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Murder suspect Chris Lee’s decades of maintaining his composure while gambling in casinos allowed him to dispassionately describe killing his longtime friend, he told a Calgary jury Tuesday.

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Under cross-examination by Crown prosecutor Shane Parker, Lee was asked why he showed no emotion while testifying that he accidentally killed Vida Smith as she tried to steal $10,000 from him.

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On Monday, Lee told defence lawyer Cory Wilson he grabbed Smith around the neck when she tried to leave his car in a northeast parking lot after failing to produce the passport she promised to sell him.

“You were very stoic as you were describing to Mr. Wilson how you killed your friend of 30 years,” Parker put to Lee.

“I show very little emotion most of the time,” Lee said.

As a result of his time in casinos, “I’ve grown accustomed to being more mellow,” he said.

“I try not to display emotion.”

Lee, 63, is charged with second-degree murder in the July 21, 2020, disappearance of Smith, whose body had never been found.

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At the start of his trial, Wilson entered a guilty plea to manslaughter on his client’s behalf, but Parker told jurors he would proceeding with the prosecution on the murder charge.

Parker suggested to Lee he was lying when he said it was a chokehold of 30 seconds that caused Smith’s death in his girlfriend’s Nissan Rogue as they consummated their deal over a passport he said she offered to sell him.

Lee, who along with Smith had a long history of gambling, including counting cards in blackjack that resulted in them being banned from many casinos, said after he paid her $10,000 in a parking lot outside a northeast Starbucks, she provided a birth certificate instead.

He said the non-photo identification would be useless in his bid to use COVID masking to subvert his banishment from casinos, explaining any time you cashed in $10,000 or more you needed to show who you were.

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Parker suggested Smith didn’t die in the parking lot as Lee asserted, but instead was transported to a remote location where he shot her.

But Lee insisted Smith was dead when he drove away, taking her corpse to the northwest residence he shared with his girlfriend before transferring her body to his older-model Cadillac Escalade.

Among the five firearms found in Lee’s Escalade after his July 30, 2020, arrest was a .45-calibre handgun in a jacket pocket.

“The .45 in your jacket pocket was the gun that caused Vida Smith’s death,” Parker put to Lee.

“Totally incorrect,” the accused responded.

“Killing someone with a gun is a very intentional act, you would agree with that?” Parker asked.

“I didn’t shoot her anywhere,” Lee said, agreeing shooting her would meet the test for murder.

Jurors will hear final submissions from Wilson and Parker on Wednesday.

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Twitter: @KMartinCourts