How Not to Get Away With Murder

Financially, spiritually and optically, Oliver Karafa and Yun Lu “Lucy” Li were a perfect match. Karafa was the consummate pretty boy: his brown hair always coiffed just so, his tennis shoes pristine. He was desperate to be seen as a successful and savvy entrepreneur, and what he lacked in skills or qualifications he made up for in bravado. With no post-secondary education and little job experience, he told whomever would listen that he was going to be a millionaire before he was 30. His wife, Li, had the looks and dimensions of a Kardashian: arched brows, high cheekbones, Barbie waistline. Her chosen path to fame and fortune was TikTok. She was part of a set of fraternal triplets who branded themselves as the Miaa Triplets on social media. They posed in lingerie and spoke little, evidently hoping that their looks alone would elevate them from wannabes to bona fide influencers.

Karafa and Li came from well-off families, and they wanted to expand on what their parents had achieved. Whereas that success had required sacrifice, however, Karafa and Li were looking for shortcuts. They leaned heavily on the idea that, if they looked the part, surely they would attract the right crowd and success would follow. If style over substance was their core compatibility, it would also be their undoing. When Karafa’s and Li’s ambitions were threatened, they were willing to go to horrific lengths to protect them.

The would-be couple first met in the late aughts, at Earl Haig Secondary School in North York. Back then, Li was a self-described nerd, shy and self-conscious about her braces. They dated briefly, but Li couldn’t hold Karafa’s attention. Karafa had recently moved from Slovakia, where his parents owned an industrial bakery. With their tailored wool blazers, silk scarves and expensive jewellery, the Karafa clan projected old-world money. When Karafa’s parents decided to go back to Slovakia, Oliver, then 16, moved into a midtown apartment with his older sister. Their parents ensured that they wanted for nothing. “It was very much: you’re on your own, but here’s a credit card,” says a former friend of Karafa’s who agreed to speak to me on the condition of anonymity.

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Karafa had an innate sense of hustle. After high school, he got a job working at a small French bistro and started talking about his intention to make it big, but Karafa’s plans would have to wait. On April 2, 2012, he went bar-hopping. The final stop was the Bull and Firkin on Yonge, where, according to court documents, Karafa and two friends ordered four pitchers and two pints of beer, one black Russian, and four shots of Jack Daniel’s. By 2 a.m., Karafa’s blood alcohol was around three times the legal limit, yet he insisted that he was good to give his friend, David Chiang, a ride home. When he got into his Range Rover, he gunned it, reaching at least 100 kilometres an hour in a 50-kilometre zone. He lost control on Mount Pleasant north of Eglinton and drove into a pole, splitting the vehicle in two. The impact fractured Chiang’s skull, and his brain was expelled out onto the pavement.

Karafa was miraculously unharmed, and though shaken by the accident, he seemed more concerned about going to jail than about Chiang’s death. Karafa’s friends joked that he would need to bulk up to defend himself. In 2014, he was found guilty on four charges, including dangerous driving causing death and criminal negligence causing death. Karafa had no prior record, so his sentence was relatively lenient: five years at Beaver Creek in Gravenhurst. In prison, Karafa struggled to follow the rules. He was caught engaging in prohibited three-way calls and suspected of making plans to smuggle drugs and tobacco into Beaver Creek. As a result, he was moved from minimum to medium security, and his first parole application was denied. The board wrote that his behaviour was “indicative of a young man with an abnormal sense of entitlement”—someone who believed he was above the law. He wasn’t granted full parole until 2017.

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When he got out, Karafa was 24 and eager to make up for lost time. He retrained his sights on becoming rich, though he was foggy on the means. He started going by the name Oliver Knox, presumably to hide his past from potential investors, and mixed with like-minded 20-somethings who also harboured outsized ambitions. Then he launched the first of several ventures: a restaurant called Food Society, on the main floor of the now-defunct Be SixFifty Hotel near Bay and Dundas. The place had an antique espresso machine and served brunch and acai bowls, but it quickly went bust. Luckily, Karafa wasn’t attached to restaurants—he was simply looking for a means to an end. So he pivoted, starting a drop-shipping business that he claimed made $1,000 a day and getting a gig as a sales representative for a luxe travel agency. He also launched Insulact, a company that supposedly sold subscription insulin to Americans, and obtained a licence to grow medical marijuana in a warehouse near Yonge and Steeles. It’s unclear whether any of these ventures were successful, but Karafa acted like they were—he ate at trendy restaurants, always showing up well dressed and immaculately groomed.

