So three guys with names in Ottawa’s drug world have been gunned down in the last few weeks.
The latest dealer, Eric V., was gunned down outside a Barrhaven home. The stories will say it happened on an otherwise quiet street. The street is always quiet until someone gets gunned down.
The last time they pulled him over, in 2007, the cops said they found $900,000 worth of weed. That’s a lot of marijuna.
There are at least 10 references to herb in the Bible, the biggest selling crime book in history. Greed, murder, whores, moneychangers, booze and weed.
The latest three men killed are described as family men.
And it would be easy to joke that Eric V. didn’t spend much time in church.
But did he?

A few weeks ago, Graham Thomas, at 35 and one year older than Eric V. was gunned down at the Gloucester Mall along with Jason, also described as a family man.
It’s not like TV. They have families and don’t get all high every tme a cash-money customer comes calling.
Graham Thomas, loving father, never snorted with his customers.
The press made a deal about Joey M. When he gave the eulogy for his friend. Joey had top secret clearance because he worked closely for the country’s Navy commander.
Safe to say he’s not doing the same job anymore. In a position like that, it’s not exactly cool to have a close friend whose a cocaine dealer.
A longtime contact of mine used to buy coke from Graham, a Hells Angels dealer. But in Ottawa, the dealer is anything but stereotypical. He brings his kids to soccer, helps his neighbour dig a car out of snow and goes all out when it comes to decorating the house for Halloween. 

Drug dealers are people too but it’s always nice to know that none of the recent (I hate that word) killings are random.
Where there’s coke, there’s usually a gun.
And lately, there have been a lot of guns in town.

30

Two of the suspects eyed in the unsolved torture and killing of Ottawa’s Donald Mongeon are in the wind.

Both are former inmates at Collins Bay Penitentiary — where Mongeon, 27, was knifed to death near a guard station. Adrian Hogg and Andrew Elliott went off the grid after making parole a few years after Mongeon’s killing on Jan. 16, 1999.

It is understood that Elliott simply boarded a plane and returned to Jamaica, his homeland, when he was released. The Ontario Provincial Police, who are investigating the case, do not know where Hogg is living. (He is thought to be in Canada, but his name doesn’t appear in any government database, according to police sources.)

In the overall investigation, detectives have gathered evidence, but there is still not enough for prosecutors to support criminal charges.

The working police theory holds that Mongeon, who was six months into a five-year robbery sentence, was either being forced or paid to smuggle drugs into the prison during visits with his girlfriend.

Detectives believe Mongeon may have been killed because he was “stepping on the product,” meaning he was taking some drugs for his own habit. Alternatively, Mongeon may have been killed because the shipment on that last day of his life never made it in.

This theory is supported by an internal incident report I got. The report, written by a guard, recounts Mongeon being upset because he wasn’t allowed to kiss his girlfriend goodbye at the end of a visit. Drugs are often slipped mouth-to-mouth in the visiting rooms of prisons across the country.

The other two suspects in the case are still in prison on unrelated charges and the penitentiary’s “code of silence” has so far thwarted the police probe.

Hogg has a violent criminal history involving guns, knives and drugs. In 1999, he was serving a seven-year sentence for trying to kill a rival in 1992.

It was the second time he had attacked him. He first stabbed him and was sentenced to 17 months, and when he won release he bumped into his victim at a party at a Toronto apartment building. He walked up to him and said, “Remember me?”

The victim turned and left, saying he didn’t want any more trouble. But Hogg followed him down the elevator just the same and when they reached the lobby he pulled an automatic handgun and shot him in the stomach. He then sprayed the lobby with bullets, hitting a teenager, an innocent bystander, in the heel.

It took Hogg longer than most to win parole. His statutory release kept getting revoked for his aggressive attitude toward prison staff and his hard-drug use at halfway houses. They also once sent him back to prison after they discovered drugs on him at a halfway house.

Hogg also had refused treatment programs for at least the first five years of his federal sentence.

“Your impulsivity and willingness to resort to violence and weapons is clear,” his prison file reads. “Although your current offence demonstrates an escalation in severity, it is very much part of the continuum of your criminal history which includes several assaults, aggravated assaults and weapons convictions … Your history on conditional release has been problematic.

