The case
Mihaly Illes was a Hungarian-born drug dealer working in the Vancouver area in 2001. Javan Dowling, 27, was one of his associates in the trade. In April 2001, as Derrick Madinsky drove a van carrying all three men through West Vancouver, Illes shot Dowling from behind.
The body was then dismembered and disposed of. According to trial testimony, Illes placed Dowling’s head in a white Home Depot bucket, showed it to several people, and for a time hid it in the garage of an acquaintance, Melanie Ovalle, before the remains were buried near Squamish, British Columbia. Madinsky, given immunity, became a witness for the Crown, and Illes, already in custody and facing deportation, was charged with murder.
A B.C. Supreme Court jury convicted Illes of first-degree murder in March 2003, and the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld the verdict. In 2008 the Supreme Court of Canada overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial, because police had not disclosed a witness statement that contradicted Madinsky’s account of who had kept the bucket. At the retrial, Justice Mark McEwan found Illes guilty again on July 11, 2011, and he received a life sentence with no parole eligibility for 25 years. A 2025 Canadian Press report said he would become eligible for full parole in November 2026 and faced deportation to Hungary if released.
Case photographs
Where it happened
Squamish, near where Javan Dowling’s remains were buried