The trial for Airdrie resident Hunter Van Mackelberg, who was charged with second-degree murder in the death of Kalix Langenau in February 2020, is underway.
Van Mackelberg’s 14-day judge-alone trial began in Calgary on Oct. 25. He is accused in the Feb. 15, 2020 homicide of Langenau, whose body was discovered southeast of Airdrie, in Balzac, on Feb. 17 that year.
According to an agreed statement of facts, Langenau’s cause of death was from a shotgun blast to the back of his head.
Crown prosecutor Ron Simenik argued that Langenau, who was living in Vancouver at the time of his passing was in the Calgary area to visit friends and family over the February long weekend in 2020 and was killed after a late-night meeting with his ex-girlfriend Madeline Kot by her boyfriend, Van Mackelberg.
The statement of agreed facts indicated Langenau had been in a relationship with Kot between 2017 and 2018, but the relationship ended that summer.
Van Mackelberg, meanwhile, had been in a relationship with a girl identified as SB around the time of 2017 and 2018, with the relationship ending around September 2018. He later started dating Kot, and was still in a relationship with her at the time of Langenau’s murder.
Around the fall of 2018, the agreed facts indicated Langenau and SB became a couple, until their relationship ended around September 2019. The crown’s argument is that Van Mackelberg held plenty of animosity toward Langenau, whom he knew through his relationship with Kot.
On the night and early morning hours of Feb. 14 and 15, 2020, according to the statement of agreed facts, Langenau and Kot exchanged about 50 text messages and a phone call, eventually agreeing to meet up in the parking lot of the Balzac Costco.
On the second day of the trial, the court heard from four witnesses, including two former friends and a former roommate of Van Mackelberg. The first to testify was Noah Popiolek, who told the court he used to go off-roading, hunting and shooting with Van Mackelberg.
“He gave off a big impression that he really, really disliked Kalix,” Popiolek said during his testimony. “He didn’t want anything to do with him and showed heavy hatred towards him.”
Popiolek added Van Mackelberg’s dislike of Langenau seemed to stem from the drama that emerged over their relationships with Kot and SB. He added Van Mackelberg would occasionally joke about wanting to injure Langenau.
“Sometimes, we’d be driving past [SB's] house and he would joke about running them both over or harming them,” he said. “He didn’t go into a lot of detail – he said it kind of lightly.”
In the days after Langenau had been reported missing, Popiolek said Hunter contacted him over Snapchat, and informed him that he had “done something wrong” and would need to lay low.
Popiolek said he found out about Langenau’s death via the news, and said when he saw a helicopter bird’s eye view camera shot of the field where Langenau's body was found, that he immediately recognized the area. He said he and Van Mackelberg had even been there a few weeks prior to go off-roading in his new truck.
“Hunter and I have gone there to go off-roading, to go shooting sometimes, and just general fun things like that,” he said.
Ethan Enns, another former friend of Van Mackelberg’s, testified about Van Mackelberg’s dislike of Langenau. Enns said Van Mackelberg had drunkenly talked about wanting to injure him.
“When he was drunk, he would talk about wanting to kick the [expletive] out of Kalix and stuff like that,” Enns told the court. “[He’d] talk about beating him up, taking out his tires on his car, stuff like that.”
Enns added Van Mackelberg had even once, when particularly drunk, offered him “a couple grand” to kill Langenau.
“I said what most people would say – [expletive] no,” he said.
During the cross-examination, Van Mackelberg’s defence lawyer, Andre Oullette argued one issue in the case is the amount of hearsay that will be brought forward by witnesses, due to rumours and discussion that proliferated on social media in the days following Langenau’s death.
“What I want to establish from the onset, from the very beginning of this case, is that you’re hearing what people have heard,” said. “That’s not the truth of it – it’s the truth they’ve heard. There is stuff being repeated, stuff being passed along, and all kinds of rumours.”
The case, which justice Glenn Poelman is presiding over, is is slated to be underway until Nov. 12 at the Calgary Courts Centre.