“Anger, jealousy, and a desire to control others, combined with a willingness to use instrumental violence in order to achieve your desires, appear to be elements in your pattern of criminal behaviour. You acknowledge … not being able to control your emotions.

“This emotional volatility combined with a demonstrated willingness to resort to violence, and easy access to weapons has predictably proven to be a potent mix,” warns the prison file, written two years before the Mongeon killing.

Andrew Elliott also had a history in the drug subculture. His prison file, dated 2001, documents a history of beating women.

It also reveals that he had a history of exploiting others for financial gain.

The parole board took the extra step to add a special condition to his release in 2001. “Since you are motivated to earn money by exploiting others, financial disclosure is deemed essential to monitor your activities. These conditions are imposed to manage risk should you not be deported,” the parole board concluded.

The federal government has told the Citizen there is no record of Elliott being deported, so it is believed he simply left on his own, which would, in effect, spare him any monitoring.

The Mongeon homicide was the subject of a coroner’s inquest two years ago and the OPP investigation remains open.

Questions have been raised about the activities of the prison guards on duty the night Mongeon was killed.

The guards have all said they checked Mongeon hourly the day he was killed inside his cell No. 18.

However, neither police nor prison investigators could find any proof to support the claims of the guards. The electronic records of the checks went missing and so did the backup paper copies that were kept in a locked filing cabinet.

In a confidential police report, an OPP detective who interviewed the guards theorized that they either never used an electronic data collector when doing their rounds or used one, but somehow erased it.

“Both theories represent deliberate actions with the only purpose being to muddy the waters on the day of the homicide. The question that must be answered is was this done to obstruct the police in their investigation to cover up the fact that officers working the evening shift on Jan. 16, 1999, did not do their job or were … these officers involved as an accessory to the murder for reasons unknown to the investigators at this time,” the detective wrote.

Some of the guards working the shift in question were later suspended for “serious negligence,” according to internal prison reports obtained by the Citizen.

Mongeon lay in a pool of blood on his cell floor for hours before guards reported anything wrong. Although they found his body under his bunk with a garbage bag wrapped around his head, they called it a suicide.

Mongeon was months away from parole and a day away from being transferred from the troubled unit when he was killed.

A $50,000 police reward for information in the case has so far gone uncollected.

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

www.twitter.com/crimegarden

This is the video I was talking about. Tried to post it earlier but had to file a quick hit about a bad John in the east end who tried to kill one of the girls. Anyway, back to Richard Lee McNair, featured on America’s Most Wanted a dozen times.

McNair, a convicted killer, escaped from jail three times. In his last escape, he had himself mailed out of the prison in a load of mailbags that had been repaired at an inmate workshop. He eluded capture for a year and a half and recalled that Ottawa was the coolest town to be on the lam. And he was impressed with OC Transpo, the city’s bus company.

He lived as a fugitive just down the road from Ottawa Police headquarters.

One morning, on his return from a jog, he spotted a police cruiser down the road from his rooming house. He smiled and waved to the cop and the officer did the same.

Here’s a video of the time he was confronted by US police, just hours after he escaped from prison and made his way to Canada. You’ll see the escaped prisoner pass himself off as a jogger. “There’s a prison around here?”

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzPo_tWAc4s

Isn’t it about time we started labeling deranged individuals who kill numerous people, in school shootings terrorist?  After all, their aim appears to kill without discrimination, but they are targeting specific institutions.  Most importantly, they inflict terror.

One Goh’s alleged act of madness in California this week has been described as a ‘murderous rampage’.  People have also said he had ‘anger management issues’.

Anyone who has trouble articulating themselves and resorts to killing people has anger management issues.

So what is the difference between a mass killer and other terrorists???

Image courtesy of  thedailybeast.com

This is the story I filed the morning Ottawa teachers Bob and Bonnie Dagenais were gunned down 10 years ago this week. It’s a story that should not be forgotten.

GARY DIMMOCK

They found the reputed killers fast asleep in a stolen pick-up truck, .12 gauge shotguns at their side.

