A B.C. man accused of four murders stepped into the witness stand for a second day Wednesday, to deny having anything to do with the slayings.

Charles Kembo testified at his murder trial that he did not kill his friend Ardon Samuel or his wife, Margaret Kembo.

He had no reason to kill Samuel, Kembo told the court.

"I loved him like my own brother," he said.

Samuel, 38, was found strangled and buried under leaves in a Vancouver park in November 2003. His penis had been chopped off and stuffed in his pants, along with notes suggesting he deserved to be killed.

Kembo told court that while the two men had several phone conversations the day before police believe Samuel died, he never met with Samuel in the park. He said he believes he may have been having drinks at a nearby lounge at the time.

"That's where I could have been, had I been in that area at that late hour," he said.

The 41-year-old was arrested in 2005 and charged in the murders of Samuel, Margaret Kembo, his girlfriend Sui Yin Ma and Rita Yeung, Margaret's 20-year-old daughter and Kembo's step-daughter.

Kembo told the court that he spoke repeatedly to his wife by cellphone in the two years after she vanished in late 2002, the time police believe she was murdered. Her body has never been found.

Kembo has said she had entered a Buddhist monastery in Hong Kong.

Prosecutors contend Kembo killed all four and assumed their identities for financial gain.

The jury has heard him admit to an addiction problem several years before his arrest, to using fake identification and to a lengthy criminal record for theft and forgery. He earlier admitted to an incestuous relationship with his step-daughter.

Kembo said Wednesday he used "novelty IDs," bought online for about $100, to set up two off-shore bank accounts.

He also said he used Samuel's name -- with his friend's "knowledge and consent" -- for companies he did work for and operated, to avoid problems over his criminal record.

But he told court he didn't know that Samuel, who he'd befriended in 1998 and lived with on and off, had taken out an $850,000 life insurance policy prior to his murder. The policy named Grant Kembo, the accused's three-year-old son at the time, as a beneficiary.

Kembo is expected to continue his testimony through next week.