MANDEL: Killer's mom must pay $1M for daughter's bail breach

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It must be a record.

Lucy Li, the infamous “Bonnie” of the Bonnie and Clyde-style Hamilton killer duo, is behind bars for life for the murder of the couple’s former business partner – but she’s still inflicting pain.

In a Hamilton court last week, her hoity toity ways cost her wealthy Markham mom, Winnie Hong Wei Liao, a cool $1 million for allowing her daughter to violate her bail conditions back in 2023 while another surety, her mom’s friend Nam Sook (Nancy) Bae, is on the hook for $50,000.

Though why the fugitive was ever allowed bail in the first place is another story.

She and her husband Oliver Karafa, an instagram-beautiful couple certain they were so clever and so entitled that they’d get away with murder, had fled to Europe after their execution of Tyler Pratt, 39, and attempted murder of his pregnant girlfriend, Jordyn Romano, 26, in 2021.

Pratt was a successful drug dealer who had relocated with Romano from Vancouver to Toronto and invested half a million dollars in Karafa’s business to sell PPE in Europe during the height of COVID-19. But his new friend’s big plans weren’t seeing the returns he’d promised and Pratt wanted his money when they were scheduled to meet March 1, 2021.

Instead, Karafa and Li lured the couple to a deserted industrial park in Stoney Creek on Feb. 28, 2021, to view a warehouse they said might be perfect for a joint grow-op business. The duo were then pumped full of bullets and left to die. Pratt succumbed to his injuries while Romano lost her unborn baby but miraculously survived.

After an international manhunt, the killers were arrested three months later in Hungary and extradited back to Canada.

Karafa was held in custody, but incredibly, after a three-day bail hearing, Superior Court Justice Andrew Goodman granted Li her freedom to await trial on $2.4 million bail.

“It was a hotly-contested, bail hearing,” said lawyer Dean Paquette, who represented Bae at the bail estreatment hearing last week. “The conditions were going to be so tight that she had no wriggle room.”

Or so the judge thought.

The original plan had Li’s mom pledging $2 million and her two friends posting $200,000 each. When one of them had health problems, Bae was added for another $200,000.

Pacquette said Li admitted responsibility for two breaches on two successive days in May 2023: she was awaiting a meeting about a civil suit against her but when the paralegal was delayed, she and Bae went to Dragon Legend restaurant in Markham where they were joined by one of her triplet sisters and her boyfriend – a potential witness she was barred from contacting.

The next day, still awaiting the paralegal, Li was at the Four Seasons Hotel where one of her sisters was living and went to the gym without her surety and was seen on her cellphone – again, violating the conditions of her release.

She was re-arrested for breaching her bail and has been in custody ever since.

After Li and Karafa were convicted of murder, her breach charges were dropped since she’s already serving life. But prosecutors decided to still go after her sureties.

Pacquette said Li filed an affidavit admitting she violated the terms of her release and deceived and manipulated Bae, who agreed to forfeit $50,000,

Li’s mom, head of Respon International Group, a Markham life-insurance firm, was in Vancouver on business at the time of the breaches, Paquette said, and agreed to forfeit $1 million.

Liao’s lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment but her friend’s lawyer could guess how the mom feels.

“I think she’s probably not very happy – not only is her daughter a convicted murderer, she’s just cost her a million dollars. I’d be pretty pissed off,” Paquette said.

“She didn’t care about risking her mother’s assets by being selfish and foolhardy and thinking you’re going to get away with it.”

It’s been a rough time for Li’s mom – in February, a disciplinary tribunal in British Columbia cancelled her life, accident and sickness insurance licence for five years and ordered her to pay a $25,000 fine for using false documents to contend that she had an MBA from York University.

And as for her troublemaking daughter, she’s appealing her murder conviction.

mmandel@postmedia.com