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“Li loved that Karafa was a bad boy, and he loved that she loved him being a bad boy”

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In 2018, he reconnected with Li, who had shed her braces and now struck him as girlfriend material. Li’s parents, both financial advisers, lived in a McMansion in North York with a stone façade. They’d bought it for $1.85 million in 2011 and filled it with Chinese calligraphy and ornate furniture. Her mother, Hong Wei “Winnie” Liao, was the president of Respon, a wealth management company, and the chairman of Botrich, a professional networking service with offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Saskatoon. Liao was also a donor to the federal Liberal party, hosting fundraisers for then–prime minister Justin Trudeau. On the mantle of the family’s living room fireplace, Liao proudly displayed a photo of Trudeau beaming beside her five children, including the triplets: Li and her sisters, Kaitlyn and Jane.

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As a teen, Li had been keen to emulate her mother. Liao offered a car as a prize for the first triplet to get accredited to sell insurance, and Li won it. She started working as a financial adviser in her mother’s business at just 17, then continued working in insurance while she studied business at Western University and then Toronto Metropolitan University. But, after graduation, she stalled. Li asked to take a year or two away from the family business, and her mother agreed to give her a monthly allowance of $5,000. She used it to finance beach vacations and cosmetic procedures, then she and her sisters started posting as the Miaa Triplets. They stood around in lingerie and fielded inane questions from randy scrollers (Are you really sisters? Can you twerk?). It didn’t generate much in the way of revenue, but Li saw potential. While her sisters pursued other gigs, she made TikTok her main preoccupation.

Li and Karafa moved in together after just two dates. “She loved that he was a bad boy, and he loved that she loved him being a bad boy,” recalls Karafa’s friend. Because of his impaired driving conviction, Karafa had no licence; Li drove him everywhere in her Mercedes. He clearly called the shots in the relationship. Once, when Li was planning to go to Miami with her sisters, Karafa objected. If she partied without him, it would make him look bad in front of his friends, and appearances were everything. Still, Li seemed content with the dynamic. The couple soon settled into a two-storey condo near Yonge and Eglinton.

In May of 2020, Karafa and Li planned a vacation to Europe. When they reached the airport to board their flight to Zurich, the attendees stopped them. Due to pandemic restrictions on cross-border travel, only EU citizens were allowed onboard. Since Karafa was a Slovakian citizen, he was fine, but Li wasn’t. They quickly scrambled for a workaround. They managed to find a Zoom officiant who was available immediately and were wed on a video call from the airport. Afterward, they spent months hanging out in Europe while the world was in lockdown.

In their goals, if not their methods of achieving them, Karafa and Li were a product of their generation. Gen Z is increasingly rejecting the conventional nine-to-five as both unappealing and unattainable, and they have a point. AI and a shrinking economy have made full-time jobs hard to come by. In July, Statistics Canada found that only 54 per cent of Canadians between 15 and 24 were employed, the lowest rate since 1998. Even when there’s a job on offer, many salaries barely cover the cost of living. As a result, more and more 20-somethings are pursuing entrepreneurship. A TD survey found that 73 per cent of Gen Z Canadians want to start their own business, and a third of Gen Zers and millennials aspire to be their own boss. One survey found that 57 per cent of Gen Zers want to become influencers, a form of self-employment that promises seductive perks: free meals, beauty products, vacations and the clout that comes with showing off your success online.

