The Head in the Bucket

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.