On the evening of Saturday, February 2, 2008 the butchered body of 24-year-old Lindsay Buziak, a realtor with ReMax Camosun‘s Westshore office, in Victoria, BC, Canada is reported found by Cohen Oatman and Jason Zailo, two mortgage brokers (working for the same Victoria outfits, Terry Martin’s Mortgage Centre and now Dominion Lending). The pair make separate 911 calls from a vacant house in Saanich, a quiet Victoria suburb.
(The empty house at 1702 De Sousa Place is owned by developer Joe De Sousa, friend and colleague of Paul Bergshoeff – the owner of JJ’s Coffee House at 7088 West Saanich Road, corner Wallace Drive, Brentwood Bay. Bergshoeff is boyfriend to realtor Shirley Zailo, manager of the ReMax office out of which Lindsay Buziak worked. The distaff Zailo is mother to Jason Zailo. Her ReMax management team-mates are broker-owner Wayne Schrader and GM Ray Blender.)
Friday, September 17, 2010, NBC’s Dateline broadcasts “Dream House Mystery”, an one-hour investigative look at the savage, as-yet-unsolved, murder.
In the days following the Dateline broadcast, from neighbourhood coffee shops to global internet discussion forums, viewers voice their suspicions of people interviewed by NBC’s Josh Mankiewicz.
To counter-act public reaction “Saanich police this week took the unusual step of gathering the region’s news media to announce that three people are not suspects in the 2008 murder of Lindsay Buziak” reports Saanich News on September 22, 2010.
“Shirley Zailo, Ryan Zailo and Jason Zailo… we would like to state unequivocally that no member of the Zailo family is presently considered a person of interest or a suspect in any way in this investigation,” says Sgt. Dean Jantzen of the Saanich Police Department.
Jantzen reveals this “extraordinary” step has been taken at the request of the Zailo family, but does not identify the “variety of investigative means and techniques” enlisted by the SPD to clear the family’s name.
In this video – boyfriend/mortgage broker Jason Zailo revisits the De Sousa Place murder house days after Lindsay Buziak’s slaying
(Jason Zailo is boyfriend to Lindsay Buziak at the time of her slaying. Shirley Zailo, realtor, is Jason’s mother, Manager of the ReMax Camosun Westshore office, and Lindsay’s boss. Ryan Zailo, brother and son, is also a realtor with ReMax Camosun Westshore. He’s not mentioned in the Dateline broadcast days earlier. Nor is Cohen Oatman identified, who’s with Jason Zailo on the murder date and phones in the 911 discovery report of Lindsay Buziak’s body.)
Word is quickly shared by the press, family friends, and followers of the murder case. Key to establishing their innocence, it’s reported on the nightly newscast, “the entire Zailo family agreed to undergo polygraph tests”.
“I know that Ryan, Jason and Shirley all volunteered for polygraph tests and all passed without any suspicions.” This comment from Kristopher Yarish, a friend of Jason and Ryan Zailo on facebook, is typical of response to this news by friends and supporters of the Zailos.
The polygraph, commonly known as a lie-detector, test in which a suspect gets “wired up” is well-known to fans of crime and police drama. Proponents of the polygraph say it can reach 80 – 95% accuracy when administered by a properly-trained examiner and under the right conditions.
To be continued…