On the surface, starting a business or becoming a TikTok star can look like the ultimate life hack—a way to skip the grind and work from a beach chair in Mykonos or an artisanal taco joint in Tulum. And while there’s no shortage of TikTok videos and Substack gurus willing to sell the idea that it can be done in 10 easy steps, the fact is that starting a successful business is hard. About one in five fail in the first year; half fail within five years. The vast majority of influencers don’t make enough money on TikTok to sustain themselves. For those willing to do the legwork, going it alone can be a viable, rewarding path. But, for anyone hoping they can find this generation’s version of a get-rich-quick scheme, the odds of success are long.

In the spring of 2020, after years of failed attempts, Karafa finally hit on a promising idea. With the world in the throes of the early pandemic, everyone was scrambling to find personal protective equipment, particularly in Europe, where supplies were critically scarce. Karafa saw the desperate need for masks and gloves as a chance to make a profit. He recruited a friend as his partner, enlisted his father’s help and secured an investor. Then he started buying PPE in bulk and shipping it to Europe, to sell at a markup.

The potential for profit was real, but they needed a steady stream of cash to purchase supplies. A single investor wasn’t going to cut it. So in the summer of 2020, an associate introduced Karafa to someone he thought could inject some capital: Tyler Pratt. Six feet tall, 222 pounds and covered in tattoos, he cut a formidable figure. He was a high-level cocaine dealer, and business was booming—he once pulled in $1 million in a single day. But he also had a young son and daughter in Vancouver and a partner, a former erotic dancer named Jordyn Romano, with whom he’d just relocated to Toronto. He was looking to get out of the drug game. He’d already started a few legitimate side hustles: a diamond company and a weight loss supplement company. Still, Pratt and Romano’s apartment was littered with evidence of his criminal undertakings: steroids, brass knuckles and a taser, plus expensive trappings like Balenciaga clothing, Louis Vuitton shoes and an Audemars Piguet watch.

Karafa, ever confident, wasn’t fazed by Pratt’s reputation. After meeting with Pratt and Romano, Karafa sent Li a text message: “I hope these retards have money.” As it turned out, they did. Pratt and Romano sized up Karafa and decided he seemed legit. Just days after they first met, Pratt forked over $170,000 for the PPE start-up, then followed up with other payments that added up to an additional $300,000. Pratt gave Karafa a burner phone, telling him to use it to keep in touch.

Their relationship began as a professional one, but a working friendship developed. Karafa gave Pratt a $350 bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue and suggested that the four of them go on a vacation to the Amalfi Coast. Pratt bought Karafa a necklace for his birthday, one he hoped would match a bracelet Karafa often wore. On a birthday card, he wrote, “Oliver, happy birthday!! All the best in 2021! Love Tyler and Jordyn.” Pratt and Karafa even spoke about a new joint venture: an island property in the Bahamas where they could open a club with lots of beautiful women, whom Li would be in charge of sourcing.

There was just one problem: Karafa’s businesses were crumbling. Even for experienced entrepreneurs, turning an idea into a lucrative enterprise is a challenge. Karafa was making rookie mistakes. His PPE supply had stalled, and his other ventures weren’t doing well enough to cover his losses. The grow-op, which he had filled with plants, had gone bust. A year and a half in, the entire crop went mouldy. It was a ruinous blow. Karafa, determined, got over a hundred more plants—but it was unclear if or when the business would turn a profit. Instead of coming clean to Pratt, Karafa doubled down. He showed Pratt forged financial documents claiming that European companies were paying big bucks for their PPE and boasted that they were each making $69,000 in profit on every shipment.

But Pratt grew impatient. By January of 2021, he started leaning on Karafa: he wanted his initial investment back, plus some interest. Karafa, cornered, promised to have $500,000 ready by March 1, 2021. With a deadline locked in, he started to panic. Pratt wasn’t the kind of spurned business partner who would take him to court. Karafa knew about a former associate of Pratt’s who had recently been gunned down in a Vancouver parking lot. Once, according to Li, Karafa came home from a heated business meeting and claimed Pratt had punched him in the face.

He needed a stall tactic, and Li had one at the ready. She offered to set up Pratt and Romano, who was newly pregnant, with a life insurance policy worth $1.5 million through her mother’s company. The details she drummed up were deeply suspect. She told Pratt and Romano that, if they paid the first premium in cash, Karafa could direct their profits from Europe to cover all further premiums. In doing so, they would effectively bring their profits into Canada without paying taxes. She also led them to believe that they could borrow against the policy, getting money they could use in Canada. Li falsified documents itemizing Pratt and Romano’s assets to convince them things were underway, but she was just buying time.