Their run of cottage break-ins in West Quebec ended early yesterday in what police described as an “inhuman” home invasion and the senseless killing of two former teachers.

The boy and his partner, 26-year-old Rene Michaud, were wanted for scores of break-ins at cottages in West Quebec.

Bob and Bonnie Dagenais, popular and retired Ottawa teachers, were gunned down at close range after Dagenais, 52, heard something outside their lakeside cottage in Val-Des-Monts, some 40 kilometres north of Ottawa.

Their alleged killers came on a noisy all-terrain vehicle just before 1 a.m.

One by one, they climbed off the four-wheeler and trudged through fresh snow. Each armed with stolen .12- gauge shotguns, they approached the cottage by its side door, leading to a wraparound deck.

Moments after hearing something outside, Dagenais got out of bed and pulled on his trousers. His wife, 51, stayed in the bedroom while her husband went to investigate.

By now, the intruders were breaking through the side door. He rushed to the wall phone, just a few feet from the door, and called 9-1-1 for help.

The teacher was now face-to-face with the intruder as he gave instruction over the phone.

It was around 12:50 a.m., according to 9-1-1 records, when his wife started screaming and the phone went dead.

One intruder drew his shotgun, pointed it at close range and fired, killing Dagenais as his wife looked on.

One of them cut the telephone wire to the receiver, still in the victim’s hand when police arrived.

In an act police are calling “deliberate and cowardly,” the second intruder walked over the dead body to get to the terrified wife.

Just a few feet in front of her, he fired the shotgun, hitting her in the chest, apparently killing her instantly.

The respected teachers were killed for nothing, police said. To the couple, married for 30 years, their lakeside cottage was their coveted getaway.

Set on a slope leading to Dodds Lake, this is where the retired couple spent as many weekends as they could.

And for nothing more than being home when armed thieves came smashing in, they were killed, police said.

The killers didn’t wear masks or try to hide their identity, police said.

It is still uncertain if the intruders knew anyone was home. The couple’s beige minivan was parked on the other side and may have been hard to see.

The 9-1-1 call triggered a quick police response from MRC des Collines officers based in Wakefield.

And for acting on every tip it gets, the small police force is being credited for the quick capture of the alleged killers.

In the hours leading to the double-killing, police believe the thieves were behind a handful of other break-and-enters.

One by one, the thieves used a stolen all-terrain vehicle to break-in to the homes.

A nearby homeowner spotted fresh tracks in the snow and figured someone was breaking into cottages again.

An MRC des Collines officer decided to follow up on the call, hoping to catch the thieves red-handed.

Trudging through the snow, the officer followed tracks into the night. The officer stopped when he noticed that tracks led directly to a stolen pick-up truck, parked alongside a nearby road.

Inside, a 15-year-old boy and Rene Michaud, 26, were fast asleep.

The officer is being credited for the quick capture of the alleged killers.

The boy and Michaud were being questioned into the night. It is suspected that both of the alleged killers had been abusing either drugs or alcohol, police said.

Police spent much of yesterday working around the clock, combing the normally quiet scene for evidence and breaking the terrible news to next of kin.

The news of the killings ricocheted through the community yesterday and has left detectives wondering why the couple weren’t spared.

“They were killed for no reason,” said Surete du Quebec agent Marc Ippersiel. “They didn’t have to kill these people. They weren’t doing anything wrong to anyone,” he said.

They didn’t fight off their killers. They just called for help, nothing more.

“The woman was just standing there, crying. And they killed her.” Agent Ippersiel said.

Detectives say they can’t recall another time when homeowners were executed during, of all things, a break and enter. They said the people that did this, have “no respect for life.”

Michaud and the young offender are expected to appear in court tomorrow to face charges in the double killing, police said.

Michaud has a long history of trouble with the law, and is considered violent.

Michaud is hard to miss — he has several tattoos on his face, including two handguns tattooed on his forehead, both barrels pointed at one another.

One police officer yesterday shrugged, and said surely the couple would have willingly handed over whatever the intruders wanted.

But they were never even asked, rather just shot in a place they loved.

