Marie Magoon, Spencer Jordan trial: judge allows taped admissions

A Calgary couple's video and audio-taped admissions that they severely beat the man's six-year-old daughter in the days and hours leading to her death will be allowed into evidence, a judge ruled Thursday.

Spencer Jordan and Marie Magoon were the targets of an undercover police sting in 2012 called a Mr. Big operation. A 2014 Supreme Court ruling on the controversial police tactic now places the onus on prosecutors to argue that the value of the operation outweighs its prejudicial effect.

• Marie Magoon, Spencer Jordan trial: Undercover officers testify to Mr. Big operation
• Marie Magoon, Spencer Jordan tortured 6-year-old Meika Jordan before death, alleges Crown

Jordan and Magoon were charged with first degree murder nearly a year after Meika Jordan died from her injuries.

Police targeted the couple in what Justice Rosemary Nation called an "elaborate" eight-month operation that cost more than $60,000 and involved 26 undercover police operators and 106 scenarios.

Officers befriended Magoon and Jordan, gradually integrating them into a fictitious criminal organization with the goal to make the couple feel as though the group could protect them from police as they were already considered suspects in Meika's murder.

In the final scenarios, Jordan and Magoon each met with the fake crime boss who told them he could make their troubles with police go away if they outlined their roles in Meika's death.

Jordan told the undercover officer that he punched the child in the stomach the morning before she died. He also confessed that he took his frustrations out on Meika, smashing her head off the tile floor.

"I just had a conversation I never wanted to have," Jordan told Magoon in an intercepted conversation after that meeting.

Shortly after, in another intercepted conversation between the couple, Jordan described dragging Meika around their home by her hair.

He talks about dragging her by her ankles up and down the stairs and throwing her onto the tile floor in anger after the child refused to run up and down the stairs as Jordan had demanded.

Magoon describes Meika's torture

Several days later, Magoon had her final interview with the undercover 'crime boss' which lasted two and a half hours.

She described holding a lighter under Meika's hand several days before the girl's death for 30 seconds to one minute, causing her so much pain she wet herself.

Magoon also explained that the day before her death, she stood over Meika holding her arms and smashed her head off the tile floor six or seven times.

Despite the undecover officers'promises of safety from criminal charges and "powerful financial inducements" the couple gained by being a part of the fictitious group, Nationruled the incentives didn't make the evidence inadmissiblebecause there was other confirmatory evidence.

Information given to the undercover officers was also deemed reliable because there were details such as the timing of Meika's injuries that could only have come from someone with intimate knowledge of the crime.

With the judge's ruling today, prosecutors Susan Pepper and Hyatt Mograbee have rested the Crown's case.

The lawyers for Magoon and Jordan will announce Thursday whether they intend on calling the accused to testify in their own defence.