Despite finding some of the circumstances “very suspicious,” a judge has acquitted a man of all charges in the 2023 killing of an Edmonton drug dealer.
Fred Kolybaba was found dead early Sept. 1, 2023, after firefighters responded to an arson fire in the basement of his northwest Edmonton home. The 69-year-old had been repeatedly stabbed and died of a deep slash wound to his jugular vein.
Nicholas Alexander Brashko, who had been at Kolybaba’s home buying Oxycodone the afternoon before, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder and arson.
After a trial, though, Court of King’s Bench Justice John Henderson concluded the Crown had failed to prove Brashko was the killer.
“Mr. Brashko told police that he did not kill the deceased,” Henderson wrote. “He told police that he left the deceased’s residence within one or two hours of his arrival at 5 p.m. When I consider these statements in the context of all the evidence, including the circumstantial evidence, I am left with a reasonable doubt that his statement may be true.”
Brashko was 44 at the time of his arrest and living in dire circumstances. When police searched his home after Kolybaba’s murder, the utilities had been cut off and there was no heat, power or running water. Investigators also found a large quantity of silver, which Brashko said he purchased from Kolybaba, along with at least 20 empty pizza boxes.
Brashko admitted he visited Kolybaba’s house to buy drugs the day before the murder. At 5:45 p.m. a friend of Kolybaba’s saw Brashko inside during a brief stop at the front door. Cellphone records show Brashko also called Kolybaba around 8:07 p.m., with his phone connecting to a tower near Kolybaba’s home.
Crown prosecutors Lucas Huyser-Wierenga and Jeffrey Zilkowsky theorized that Brashko killed Kolybaba sometime after the friend visited, then remained in the house until 12:10 a.m., when the home’s security system registered the front door opening. Fire crews responded minutes later after Kolybaba’s smoke detectors activated. They extinguished three small deliberately set fires in the basement.
Prosecutors claimed that after he left the house, Brashko walked toward a Shell gas station near the Kensington Bingo Hall, where a man was spotted on surveillance footage carrying two heavy bags. A cab driver testified he picked up a man in the area around that time and dropped him at a church near Brashko’s home. The driver said the man was carrying bags which made a “clinking” sound when he loaded them into the car.
Henderson said the Crown’s theory — that Brashko killed Kolybaba, then stole his collection of silver coins — was “dangerously seductive.”
“There is no doubt that the circumstances disclosed in the evidence are clearly very suspicious,” he said. “The Crown theory is based on a chain of established facts, which the Crown submits gives rise to an inference that Mr. Brashko is guilty.”
However, the judge found the circumstances were not proof of Brashko’s guilt.
While concluding Kolybaba was clearly slain, Henderson was left with a reasonable doubt about the identity of the killer. He said the security footage from the Shell station and bingo hall do not clearly show the man’s face, and the man in the video is wearing different clothing than Brashko was seen wearing earlier in the day.
Prosecutors argued Brashko had changed clothes after stabbing Kolybaba, but no blood soaked clothes were ever found in either man’s home. The man in the Shell station video is also wearing footwear similar to what Brashko was wearing earlier in the day, despite no blood stained shoes being found anywhere in Brashko’s home.
While the Crown argued it would be unusual for a man with a large quantity of valuable silver to be living in a home with no utilities, Henderson said there was evidence Brashko bought and sold the precious metal in the lead-up to Kolybaba’s murder. In particular, banking records confirmed Brashko received several large cash transfers after his mother’s death, which he claims he used to purchase silver.
Henderson noted that, while they weren’t required for the Crown to prove its case, police never found a murder weapon, and the bags seen in the Shell surveillance footage were never located. Nor was Kolybaba’s blood or DNA found in Brashko’s home, the judge said.
Taken as a whole, the Crown’s case was too weak to ground a conviction, Henderson concluded.
“It would be too dangerous to convict on the totality of the evidence presented,” he said.
According to the decision, Brashko was “seriously” injured and hospitalized after his initial arrest by police Sept. 4, 2023. He was released and rearrested the following February.
Anna Konye, Brashko’s lawyer, declined to comment.
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