@crimegarden

“I like your shoes.”

The words were the last that Alain Brosseau heard before being dropped head first over the side of the Alexandra Bridge onto the rocky shoals of the Ottawa River. It was just before midnight on Aug. 21, 1989.

Brosseau’s body washed to the Gatineau side of the river during the night while his assailants continued a gay-bashing rampage fuelled by whisky, hash and and hate.

The teenagers had descended earlier that evening on Major’s Hill Park, then a popular cruising area for gay men, to “roll a queer.”

But in Brosseau, they lit upon an unsuspecting waiter with a longtime girlfriend on his way home to Gatineau after an evening shift at The Château Laurier.

Alain Brosseau was a popular member of the staff at the Chateau Laurier. He was a gifted mimic and could recreate any number of actors, comedians and cartoon characters.

The stark horror of the event would shock the city, mobilize its gay community — long the target of violence — and bring about unprecedented police reforms. In its wake, the Ottawa Police Service would pioneer diversity training and become the first in the country to establish a hate crimes unit.

Brosseau’s murder took place at a time when gay activists were engaged in two epic struggles: one, a battle to win resources for their fight against HIV/AIDS, and the other a quest to have “sexual orientation” added to human rights legislation.

Judy Girard, then president of the pioneering social services agency Pink Triangle Services, says the crime made everyone in the gay community reflect. “We had achieved all these rights and yet people were still being murdered because they looked gay,” she remembers. “There was a sense of, OK, enough of this already. We have to protect people.”

The Brosseau murder became a political rallying cry. As a result, it became less about one man and more about a community. Yet it was then and it remains today a profound personal tragedy.

Brosseau’s father, Jean-Paul, died 13 years ago from a cancer that his wife believes was hastened by his grief.

“My husband had a lot of trouble with what happened: we couldn’t talk about it. He couldn’t hear people talking about it,” Anita Brosseau, 81, told the Citizen in a recent interview. “For me, I had a lot of friends, they consoled me. My husband, he kept it all inside.”

Anita Brosseau still lives in Longueuil, Que., the Montreal suburb where Alain was born and raised. It has been 25 years since her son’s murder became one of this city’s most notorious, affecting crimes.

“The sadness isn’t as bad now,” she says, “but we don’t forget.”

The Victim

Growing up in Longueuil, Alain Brosseau dreamed of being a great chef. He went to cooking school, trained as a sommelier, and worked at a number of Quebec hotels.

When he heard about a job opening at Ottawa’s famed Château Laurier, he decided to move to the National Capital Region to explore new possibilities. He settled in Gatineau, within walking distance of his job at the Canadian Grill, a restaurant that regularly played host to Parliament Hill’s powerbrokers.

The restaurant’s deep alcoves, banquette seats and dim lighting offered the ideal habitat for backroom politics. The Canadian Grill’s waiters were known as much for their discretion as their wine selections.

Brosseau was a popular member of the staff: his easy charm and slight build allowed him to blend effortlessly into any room. He was a gifted mimic and could recreate for his friends any number of actors, comedians and cartoon characters, including whole scenes with Donald Duck.

The capital also allowed Brosseau to indulge another great passion: fishing. He loved being on the water and spent many happy mornings in his boat on the Ottawa River. Sometimes, he’d take his girlfriend, Véronique, along for a day of sunshine.

Often, he’d return to Longueuil to visit his parents and three younger siblings, Michelle, Isabelle and Rejean. “When he came to see us and spent two or three days, I loved that,” says his mother. “He would sometimes come with his girlfriend during the holidays … He was a good boy.”

During his five years in Ottawa, Brosseau developed the habit of walking home from work across the Alexandra Bridge. He found it relaxing to visit the river’s hypnotic calm after the bustle and hubbub of waitering. Colleagues at the Château Laurier, however, warned him against the practice: they said it was dangerous, particularly at night.

It’s not clear if Brosseau ever understood why his route was perilous. In the late 1980s, Major’s Hill Park, behind the hotel, was a clandestine meeting place for gay men — and a hunting ground for those who would do them harm.

