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Mr. Thibault says he was first approached by Ms. Doucet, late in 2007. She was looking for a gun, he alleges. He happens to own some.

“I told her that she could not handle a gun because Mike [Ryan] was stronger,” reads Mr. Thibault’s January 2008 statement to police.

He recalled that Ms. Doucet then pleaded with him to murder Mr. Ryan. “I told her that I did not want to do that,” reads Mr. Thibault’s police statement. “She told me that if we did not find anybody to do that she was going to kill herself and her little daughter.”

He alleged the pair then met with Mr. Boudreau in his barn near the village of Concession, N.S.

“Herbie told me, he told me ‘Mike [sic] got to be gone, Mike’s got to go away.'”

“What did you make of his comments,” asked RCMP Cpl. Christian Thibaudeau.

“He wanted to have Mike Ryan killed…Herbie said, ‘We’ll pay $25,000 down and $25,000 when the job is done.'”

Mr. Boudreau pulled into his driveway the next day, Mr. Thibault recalled to police. “He threw three envelopes on the hood of my truck,” he stated. The envelopes contained $25,000. “I told him I did not want to have anything to do with that. That I did not want to go to jail for Nicole or anybody. He got kind of pissed off.”

Three days later, he alleged, Nicole contacted him and raised the ante. “She told me that if Mike was destroyed and that she was to inherit everything, that she would give me the piece of land from the house down in Little Brook,” he told police. (Mr. Ryan owned half of the Little Brook house and all of the adjacent land, about 15 acres, plus two more houses in Nova Scotia, along with other investments.)