It has been more than six years since three men linked to the Greeks gang in Vernon were convicted of murder. They continue to appeal those convictions, trying to get an audience before the Supreme Court of Canada.
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Supreme Court of Canada dismisses appeal of Greeks
gang killers
Convicted killers who terrorized Vernon 15 years ago lose appeal
The Supreme Court of Canada will not hear an appeal of murder convictions of three members of the notorious Greeks gang from Vernon.
The country’s highest court issued a statement Thursday dismissing the appeals of Peter Manolakos and his associates, Leslie Podolski and Sheldon Richard O’Donnell.
Manolakos, Podolski and O’Donnell are three of five men convicted by a jury in November 2012 of various counts in the murders of David Marnuik, Thomas Bryce and Ronald Thom in the Vernon area between July 2004 and May 2005.
Marnuik, who delivered drugs for the Greeks, was beaten to death with a baseball bat, a hammer and a blowtorch because he had taken off with some cash and a gang cellphone in the middle of a shift in the summer of 2004.
Bryce was a rival drug trafficker fighting the Greeks for turf when he was beaten with a wooden bat, then stomped at a popular beach near Vernon in November 2004. He died 17 days later in hospital.
Thom was shot to death on May 31, 2005, because Manolakos mistakenly believed Thom had provided police with information about the Greeks‘ criminal activity.
Manolakos was convicted of the first-degree murder of Thom and manslaughter in Marnuik’s death. O’Donnell was convicted of first-degree murder in the Thom slaying and second-degree murder in the deaths of Marnuik and Bryce. Podolski was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Marnuik.
All three are serving life sentences.
The Supreme Court decision came 10 months after the B.C. Court of Appeal dismissed all 16 grounds of appeal filed by the trio, including that the judge improperly allowed hearsay evidence to be admitted and didn’t provide adequate warnings about the credibility of some of the criminal witnesses who testified for the Crown.
The men were found to be part of a drug-trafficking gang operating in the North Okanagan called the Greeks, headed by Manolakos, who is of Greek heritage.
Manolakos provided gold rings and vests to his members, who also had tattoos of the word “ema” — which means blood in Greek — as well as the Greek letter omega.
Jurors at the trial also heard the Greeks had different ranks within the organization, including runners like Marnuik who worked the drug lines at the street level, bankers who would supply drugs to the runners and collect the profits, and enforcers who would mete out punishment to those who broke the gang‘s rules.