During the early summer of 1989, two men — John Miller, 36, and Peter Vainola, 37 — were killed in mysterious falls from the cliffs at Major’s Hill Park. The police dismissed foul play and the chief regional coroner, Walter Harris, rejected an inquest. “Short of erecting a 20-foot fence with barbed wire,” he said, “I’m not really sure what anyone can do.”

On Aug. 11, the Ottawa Citizen carried a front-page story about the seventh person to fall from the cliffs that summer. Some had lost their balance while seeking an out-of-the-way place to urinate on Canada Day. Other falls went unexplained. Then city councillor Marc Laviolette, whose ward included Major’s Hill Park, said he wanted to know what attracted so many people to such a hazardous place.

Barry Deeprose and Judy Girard are local gay activists who were instrumental in improving relations with the Ottawa police after the murder of Alain Brosseau. Girard was one of the instructors when the force’s officers underwent training sessions on gay culture.

Those in the city’s gay community could have offered an answer: they also knew that not all of the incidents were benign. David Pepper, a longtime Ottawa activist, said gay men were being attacked in the park, a popular cruising area. “That whole summer, there was all sorts of violence happening around Major’s Hill Park: there had been robberies, assaults and bizarre falls. Those of us in the community knew these weren’t just accidents.”

Judy Girard says violence was a common feature of gay life in the 1980s, particularly for closeted gay men who were more likely to seek out sex partners in parks and public washrooms: “There was always an element of violence if you were gay back then. There still is today, but it was much more profound back then.”

On the evening of Aug. 21, 1989, at about 11:30 p.m., Brosseau walked unknowingly into that world when he set out alone for the Alexandra Bridge.

It was a Monday night.

The Crime

Earlier that day, four young friends converged on a Centretown apartment to drop acid, smoke hash and guzzle whisky. Jeffrey Lalonde, 18, Thomas MacDougall, 18, Duane Martin, 17, and a 16-year-old, known as Reid, found kinship in their troubled backgrounds.

All had left home during their high school years; they now relied on petty crime to subsidize their drug and alcohol binges. Lalonde, blonde-haired and muscular, was the group’s most imposing figure.

After downing two 40-ounce bottles of whisky, the group set off for Major’s Hill Park at 10:30 p.m. Their plan, as one of them would later testify, was to “roll a queer” since gay men in the park were considered easy targets unlikely to report being victimized. They had been preying upon park denizens all summer. MacDougall carried an imitation .45 automatic; Martin concealed a knife.

In the park, the gang confronted a man sitting on a bench: MacDougall put the fake gun to his head and the man, terrified, bolted from the park. Martin stabbed him in the lower back as he raced for the safety of the Market and its crowds.

The gang then wheeled north toward the Alexandra Bridge just as Alain Brosseau was making his way home from the Château Laurier.

Martin initiated the attack, hitting Brosseau across the back of the head with a stick. The waiter turned to confront his attacker, but he was overwhelmed by punches and kicks. The gang pummelled him to the ground, took $80 from his pockets, and forced a ring from his finger.

Lalonde stole the chain from Brosseau’s neck. Then, according to the eyewitness testimony of 16-year-old Reid, Lalonde suddenly heaved a dazed Brosseau up and over the railing by his calves. He dangled him headfirst from the bridge.

“I like your shoes,” Lalonde said as he released his grip. Brosseau scrabbled madly for a hold on the bridge, but couldn’t arrest his fall.

“The guy is dead: that must be 100 feet down,” Lalonde said as the group continued across the bridge.

Former police chief Thomas Flanagan embraced diversity training.

In downtown Gatineau, they met two friends, Henry Hynes, 20, and Mauricio Carpio, 23, and bought drinks with their stolen cash. The gang, however, had still not spent its murderous force.

Hours later, now six strong, they took two taxis to Orléans and broke into the Borland Drive home of a man Martin and MacDougall had robbed weeks earlier in Major’s Hill Park. Their haul had included the man’s wallet, full of identification, which provided his address.