As the days ticked down, Karafa faced the prospect of admitting that he was overextended and, worse, a fraud. Then he had an idea. What if there were a simple solution, a way of dealing with his problem that would allow him to keep his money and his reputation? And Pratt and Romano, well, they would just disappear. He would need Li’s help, but surely between the two of them, they could pull it off. So, just weeks before the day he was supposed to pay Pratt back, Karafa hurriedly put together a hare-brained murder scheme.

The first step was to find a secluded spot and come up with a plausible reason to lure Pratt and Romano there. Using Google Maps, Karafa found a warehouse in an industrial part of Stoney Creek, on the outskirts of Hamilton. He went to scope out the property in person and found that it was sufficiently private, then asked Pratt if they could meet there on Sunday, February 28, the day before Karafa had agreed to give Pratt his money. Karafa lied, saying that the warehouse was owned by Li’s mother and that he’d arranged a meeting with their realtor to talk about turning it into another grow-op. Pratt agreed, and the four friends made plans to go for dinner afterward at Sotto Sotto in Oakville, the sister restaurant to the Avenue Road celebrity hangout.

Next up: covering their tracks. Karafa and Li needed to keep their phones at home on the day of the meet so it would look like they had never left their condo. Karafa asked a friend named Phi Chinh, whom he’d met working in a restaurant almost a decade earlier, if he could borrow the SIM card in his cellphone on February 28. Karafa’s story was that he had an important meeting with some Chinese investors, acquaintances of Li’s family whom he was hoping might inject $1 million into his PPE business. He didn’t want Li’s family—or anyone else—to know that the deal was going down. Chinh didn’t fully understand, but he agreed. Step three: the getaway car. Karafa bought a white Audi Q5 for $18,000 and made plans with a contact to dispose of both the Audi and Pratt’s Range Rover by shipping them to Europe, where they would be broken down and sold for parts.

On the day of the meeting, Chinh arrived at Li and Karafa’s condo just after 3 p.m. to deliver his SIM card. Li seemed nervous as they put his card in her phone. Karafa then snuck out of their apartment using the stairs, which didn’t have security cameras. Li, however, insisted on taking the elevator even though it had cameras that could jeopardize their alibi. In a half-baked attempt to minimize the risk, Karafa dug out a blond wig that Li had used for a social media post. She sometimes wore it ­during sex, but this time, Karafa told her to put it on for her elevator ride. She also pulled on a tuque with a Mercedes logo, a hoodie and, for good measure, a PPE mask. By this point, they were running late, so they texted Pratt and Romano and asked to push the meeting back by 45 minutes. When Karafa and Li finally arrived at the warehouse, they cut the chain on the gate and headed around to the back of the lot.

Ten minutes later, Pratt and Romano pulled up in Romano’s Range Rover. Pratt had a bag full of cash and a pizza; Romano, now 13 weeks pregnant, was hungry and had insisted that they stop. Karafa and Li led their guests to the door but quickly realized they hadn’t thought much further: it was locked. Li, improvising, pretended to look for a lockbox, suggesting that the realtor must have left a key somewhere. Romano got into her car and turned on the seat warmer. Pratt, sensing that something was off, demanded to know where the realtor was. While Karafa did what he could to pacify him, Li got inside the Range Rover and made small talk with Romano, but the conversation was tense and awkward, so Li got out and stood in front of the car.

As Pratt got angrier, Karafa ran out of tactics. He pulled out a 9 mm handgun—but he didn’t point it at Pratt. He wheeled around and aimed the barrel at Romano, who was still in the passenger seat. “Get out of here, Jo,” he said, his voice and hand both shaking. But he didn’t wait long enough for Romano to react. He just started shooting. Two bullets got buried in the seat of the car, but the third hit Romano squarely in the chest. Pratt had only enough time to scream, “What the fuck, bro?” before Karafa turned the gun on him. Karafa shot Pratt five or six times in the head and chest before he collapsed onto the pavement. One of the bullets tore through his lungs, which began to fill with blood; he would be dead within the hour.

