Richmond hitman loses appeal of first-degree murder conviction

A Richmond killer who gunned down an alleged international money launderer inside a restaurant in 2020 has lost an appeal of his first-degree murder conviction.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Jeanne Watchuk convicted Richard Reed in September 2024 of killing Jian Jun Zhu at the Manzo restaurant in Richmond on Sept. 18, 2020.

Watchuk found that Reed was clearly the shooter seen wearing a distinctive striped Calvin Klein hoodie as he began casing the restaurant about 25 minutes before the 7:35 p.m. murder.

Reed appealed his conviction, arguing to B.C.’s highest court that Watchuk should have re-evaluated evidence that had been excluded at the trial about whether the murder was planned and deliberate — a key element of first-degree murder.

It was Reed’s own lawyer who got some of the testimony from his friend Mohammad Elburai excluded at the 2024 trial.

Elburai testified that Reed had confessed his role in the murder, but claimed he had meant to kill Zhu’s associate, Paul Jin, instead. Jin, another alleged money launderer, was wounded in the attack.

Elburai testified that Reed said he was paid a few thousand dollars for the hit.

Elburai was a reluctant witness. He said in court that his memory was poor and said repeatedly he didn’t want to be in court. He agreed under cross-examination that he may have learned details of the murder in news reports and not from Reed.

In his appeal, Reed admitted he was the shooter, but that he had not planned to kill Zhu, and therefore should not have been convicted of first-degree murder, Appeal Court Justice Geoffrey Gomery noted in his written decision.

“He accepts that he is guilty of murder,” Gomery said. “Mr. Reed submits that his purported admissions to Mr. Elburai suggest that he either killed Mr. Zhu impulsively or was reckless as to his identity, and that either state of mind is inconsistent with planning and deliberation.”

But Gomery said Watchuk did not err by not re-evaluating her decision to exclude the purported confession before determining if Reed was guilty of first-degree murder.

“The reason for the judge’s inadmissibility ruling was her inability to conclude that Mr. Elburai was relating admissions made by Mr. Reed, as opposed to information he had obtained from some other source. Admissions made by Mr. Reed were presumptively admissible. Information obtained from others was not,” Gomery said.

“Even if the judge had … reconsidered the inadmissibility of Mr. Elburai’s evidence, having regard to the findings she made that ground the inadmissibility ruling, the evidence would remain inadmissible and that is the end of the appeal.”

He added that “the judge was not obliged to consider inadmissible evidence in her deliberations. It would have been an error to have done so.”

Appeal Court Justices Margot Fleming and Andrew Mayer, who were also on the panel that heard Reed’s appeal in September, agreed with Gomery.

At the time of the murder, both Zhu and Jin had been the targets of a massive police investigation called E-Pirate into suspected money laundering through an underground bank in Richmond of tens of millions in organized crime profits.

Zhu and his wife were initially charged, but the charges were stayed in 2018. Both Zhu and Jin were later named as defendants in a series of civil forfeiture lawsuits filed by the B.C. government. The lawsuit naming Zhu was settled in 2021, while cases involving Jin remain ongoing.