city’s northwest side. Gilley was taken to a hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Within days, the 38-year-old woman’s death was instead ruled a homicide by neck compression, and Gilley was charged with murder, a charge in which prosecutors can seek the death penalty. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office had not said whether it would do so, even though Gilley’s trial was scheduled to begin just weeks before his escape.
Tim Ballengee, the lawyer for the victim’s family, said in statements to the media that Gilley’s stunning escape from pretrial surveillance was “devastating for the family.”
“The Bauers are deeply disappointed by the collapse of the system,” Ballengee told the Chronicle.
Gilley’s legal representation was led by Dick DeGuerin, arguably the best-known attorney in Texas, having represented cult leader David Koresh, former U.S. Congressman Tom DeLay and Robert Durst, whose history of murderous violence was portrayed in the HBO series The Jinx.
DeGuerin told Bryce Newberry – a reporter for the Houston affiliate ABC News who spoke to CBC News via email about the Gilley case – on May 4 that he was concerned “that the prosecution will try to say that him running from it is evidence of his guilt, but I think he’s just scared.”
Read the US Marshal’s allegations regarding Gilley’s escape:
The extradition process is unclear at this point
Gilley declared his innocence this week at a preliminary court hearing in Turin, Italy. According to an NBC News report, he sought asylum there to avoid a possible death penalty and chose Italy “because of strong public opposition to the death penalty.”
“I didn’t kill my wife,” Gilley said. “The only crime I committed was escaping. I fled to avoid being killed.”
Gilley has now been charged in the United States with the federal crime of interstate flight to avoid prosecution, in addition to his federal murder charges.
Italy and the United States have an extradition treaty that was last updated in the 1980s, but like many other countries, Italy is wary of sending suspects to a country where they could face the death penalty. Similar battles over defendants who face the possibility of execution if convicted have occurred in North America in the past. Convicted serial killer Charles Ng of California and convicted murderer Joseph Kindler of Pennsylvania each spent about six years in Canadian custody before being extradited to the United States, where they were found guilty of their crimes.
The most famous case of an American fugitive who crossed Canada before being caught in Europe is perhaps that of James Earl Ray, who was later convicted in the 1968 assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. Ray, who spent weeks in Toronto, used the name of a living police officer to get a passport from a travel agent – the last name was misspelled, by the way.
Ray was subsequently arrested in England. The failure to stop Ray in Canada caused great embarrassment to the federal government and led to a number of changes in the issuance of passports.