A BC mobster fled to Ontario and changed his name. Who overtook Alexander Kucovic?

Star prosecution witness Kosto Barjaktarovic must have felt his stomach when he heard the verdict.

Gangster Bindy Johal and five of his associates have all been acquitted of the underworld murders of British Columbia on brothers Jim and Ron Dosanjh.

Barjaktarovic was a star-crown witness against the five alleged gang members and now they were all free.

There was more at stake in the trial than rigorous evidence.

A bonus for the accused was that juror Gillian Guess slept with one of the accused and refused to cast a guilty verdict.

Guess was eventually convicted of obstruction of justice, but it was cold consolation for Barjaktarovic.

Even a serious gang member, he did not testify out of a sense of civic duty, he took the witness stand for immunity from prosecution, money and resettlement. He was not innocent and admitted that he played a role in two gang murders while working with Johal.

While moving into witness protection, Barjaktarovic changed his name to Alexander Kucovic and moved to Ontario.

Johal was shot dead in December 1998, three years after he was released on the Dosanjh brothers’ murder charge.

Even with Johal killed, Barjaktarovic still had many deadly enemies.

He also had many bad habits and little desire to reform.

He was briefly trying to make a living in an RCMP witness protection program when he played hockey for a team committed to power.

He first met him in London, Ont. established, where he claimed to be a bouncer and tanning salon worker.

It did not go well.

He was caught in March 1996 with cocaine, a prohibited assault rifle and a limited handgun and sentenced to a term of two and a half years.

When he was free, he moved to the York area, where he somehow had enough money to settle on the posh Grandvista Crescent in Vaughan, near Rutherford Road and Pine Valley Drive.

He now called himself a jeweler and traveled through the entertainment district of Toronto

Buff and tattooed, he looked like a character from the reality show “Jersey Shore,” which he listed among his favorites on Facebook.

He felt comfortable enough to make a return trip to visit family in the Vancouver area.

During one of those trips west, he was convicted of assault causing bodily injury and given a nine-month suspended sentence.

Back in the York area, police were called to his home in June 2011 in connection with domestic complaints.

Weeks later, around 10:30 pm on Saturday, July 2, 2011, his lifeless body was found in the middle of Grandvista Crescent.

He was shot several times.

York’s regional police homicide investigators have reached out to Bolton resident Michael Costa. Court documents describe him as a “person of interest”, but not a suspect in the murder investigation.

On July 7, Costa met with York investigators and denied any knowledge of Kucovic’s murder.

Costa did tell them he had an affair with the deceased’s wife and said he was concerned he might have been the real target of Kucovic’s killer or killers.

Costa also said he did not want to cooperate with the police because he did not have confidence in their ability to protect him, as he had previously been a victim of an unresolved knife attack.

When the interview was over, he was not detained or ordered to stay in town.

Costa’s attitude toward the police was complicated by the fact that his older brother, Daniel, was a constable in the Toronto Police Department.

That evening, Daniel Costa drove his brother to Pearson International Airport for a 20:00 flight to Italy.

At 09:37 that evening, according to court documents, Const. Costa sat down with York murder investigators while his brother flew to Rome.

In an interview on tape, he denied six times any knowledge of his brother’s whereabouts or activities, even though he paid for his brother’s one-way ticket.

When the professional standards unit of the Toronto Police Service const. Costa’s computer activity, they found that he conducted an unauthorized search on his brother’s name on January 5, 2011 on police computers.

Michael eventually returned to the York area and his enemies quickly took notice: On November 12, 2020, he was shot at least twice in the parking lot of a Steel Avenue West cafe.

Two months later, two gunmen attacked his Bolton home.

Michael survived again, but his father, Giovanni, 65, was shot dead.

Meanwhile, Michael’s older brother fought to keep his job as a Toronto police officer.

Daniel Costa was disciplined because he used a police computer database without authorization and lied to York Regional Police homicide investigators about his brother’s location.

He pleaded guilty to fraud and insubordination, but was found not guilty of perjury.

He retained his job as a Toronto police constable, with a fine of a suspension, demotion and deduction of pay.

Michael Costa had new problems of his own. In April 2015, he was charged along with 14 others – including former Olympic snowboarder Ryan Wedding – after a two-year RCMP investigation called “Operation Harrington”, which investigated links between Canadian and Colombian and Mexican drug cartels.

Those charges against Michael Costa were later dropped.

Back in BC, Kucovic is still remembered as “Kosto Barjaktarovic,” his name when he was a witness to the Johal murder trial in 1995.

Kucovic’s family in Burnaby, BC mourned over him and published a newspaper article that read: “He was the best father and the best son, very (caring) for his family, friends and good neighbors. He can always be relied on. He has an extremely loving heart for his family in Canada, and at home in Montenegro, Serbia and Macedonia. ”

In the GTA, he was hailed as “Alex Kucovic.” Immediately after his murder, many friends posted tributes on Facebook.

“RIP BROTHER … YOU WILL BE MISSED BROTHER,” a friend wrote less than three hours after he was shot.

The next morning, another friend posted this message:

“I knew a man who once said, ‘Death smiles for all of us; all a man can do is smile back. ‘ RIP BRO … you will be missed. ”