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Blond and fresh faced, the 6-foot-2 man was a normal and popular kid who excelled at sports, said Ray LeMoigne, superintendent of the school district that includes the Fort St. James high school Mr. Legebokoff graduated from in 2008. He spent some time after graduation in Lethbridge, police said, before moving to Prince George, where he worked as a mechanic.

“Cody has a loving family and caring parents, siblings and a large extended family in the region,” Mr. LeMoigne told the Prince George Citizen. “In school he was well liked by his peers and was very good at sports. He played minor hockey at all levels and belonged to the downhill ski and snowboard team.”

“He’s from a wonderful home,” said Ms. Leslie’s grandmother, Kathleen Leslie, who grew up with Mr. Legebokoff’s grandfather in Fraser Lake. “It’s hard to fathom. [The family doesn’t] know what in the world could have caused this.”

Mr. Goodwin said his family is struggling to come to grips with the magnitude of the allegations his grandson is facing.

“Everybody liked him, there wasn’t a person that had a bad thing to say about him — nobody,” said the grandfather, who last saw Mr. Legebokoff a month before his November 2010 arrest when he showed up at a Thanksgiving dinner with a girlfriend. “There’s a split personality or something wrong in his head. He needs a doctor to help him.”

Friends, most of them asking not to be named, began lining up to defend Mr. Legebokoff.

“Cody has always been in the wrong place at the wrong time..this could have been one of those moments,” wrote someone identifying themselves as CJRM on the website for CPKG-TV, the news channel in Prince George. “He is a great buddy of mine, and I wouldn’t hesitate for one seconde [sic] to get in a vehicle with him and go cruising. He was my two stepping partner nights we would go out dancing, I have seen him in bar fights and I have pissed that boy off a few good times, and not once had he ever shown any signs to lose his mind and kill me or anyone else.”