Seven years after the body of 14-year-old Chelsea Acorn was found brutally murdered near Hope, B.C. a trial has begun for her killer, a man whose son has already been convicted in her death.
Acorn’s cousin, Stacey Laybolt, remembers the victim as a fun-loving teen who didn’t deserve what happened to her.
“Chelsea was full of life, she was animated, and made friends wherever she went,” Laybolt said.
But Acorn’s life came to a violent end in June 2005, when she was strangled, bludgeoned in the head with a rock and dumped in a shallow grave.
Fifty-nine-year-old Jesse Blue West, a long haul trucker, appeared in Chilliwack provincial court Tuesday for the start of his trial. West’s son Dustin Moir was already convicted of first-degree murder in 2010.
The Crown alleges West befriended Acorn, who was bounced between foster homes and struggled with drugs and alcohol.
The court heard Acorn had called her social worker and asked to go to Vancouver with West, who said he had a group for troubled teens called “Scared Straight.” West allegedly told Acorn he took the teens to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside to show the effects of drugs and alcohol.
The social worker testified when she called West to confirm, he denied knowing the girl.
The Crown said Acorn knew West as a drug dealer and she was dating his 19-year-old son, but when the relationship soured, the father and son took Acorn camping and killed her.
“There's lots of troubled teens around, but she had another side to her that was loving and caring and full of life and unfortunately that was robbed from her and that's what this is about,” Laybolt said.
The trial is slated to last six weeks and evidence will be presented that allegedly shows West confessed to an undercover police officer he killed Acorn.
With a report from CTV British Columbia’s Julia Foy
