Sentencing delayed for Canadian who killed con man National Post

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Sentencing delayed for Canadian who killed con man

Canwest News Service Published: Monday, March 10, 2008

(last) Photo courtesy of familyMargaret Crane in 2005 in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

CHIANG MAI, Thailand — Sentencing in the bizarre murder of a con man with cult-like appeal, killed by his lover of nearly 30 years, was inexplicably delayed Monday.

Observers in the northern Thailand courtroom looked as confused as court officials Monday, when sentencing proceedings for former Victoria resident Margaret Crane were delayed. Crane was convicted Feb. 29, but details about the proceedings are sketchy, including what plea she entered.

Crane was convicted in the July 2006 shooting death of Daniel George Dubie, the father of her six children, in a restaurant in Chiang Mai.

On Monday, court officials first directed people to a tiny courtroom for Crane’s sentencing, but neither judge nor prisoner was present. Then it emerged that Crane’s sentencing had been postponed to March 20.

The court office gave no other information. It’s not known where Crane is currently being held.

The tumultuous relationship between Dubie and Crane – the two were never married – reached its end in Thailand when, after 28 years of following Dubie around the world and submitting to the con man’s schemes, Crane shot him.

Crane could face a firing squad if convicted.

The killing exposed a shocking saga involving a charismatic American with a cult-like allure who, over three decades, duped dozens of people and seduced scores of women. Dubie was known as a con man who could draw on his charm or turn to cruelty.

“I would describe him as a classic fraudster, a swindler with an uncanny ability to capture the minds of individuals who weren’t as strong as he was – a David Koresh-type figure,” FBI Special Agent Dan McLaughlin has said. He investigated Dubie in Hawaii in 2001.

Brian Fujiuchi, a police detective in Hawaii when Dubie was being investigated for a cult he operated in the 1980s, has said: “I just couldn’t believe these people believed he was Jesus Christ and were handing over their life savings.”

Angel Crane, the couple’s eldest daughter, who is 23 and has custody of her five siblings, aged five to 15, said Dubie “really sort of did a number” on her mother.

“He had my mother convinced that she was responsible for bringing sin into the world and it was now up to them to reset the balance in the world between good and evil,” she said in an interview shortly after her mother’s arrest.

“They believed we were at a crucial point in time when either all good will take over the world or all evil – that their love was the greatest love of all time, for it was the first and would be the last. But they could not be together until everything in the universe was set right. That is why he had to be with other women.”

The Foreign Affairs Department said Monday it is aware of the situation in Thailand but has no new details to release.

“The Embassy of Canada in Bangkok is providing consular assistance,” the department said in a statement. “Further information cannot be released due to the Privacy Act.”

Their bizarre life played out from an oceanside mansion in Hawaii to an isolated cabin in Nova Scotia – with stops in Toronto, Montreal and Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., before ending in Thailand.

Victoria Times Colonist, with files by National Post

CNS 3/10/08 19:55:57

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