Karafa and Li took Pratt and Romano’s cellphones, which they knew contained texts that linked them all to the meeting, and the $20,000 in cash Pratt had on him. Then they pulled Romano out of the car, so forcefully that one of her thigh-high Louboutin boots came off, and dumped her on the ground. They left her there while they drove both cars off the property, ditching the Audi nearby and returning in the Range Rover. It was only at this point that Li noticed her grey sweatpants were covered in Pratt’s blood. But they had a bigger problem: scanning the parking lot, they realized that Romano was gone.

They frantically looked for her, driving around for an hour, desperate to find her body, before getting nervous about lingering at the crime scene. Surely she couldn’t have survived, they thought, and they decided to leave, Karafa driving while holding the car door, which had been damaged from the gunshots and wouldn’t stay shut. He messaged his contact who was buying the cars: “Both cars are fucked you have to tow both.” Ever the dealmaker, he said he was willing to accept just $2,000 for both cars if they were picked up the next day. Li and Karafa drove to Etobicoke, where Karafa threw his gun away, then abandoned the Range Rover on Audley Street.

They flagged a cab and rode, still covered in blood, back to their condo, where they stripped and put their clothes in a plastic bag. Li was scrolling on her phone when she came across a news item, a worst-case scenario they had not anticipated: Romano had been found—alive. The bullet had pierced her heart, and though she was bleeding profusely, she had regained consciousness. Afraid for her life and the life of her baby, she managed to crawl down to the curb. A few minutes later, a Good Samaritan spotted her on the road. By the time the paramedics and police arrived, Romano was barely breathing. The police, casing the scene, quickly found Pratt’s body along with a keychain bearing a picture of his young son smiling in a hockey uniform.

Karafa and Li’s weeks of planning had been undone in a couple of hours. Still, they weren’t prepared to give up. They cobbled together a new plan. First, Karafa called Chinh, who was at a party, and told him they would drop off his SIM card. Chinh was drunk and didn’t register that anything was wrong. Karafa and Li arrived not long after midnight, seemingly calm and in good spirits. Karafa flashed a smile before telling Chinh that his big business meeting had been a success.

After that, Karafa and Li returned to their condo to pack a small Louis Vuitton backpack and throw Li’s wig, some bullets and the clothes they had been wearing at the time of the murder in a garbage bag. At 2:49 a.m., they rode down in their elevator for the last time. Li held a UPS package and Karafa carried the bag of evidence. Then they got into Li’s Mercedes and started driving north. They ran out of gas near a general store in Muskoka and decided to ditch the car. They also threw the bag of evidence, which included a lottery ticket with Pratt’s signature on it, into a nearby trash can. Then they called a taxi and asked the driver to take them to Montreal. It was too far, the driver told them, so they settled for Sheppard-Yonge station. From there, Li and Karafa took the subway to Union, caught a train to Montreal and flew to the Czech Republic.

Despite serious injuries to her heart, liver and diaphragm, Romano survived—though her pregnancy did not. After three days in a coma, she awoke and identified Karafa and Li as the shooters. Police, initially unable to find their suspects, triangulated signals from nearby cell towers. This led them to Chinh, who appeared to have been at the scene of the crime—but he immediately volunteered the SIM card story. On March 4, the Hamilton police issued warrants and a public bulletin seeking the arrest of Karafa and Li.

After landing in Prague, the fugitives spent some time in Slovakia, where Karafa’s parents live, then settled in rural Hungary. Fearing capture, they obtained fake Slovakian passports, Karafa’s under the name Jakub Nichta, Li’s under Ying Feng Nichta. But, in the end, their forgery didn’t save them. In mid-June, the Hamilton police, working alongside the Hungarian Fugitive Active Search Team, tracked them down in Budapest, where they were hanging out in an area known for its nightclubs, and took them into custody.

