Skip to content

OPINION: One of the most bizarre sex crime court cases is Chilliwack’s David Lee Roth impersonator

David Kuntz-Angel was convicted of underage sex, then granted a mistrial, now it’s back on
30474198_web1_DiamondDiscountDave
David Lee Roth (left) and the Chilliwack man who for years has impersonated him, David Kuntz-Angel (right). Kuntz-Angel was convicted on Aug. 2, 2019 of various counts connected to sex with an underage girl. A mistrial was declared and now the trial continues Jan. 30, 2023. (Twitter/Brantford Expositor)

Of all the court stories I’ve covered over the last decade, none has turned out to be as unusual and seemingly neverending as that of David Kuntz-Angel.

Kuntz-Angel was convicted of grooming and having sex with a young girl for more than a decade.

The now 57-year-old is known from Chilliwack all the way Brantford, Ontario, for his compulsion to not just imitate, but lie and pretend he is David Lee Roth, the famous American rock star.

If that wasn’t strange enough, a girlfriend of his once killed a woman in a love triangle. Back in 1988, Kuntz-Angel was 23 and living with a woman in Cambridge, Ontario. According to media reports, Kuntz-Angel told his brother he was going to marry another woman. The woman he lived with then stabbed the other woman approximately 70 times and killed her.

She pleaded insanity in court. Kuntz-Angel was never charged in that case.

The David Lee Roth anecdotes are many. He does, or did, bear a passing resemblance to the former Van Halen lead singer, and the number of times he has fooled people is many. According to a Sun Media report from 2008, Kuntz-Angel was pulled over by police for speeding and identified himself as David Lee Roth. He said he was having an allergic reaction to nuts and was brought to hospital for treatment.

“Later that evening, after recovering, the man partied at the Liquid Lounge in Brantford, posing for pictures and identifying himself as Roth,” according to the Sun Media story.

“But the real Roth was playing that night at Madison Square Garden in New York City on the Van Halen tour.”

Fast forward to recent years in Chilliwack, during one court appearance in July 2019 in this tedious case, he was talking strange and mumbling, something he blamed on yours truly.

“Things Mr. Henderson printed in the paper ended up getting my teeth knocked out from that. I’m just trying to recover,” he said on the witness stand.

“I was beaten up really bad at Surrey Pre-Trial,” Kuntz-Angel also told the court on April 23, 2018. “That’s the difficulty with my hearing.”

(Being accused of, let alone convicted of, sexual crimes against children doesn’t earn you a great reputation behind bars.)

There was a trial, then the declaration of a mistrial, then the start of a retrial, then an application to drop the charges, and now the retrial is back on again.

Kuntz-Angel originally faced 12 charges. Justice Neill Brown acquitted him in 2019 of sexual exploitation, sexual assault, assault causing bodily harm, and one count of procuring. But he convicted Kuntz-Angel of the most serious charges, including sexual interference.

Prior to sentencing, however, the case was reassigned to a different judge, and Kuntz-Angel’s lawyer Chantal Paquette applied for a mistrial questioning the mental faculties of Justice Brown.

That mistrial was declared, and the entire proceedings began again in 2020. Personal health details were never released, but the B.C. Supreme Court announced the retirement of Justice Brown on May 27, 2020.

We’ve seen three different judges, two different Crown counsel, and now two trials.

The new trial was ordered, but on July 21, 2021, Justice Terence Schultes ruled that the victim, who cannot be named due to a publication ban, was unable to continue with further cross-examination.

Defence then filed an application to have the victim’s testimony excluded from the trial due to a lack of complete cross-examination. On Nov. 1, 2021, Justice Schultes dismissed that application allowing transcripts of her prior testimony from the first trial to be used.

Kuntz-Angel then asked to have the charges dropped due to delay, a so-called Jordan application under section 11(b) of the Charter. On April 22, 2022, Justice Schultes dismissed the Jordan application, meaning the retrial can now go ahead.

The trial is scheduled to continue in B.C. Supreme Court in New Westminster on Jan. 30, 2023.

Justice is a lot of things, swift isn’t one of them.

READ MORE: Mistrial declared in Chilliwack’s David Lee Roth impersonator underage sex case - Jan. 22, 2020

READ MORE: Alleged sex crime victim of Chilliwack’s David Lee Roth impersonator can’t continue to testify - July 30, 2021

READ MORE: Chilliwack man charged with sexual misconduct says he was beaten up in jail


Do you have something to add to this story, or something else we should report on? Email:
editor@theprogress.com

@PeeJayAitch
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.