William Sandeson: Judge Orders a Convicted Killer's Bitcoin Laptop Returned

Linda Boutilier was in the courtroom in Halifax on Tuesday 3 November 2026, as she has been for every court appearance since her son Taylor Samson was shot in August 2015. She heard Justice John Bodurtha of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court rule that the state could not keep the laptop of the man convicted of killing him, or the bitcoin wallet inside it. She declined to comment.

William Sandeson, who is serving a life sentence for the second-degree murder of Samson, followed the hearing by video from a prison in Quebec. Global News reported that the judge ordered the laptop returned to Sandeson's family. C$5,000 in cash found in his apartment is forfeited. Taylor Samson was 22, a physics student at Dalhousie University. His remains have never been found.

Nobody has said in public exactly what the laptop is worth. Sandeson has said the bitcoin was worth C$8,000 to C$10,000 in 2015. The Samson family's lawyer has said it could be worth more than C$200,000. A 2024 appeal court decision valued his assets, most of them bitcoin, at over C$640,000. And no report of the ruling answers the biggest question for the Samson family: what happens now to the court order they won to hold that money for their wrongful-death claim.

What happened to Taylor Samson

On 15 August 2015, Samson went to Sandeson's apartment in south-end Halifax for a cannabis deal, expecting to be paid C$40,000. Sandeson, also a student, was days from starting medical school at Dalhousie. He shot Samson and kept the drugs and the money. Samson was reported missing the next day.

A jury convicted Sandeson of first-degree murder in 2017. The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal overturned that verdict in 2020, finding a mistrial should have been granted. At his second trial in 2023, Sandeson admitted shooting Samson but said it was self-defence. The jury rejected that and found him guilty of second-degree murder. The sentence was life with no parole for 15 years, which makes him eligible in 2030. In December 2025 the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal of that conviction.

Why the Crown lost the bitcoin

A bitcoin wallet is a set of secret keys that controls digital money, much like the only login to a brokerage account, except that there is no broker to call if the login is lost. Sandeson testified in 2022 that he needed the physical Dell laptop to reach his coins, saying "if the laptop is inoperable, the money is lost forever".

Earlier this year he asked the court to return it, along with the C$5,000. The Crown, the name for prosecutors in Canada, answered with a forfeiture application, which is a request to have property confiscated because it is linked to crime.

At a hearing on 19 August 2026, Crown lawyer Timothy O'Leary said evidence from the trials showed Sandeson lent money from a line of credit to other drug dealers, and that proceeds from those loans bought bitcoin. Sandeson's lawyer, Allan MacDonald, replied that the Crown had failed to prove the money was "tainted by criminality". He said Sandeson had legitimate income at the time and could have used one of his jobs to pay for the coins. The line of credit, C$200,000, was meant for university.

Sandeson had told his murder trial that he earned about C$8,000 a month selling drugs by summer 2015, on top of three jobs. A court decision from 2022 records that he recalled buying C$3,000 of bitcoin on 15 August 2015, the day Samson was killed, and that his father sent the court a record of that transaction. Bodurtha found the Crown had not made the link. "The Crown has not met its burden to demonstrate the cryptocurrency was used as part of the drug transaction, proceeds of crime, or otherwise tainted by criminality," Bodurtha ruled, according to Global News. He called any use of the coins in the deal "hypothetical". CTV News quoted him saying the Crown's case on the item was "purely speculative, with no evidence of actual dealing with the Bitcoin in relation to the murder".

The ruling is a finding about what prosecutors proved, not a finding that the coins are clean. The cash went the other way. "I find that the $5,000 in cash found in the respondent's apartment after the murder is forfeited as offence-related property," Bodurtha said, using the legal term for property connected to a crime.

How C$8,000 became C$640,000

The numbers look contradictory, but they describe different moments. Sandeson's C$8,000 to C$10,000, given in testimony in October 2022, was what he said the coins were worth in 2015, and he told the court they had risen during his years in custody. CTV described the C$8,000 as what he believed he could reach on the night of the murder. CBC, reporting the ruling, still gave "around $8,000".

James Goodwin, the Samson family's lawyer, told the court in December 2022 that the wallet could be worth as much as C$250,000, and in February 2023 said it could top C$200,000.

The firmest figures come from the Court of Appeal. In July 2024 Justice Cindy Bourgeois refused to make taxpayers fund Sandeson's appeal, and her decision set out his holdings. He held 8.669 bitcoin when he was jailed. Part of that was sold in February 2024, and C$198,000 from the sale sits in his lawyer's trust account. The remaining 4.92916119 bitcoin were worth "at least $443,624", or about C$90,000 a coin. Together that was over C$640,000. Several news reports have said he had that sum when he was jailed. The decision does not: the C$198,000 came from a 2024 sale and the bitcoin was valued at 2024 prices.

The decision does not explain how coins were sold in 2024 while Sandeson was still fighting for the laptop, beyond noting that an IT firm assisted. His own affidavit, reported by Global News in February 2026, says the laptop holds the digital keys to cryptocurrency, "a portion of which his family has been unable to recover". No report says how much bitcoin is on the laptop, or whether it is the same 4.93 coins.

The question the ruling leaves open

Boutilier and her younger son, Connor Samson, sued Sandeson in December 2022 for wrongful death. Their claim seeks damages, including for the loss of Taylor's "guidance, care and companionship", and says Sandeson "murdered their son and brother". On 12 December 2022, Justice D. Timothy Gabriel ordered police and the Crown not to give Sandeson the laptop or any data that could lead him to the coins. Goodwin said the family wanted the money kept available in case they won. "The family is entitled to damages," he said, adding that it is "pretty rare" for someone who commits homicide to have any assets.

By 2024 that protection had changed shape. Bourgeois wrote that the C$198,000 and the remaining bitcoin were "subject to a Preservation Order" sought by Samson's mother and brother. It ranks who gets paid: first the IT firm helping to sell the coins, second Sandeson's civil lawyers, third any payment ordered to the Samson family, and last, whatever remains, to Sandeson. A judicial settlement conference, a meeting led by a judge to try to end a lawsuit, was set for August 2024. Sandeson agreed under questioning that he would be left with C$200,000 to C$300,000 after those payments. He also told the court he owed his mother C$177,000 for past legal bills.

That is where the public record stops. No public report says what happened at the conference, whether the lawsuit settled, whether the family has received anything, or whether the Preservation Order still stands. CBC, CTV and Global News did not mention it in their reports of the 3 November ruling. Bodurtha was deciding the Crown's forfeiture claim, which is a separate matter from the family's civil claim, and no report says whether his order changes what the family can reach. If the Preservation Order is still in force, it could yet decide what happens to the coins. The written decision could not be found online on 5 November.

Eleven years on, the laptop has somewhere to go. Taylor Samson's remains have never been found.