After they were apprehended, their strategies diverged. Li agreed to return to Canada voluntarily on July 12, 2021. Her mother offered to spring for a private plane for the police officers who were sent to retrieve her; they declined. When Li arrived in Hamilton, she was interrogated by Detective Troy Ashbaugh. Li, who was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a blanket draped over her shoulders, seemed tired. When Ashbaugh asked about her flight, she commented on how tight the leg room had been. She wasn’t used to flying economy, she said.

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“Ms. Li concedes she may be the stupidest person in the room,” the judge told the jury at trial

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Over four hours, Li insisted that she would need to speak to her lawyer before answering questions yet simultaneously divulged details about the crime. She was eager to clear the air, she said. She told Ashbaugh that she’d had no idea Karafa was planning to kill anyone and insisted that she was “like maybe a half a football field away when it happened.” She was emphatic that Karafa would return and explain everything. Pratt’s death couldn’t have been planned, she insisted, because if Karafa had known it was going to happen, he would never have brought her along. “I’m not a very strong person,” Li told Ashbaugh. “I’m very squeamish of blood. It was all very overwhelming.”

But, as time passed, Li started to turn on her husband. “I think I didn’t know much about him at all,” she said. “I’m just a little bit scared, because I don’t want to get in trouble for something that I didn’t do.” When Ashbaugh revealed that Romano had confirmed Li’s presence during the shooting, Li clammed up. “I think I’m gonna wait for my lawyers for this part,” she said. “She’s not, like, entirely wrong, but she’s just missing a lot of information. I think after I give you the full story, though, it will make a lot more sense for everyone. It’s just so piece-y right now.”

For police, it was less piece-y. Despite their scattershot efforts, Karafa and Li had left behind voluminous evidence—less breadcrumbs than whole loaves. Surveillance cameras had caught them at just about every stage of the crime: in the condo elevator, at the shooting location, dumping the Range Rover and en route to their various pit stops. The police didn’t need Pratt’s and Romano’s phones to access messages about the meetup; they were able to subpoena texts that outlined the entire plan. They’d found Li’s abandoned Mercedes and the nearby garbage can where she’d left her wig and bloodied sweatpants. Even as Li and Karafa had made their escape, security cameras caught them at Union Station, waiting for a shuttle bus in Montreal and again at the Montreal airport.

In December of 2021, Li had a three-day bail hearing during which her lawyer argued for her to be put on house arrest pending trial. Her mother told the judge that she would “chain lock” her daughter’s door, install iron bars on the windows, and take away Li’s credit cards and car keys. She was, she insisted, willing to pay whatever it cost. Li’s bail was set at $3 million, and her mother and a few family friends agreed to act as her sureties. With Liao on the hook for $2 million and the friends putting up the rest, Li was sent home with an ankle monitor.

The arrangement worked, for a while. But, when Liao went out of town in May of 2023, she appointed one of Li’s other sureties to keep an eye on her. Li told this friend that she was allowed to leave the house because she was meeting with a paralegal to discuss a potential lawsuit. Instead, she went for lunch with her sisters at Dragon Legend, a Chinese buffet in Markham. The next day, she said she had another meeting, this time downtown at her sister’s luxury condo in the Four Seasons hotel—but, when she arrived, Li just used the gym and scrolled on her phone. All these trips were in explicit violation of the terms of her bail and jeopardized the money her mother and friends had proffered. The Hamilton police, who were monitoring Li’s movements using the GPS on her ankle monitor, arrested her on May 29 and charged her with four counts of breaching bail conditions. She was sent back to jail to await trial.

Meanwhile, Karafa was in Budapest, fighting extradition. He argued that his life would be at risk in Canada, and he hired a private investigator to try to prove that Pratt had a network of criminal connections who might avenge his death. Karafa also accused the Hamilton police of corruption, though he neglected to elaborate. In March of 2022, a Budapest court ruled against him. If Pratt really had such far-reaching connections, a judge noted, they could get at Karafa anywhere in the world. He was put on a plane to Canada to face murder charges, then confined in the Hamilton-Wentworth Detention Centre.