The man, a 36-year-old civil servant, woke to find three members of the gang by his bed at 3 a.m. One of them looped a belt around his neck, dragged him out of bed and warned, “You faggot, we’re going to kill you.” He was poked in the eye with a screwdriver, stabbed in the back, and slashed across the neck before being wrapped in a blanket and dumped in the trunk of his car. The man’s roommate was stabbed in the abdomen and slashed across the throat. He played dead on his bedroom floor.

The gang fled when they couldn’t start the victim’s car. Both men survived life-threatening injuries to testify against their attackers.

The Impact

The Ottawa police arrested all six young men within 48 hours and charged them with attempted murder in connection with the Orléans attack. Days later, the group’s still darker secret emerged. Murder charges followed.

For Brosseau’s family, friends and co-workers, there was only anguish: “The people at the Château Laurier cried a lot and so did we,” says Anita Brosseau.

Rejean Brosseau came to Ottawa to identify his brother’s body. “He was in bad shape,” says Brosseau, now 54.

Meanwhile, in Ottawa’s gay community, long-simmering anger at police inaction started to boil. Local activists organized a “Blow the Whistle” campaign: they urged gay men to carry whistles as a measure of protection and demanded that police do a better job of targeting park predators.

“If it had been any other kind of group, there would have been concern, empathy and task forces,” says David Pepper, one of the activists behind the campaign. “But there was a refusal to acknowledge that gay men were being targeted for violence.”

Activists had two problems to overcome: police indifference (or outright hostility) and the gay community’s traditional insularity. Ottawa’s gay community had a deep mistrust of police dating back decades to the RCMP’s national security campaigns that sought to identify homosexual civil servants, considered prime targets for blackmail by Soviet agents. In the mid-1970s, the Ottawa police routinely named men who used male prostitutes and famously raided the city’s gay bath house on Wellington Street.

Initially, the Brosseau case served only to further alienate the gay community from the police since law enforcement officials publicly characterized the murder as an isolated incident.

Once the criminal cases reached trial, however, the testimony left no doubt that the murder was part of an ugly, protracted gay bashing campaign.

Jeffrey Lalonde told the Citizen in a jailhouse interview that he came to hate homosexuals after being sexually abused as a child. (He committed suicide in a Quebec prison in May 2008 while serving a life sentence for second-degree murder.)

City councillor Mark Maloney, a member of the police board, was so disturbed by the gulf that existed between the police and gay community that he brokered a meeting between the two sides. A coalition of gay activists sat down with senior police officials in July 1991. They formed the GLBT Ottawa Police Liaison Committee, among the first of its kind in the country, to open the lines of communication.

Then police chief Thomas Flanagan met with the committee in October 1991 to accept a report from the   Ottawa-Hull Gay Task Force on Violence. Among other things, it called for sensitivity training and the formation of a police hate crimes unit. Flanagan vowed to consider the ideas. He also promised to launch more patrols in areas where gays were being attacked and to crack down on officers who voiced anti-gay sentiments.

“As with any other sort of discriminatory attitude, whether it be racial or homophobic, whether it be gender-based, I’m not prepared to stand for it,” he told reporters.

Many credit Flanagan with changing the tenor of the conversation between police and the gay community.

“He had no problem at all with gays and just wanted to make a better police force,” remembers Barry Deeprose, a founder of the AIDS Committee of Ottawa.

Flanagan eventually embraced the task force’s call for diversity training. Beginning in 1992, every one of the police force’s 600 members went through a three-hour training sessions on gay culture. “Both sides learned a lot from it: I know I came to appreciate the nature of their reality as well,” says Girard, one of the instructors. “I think relations between the gay community and police became astronomically better after that.”

Ottawa police launched the country’s first hate crimes unit in January 1993. David Pepper considers it a watershed moment in this city’s police-minority relations. “I believe it fundamentally shifted the dialogue and discussion,” he says. “It promoted the understanding that there was a police mandate to investigate and prevent hate crimes … But it wasn’t just about gays and lesbians. It was about blacks, Jews, immigrants.”

Two years later, in another indication of just how much things had changed, Pepper was hired by the Ottawa police as director of community development and corporate communications. He held the post for 17 years before moving to OC Transpo.

