Sergei Kostin, 40, had been a commercial fisherman in his native Ukraine. He came to Canada in 1993 and had worked for Bob's-Blue Bell Taxi in Dartmouth for about ten years. He was known as a hard-working and dependable driver. At about 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 17, 2009 he picked up a fare at Gaston Road Variety store in Dartmouth. The call had been placed by store clerk for a customer, but the clerk had made several calls for cabs that afternoon and couldn't remember who Mr. Kostin picked up. There were no security cameras in the store. Mr. Kostin did not report himself clear at the end of the trip and he did not have his cell phone with him so he could not be contacted. He did not activate the taxi's panic alarm. Mr. Kostin was supposed to drive some Ukrainian and Russian friends to a birthday party Saturday evening but failed to show up. When he was still missing on Monday managers at Bob's-Blue Bell contacted their global positioning system company and were told that the GPS in Mr. Kostin's car had been disconnected at the end of Johnson Street in the Cherry Brook neighbourhood about 20 minutes after he picked up his passengers. On Tuesday morning an RCMP patrol found Mr. Kostin's green Chevrolet Impala behind an abandoned building on Amos Walter Drive in North Preston. Two stolen cars were also parked behind the building. The taxi had been set on fire and was badly burned. The property owner said that a neighbour alerted him to the burning car at about 11:30 p.m. the night before and he went to look at it. Since a heavy snowfall was snuffing out the flames he left the cab to burn, assuming that it was just another stolen car. As reporters probed Mr. Kostin's background it was learned that he had filed for bankruptcy in 2006 after running up more than $142,000 in credit card debt to finance his gambling. However, any suspicion of a connection with Mr. Kostin's disappearance vanished with the discovery of his body on April 1, 2009. In the weeks since Mr. Kostin went missing the police investigation began to focus on two young men, a 22-year-old who was arrested for the armed robbery of a convenience store in February, 2009, and his 20-year-old cousin. Both were initially accused of murder but the 20-year-old was granted immunity from prosecution when he led police to a wooded area near the centre of North Preston and about a kilometre from where the burned-out taxi was found. Searchers found Mr. Kostin's body buried under the roots of a fallen tree.

Sergei Kostin. (Source: metronews.ca/halifax) According to the 20-year-old, he was sitting in the front passenger seat of the taxi while the killer sat in the back seat. When they arrived at Cherry Brook the killer suddenly shot Mr. Kostin in the back of the head with a sawed-off AR-7 rifle. The killer then pulled Mr. Kostin into the back seat and ordered his cousin to drive the cab to where the body and the car were abandoned. The cousin said he cooperated out of fear for his life. The killer did not go on trial until September of 2012 by which time he was serving four years in prison for the convenience store robbery. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 25 years.