The trial began on April 10, 2024. Li and Karafa were tried together but with different lawyers and diverging narratives. The legal strategy Li’s team deployed wasn’t flattering: they argued that she was essentially too dumb to be part of any criminal conspiracy. Despite the fact that Karafa had been controlling, manipulative and a chronic cheater, they said, Li had failed to recognize any red flags in their relationship. On the day of the crime, she had been planning to have dinner with her mother and sisters, and at the last minute, Karafa had asked for a ride to meet with Pratt and Romano. Li was annoyed, but then she found her stringy blond wig in Karafa’s bag. She thought it meant that he was planning to cheat on her and worried that Romano was bringing one of her stripper friends to meet him. In order to keep an eye on Karafa, she agreed to drive to Hamilton.

She told the court that she had been on the far side of the building when the shooting took place. When she returned, it was too chaotic to figure out what was going on, so she just hopped into the car when Karafa told her to. She said she had seen Pratt on the ground but initially thought that Romano had run over him. Later, when she’d asked Karafa what had happened, he wouldn’t really tell her, she said. He just warned her that Pratt’s associates would kill them; they had no choice but to flee and live under new identities. “Lucy Li is a distinctly flawed, naïve, superficial, entitled, sometimes vacuous, irresponsible and quite juvenile human being,” the judge told the jury in his instructions. “She has many moral failings and conducted herself poorly and immorally with respect to the fake insurance application and the accompanying lies, but that does not make her a murderer.” For maximum clarity, he added: “Ms. Li concedes she may be the stupidest person in the room.”

Karafa admitted to pulling the trigger, killing Pratt and seriously wounding Romano, but his lawyer argued that it wasn’t something he’d planned out—it was purely self-defence. Karafa wanted to terminate his business relationship with Pratt but was afraid of the fallout. The lawyer emphasized Pratt’s drug-dealing, his allegedly violent nature and his sheer stature. Karafa’s fear and panic, he argued, were justified. He’d come up with the Stoney Creek plan as just another stall tactic, and it was Pratt who had escalated the situation by getting angry.

When Romano took the stand, a different portrait of Pratt emerged. Romano told the court that they had been trying to start over, to chart a new course that was safer and more respectable. When they met Karafa, they thought the charismatic salesman could help them—and it was a wonderful perk that he also wanted to be their friend. They had never imagined that Karafa and Li were capable of double-crossing them. Romano described Pratt as a devoted father. On the day he was murdered, he had just flown back from BC, where he had celebrated his daughter’s birthday.

On May 24, 2024, the jury rendered a verdict. They didn’t buy Li’s attempts to play dumb or Karafa’s claims of self-defence. The evidence of premeditation—the arrangement to dispose of the cars, the SIM card loan, the story about the Stoney Creek building, the extensive security footage—was overwhelming. Karafa and Li were both found guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of Pratt and the attempted murder of Romano. The convictions triggered a mandatory life sentence with no possibility of parole for at least 25 years. Romano, who now has an angry pink scar on her chest, has since filed a $3-million civil suit against Li, Karafa and the mutual friend who connected them all, describing the physical trauma, depression and anxiety she’s suffered in the aftermath of the shooting.

This May, a Hamilton court deliberated on whether Li’s sureties would have to pay up for her breaching of the bail conditions. Liao’s lawyer argued that his client “never imagined for a moment that her daughter would ever do something as thoughtless, selfish, irresponsible.” Li looked on silently from the prisoner’s box, wearing a prison-issued grey sweatsuit; her lawyer conveyed her regret to the court for “blowing it.” In the end, the court ruled that Liao would have to pay $1 million; her friend who had been chaperoning was on the hook for $50,000.

Li and Karafa, who remain married, both declined my requests for interviews. After her bail hearing, Li returned to the Grand Valley Institution for Women, near Kitchener. Karafa is at a penitentiary on the East Coast. Despite their convictions, they still seem to believe in the existence of a get-out-of-jail-free card. Karafa recently filed an appeal, and Li is shopping around for a new lawyer.

This story appears in the December 2025 issue of Toronto Life magazine. To subscribe, click here. To purchase single issues, click here.