LAS VEGAS — The trial of a small-time loan shark and professional poker player accused of brutally slaying a fellow gambler for his bankroll, then leaving the body in a hotel stairwell, is set to begin Thursday.

Greg Chao, now 31, is charged with first-degree murder with a deadly weapon and robbery with a deadly weapon for the brutal 1997 killing of Donald Idiens, a 53-year-old Canadian contractor and avid poker player.

The legal hurdle of extraditing Chao, also a Canadian citizen, from his native British Columbia for first-degree murder charges has meant that the case is coming to trial more than seven years after Idiens was found dead in a stairwell of the Imperial Palace Hotel.

Canadian authorities first had to be reassured that Chao would not face the death penalty before allowing him to be transferred to American soil.

Story continues

advertisement

If convicted on the murder charge, Chao faces a maximum penalty of life behind bars without parole.

The owner of a faltering Canadian construction company, Donald Idiens may have been seeking redemption at the poker tables when he pointed his pickup truck south toward Las Vegas in the winter of 1997.

Instead, after several weeks of losing heavily in the poker room of the Mirage Casino, Idiens left $820 in chips at a Texas Hold'em table to take a phone call. He was never heard from again.

Clad only in underwear and socks, Idiens' battered and bruised body was found by housekeepers the next day, Dec. 9, 1997, across the Strip in a stairwell on the 17th floor of the Imperial Palace Hotel.

A plastic bag was tied over his bloodied face, an ear was partially torn off, and a coroner's investigation found that he died of multiple blunt traumas to the head and neck.

Police were initially unable to identify the body. But when Idiens' friend Edwin Phillip Barber saw news reports about the killing, he went to the Las Vegas police to report his friend missing and was able to identify the victim.

Initially the investigation focused on several people to whom Idiens owed money, as well as a business associate who had reportedly just taken out a million-dollar life insurance policy on him. But after questioning family members and several Imperial Palace employees, the focus shifted toward Greg Chao.

A small-time loan shark and professional gambler also from the Vancouver area, Chao, now 31, happened to be staying in a room down the hall from the stairwell where Idiens' body was discovered.

When interviewed by police, a housekeeper recalled scrubbing a brown substance in the grouting between the tiles in the room where Chao stayed. Police later were able to confirm that the substance was blood and that Idiens had been murdered in the room.

Chao, however, had already returned to Canada, according to a police report. When detectives traveled to the Vancouver area to interview him, Chao conceded that he was in Las Vegas at the time of the murder. He also admitted that he met Idiens at a poker table in the Mirage.

Both Barber and Idiens' son, Craig, told detectives that, during phone calls with Idiens before he was murdered, he told them about loaning an Asian man from the Vancouver area $1,000 at a poker table.

Prosecutors are expected to argue that Chao befriended Idiens, borrowed money from him, and in a desperate bid to get more money to pay off another debt, lured Idiens back to his hotel room, beat him to death and stole the thousands of dollars in his bankroll.

Several pretrial motions and jury selection, which began Monday, hinted at Chao's defense strategy.

Defense attorney Timothy O'Brien argued to Las Vegas District Judge Nancy Saitta that a statement by Barber to police, in which he listed several people who stood to gain from Idiens' death, should be allowed into evidence.

Barber has since died and his statement is one of the few chances O'Brien may have to tell the jury about other people with possible motives for killing Idiens.

"Our whole point of this case, Judge, is that Mr. Chao is completely innocent and there is a whole host of other suspects," O'Brien said.

Saitta is expected to rule on the motion before opening statements begin Thursday.

The defense and prosecution listed more than 50 potential witnesses they may call to the stand, including dealers from the Mirage, professional gamblers, several people from out of the country and family members of Chao and Idiens.

The trial is expected to last one to two weeks.

Court TV Extra is streaming the trial live.