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Jack’s skull and some bones were found 17 years later.

Photo by DARRYL DYCK / THE CANADIAN PRESS

Handlen also agreed to go to the B.C. Interior and show members of the crime group the spot where he said he’d snatched Jack. The court heard he pointed out one of 17 pullouts along a highway that looked like one he’d remembered but had some doubts about whether it was the same one.

The Crown presented a videotaped recording of Handlen in a vehicle with another undercover officer as the two drive along a highway, and he is asked if he’d heard any media reports indicating where Jack may have last been seen.

“I’m the only one that knows that stuff, nobody else does,” Handlen says.

“You heard it,” Matei told jurors, adding: “That’s because he raped, he abducted and he killed Monica Jack.”

Handlen has pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murder of Jack.

Matei said Handlen did not want to stop at the pullout or elsewhere in Merritt because he believed witnesses could identify him years later, even though the undercover officer had deceived him about having been seen on May 6, 1978, the day Jack disappeared.

“If he didn’t do anything, what’s he concerned about?” he asked jurors.

He said Handlen wasn’t a “yes man” who would have admitted to a “horrible crime” that he didn’t commit.

The fictitious crime group, for which Handlen did jobs like repossessing vehicles, did not provide inducements that would have had him confess to something he didn’t do, Matei said.

Handlen also had a partner of 30 years and lots of work, including as a handyman, that met his financial needs, and had a wide circle of friends so he wasn’t dependent on the connections he’d made with members of the group, Matei said.