A man accused of murdering a Nanaimo teen in 2017 is expected to change his plea from not guilty to guilty at his next court appearance.
Steven Michael Bacon, now 62, was due to go on trial for first-degree murder in November for the slaying of 16-year-old Makayla Chang after he pleaded not guilty to the charge.
But on Monday, media reported Bacon’s lawyer Gil Labine told a judge that his client will instead plead guilty at his next court appearance Aug. 15.
In a text from Labine to CHEK News Tuesday, the lawyer said he “will only confirm (this) after August 15th.”
Mikayla Chang was 16 years old when she was last seen in Nanaimo in March 2017. She had been living off and on with Bacon at a home on Bruce Avenue.
The property manager told CHEK News at the time that Bacon was passing Chang off as his daughter.
READ MORE: ‘It’s heartbreaking’: Family of murdered Nanaimo teen Makayla Chang attends preliminary hearing
The home became the focus of an intense police investigation but at the time police would not say Bacon was a suspect.
Vigils were held for the missing teenager as her distraught parents coped with the loss.
“There’s somebody out there who took a life, the life of our daughter and we just want justice obviously,” said her father Kerry Chang two years after his daughter disappeared.
Chang’s body was found in May of 2017, but it wasn’t until September 2020 when Bacon was arrested in Thunder Bay on an unrelated charge, and then later charged with Chang’s murder.
He was transferred back to B.C. last October.
Family members of Makayla Chang declined to comment on the guilty plea change Tuesday.
Dean Stoltz