After Alain Brosseau’s murder, David Pepper was one of the activists behind a ‘Blow the Whistle’ campaign urging gay men to carry whistles as a way to protect themselves and calling for police to do more to stop violent predators from targeting them.

During his time with the force, Pepper saw the pride flag raised at police headquarters; he listened to the police chorus perform with the Ottawa Gay Men’s Chorus; and he marched in the Pride Parade alongside uniformed officers. The GLBT police liaison committee continues to meet each month.

Pepper says all of it goes back to Alain Brosseau, a straight man who died because his attackers thought he was gay. That fact made his murder resonate with the broader community, he says, and invested it with a power that would have been denied a gay victim.

“It meant no one was safe from someone who waned to bash a gay — because they don’t ask you for a membership card,” Pepper says.

“But the thing that has always weighed on me is that we’ve never really been able to talk to his family or recognize that his life wasn’t wasted … I don’t know if his family understands the power and the symbolism of Alain Brosseau.”

Time served:

Jeffrey Lalonde was 36 years old when he died by suicide in Laval’s medium-security Leclerc Institution while serving a life sentence for second-degree murder, and a concurrent 10-year sentence for attempted murder in the Orleans stabbings.

Thomas MacDougall received seven years for manslaughter in Brosseau’s death and two years for breaking into the Orleans home.

Duane Martin, a young offender moved to adult court, received an eight-year sentence for the Orleans stabbings and two years for robbing Brosseau.

Henry Hynes received 10 years for the Orleans stabbings.

Mauricio Carpio received two years for breaking into the Orleans home.

Reid, a young offender turned Crown witness, was handed a suspended sentence after serving nine months in pretrial custody.

Related

• Profiles in pride: More than just a celebration
• A rainbow of identities
• Party or protest? For Ottawa's Capital Pride, it's both
• Capstick: Pride's progress and potential

A convicted killer who had been out on bail pending an appeal is back in jail after allegedly violating his release conditions.

Charlie Manasseri is accused of breaching a condition of his recognizance after allegedly having contact with a witness.

Manasseri, 52, received a life sentence with no chance of parole for 10 years in February 2012 after a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder for the killing of Brian Fudge nearly a decade ago. Police allege Manasseri contacted the witness on Oct. 27, nearly one year to the day he was released on bail pending his appeal.

Brian Fudge died after altercation in a bar.

Fudge died on Jan. 2, 2005, a day after he was attacked in separate assaults at Le Skratch Bar and Grill, where he had been drinking and celebrating his 22nd birthday and New Year’s Eve.

Witnesses testified at the trial that Manasseri had repeatedly pounded Fudge’s head into the metal bar top after an argument between the men over who should be served first. A still-conscious Fudge was escorted from the bar by bouncers and then punched in the face by a second man, George Kenny. Fudge immediately fell unconscious. Doctors testified during the trial that Manasseri‘s attack likely led to the massive brain injury that killed Fudge.

Manasseri appealed his conviction, arguing he had fresh evidence that could prove he may not have delivered the fatal blow.

As part of his release conditions, Manasseri was not to have any contact with employees from the bar, witnesses or Fudge’s family. Manasseri was released on a $125,000 bond to two sureties.

aseymour@ottawacitizen.com
Twitter.com/andrew_seymour

Charlie Manasseri, like the judge said, couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Manasseri, 52, received a life sentence with no chance of parole for 10 years in February 2012 after a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder for the killing of Brian Fudge nearly a decade ago. He won bail while awaiting an appeal of the conviction and all he had to do was stay clear of anyone connected to the case, let alone court witnesses.

Instead, Justice David Watt ruled on Tuesday, Manasseri, 52, turned a chance meeting with a key witness into a clumsy attempt to intimidate the pathologist who testified against him.

Worse, the judge ruled that Manasseri, who had been released on a $125,000 bond to two sureties, tried to cover it up by asking the witness to keep the heated conversation secret.

And for that severe breach of his bail conditions, Manasseri will remain in prison until his defence team goes to court for a fresh-evidence appeal anchored in reports from two other forensic pathologists that concluded he didn’t deliver the blows that killed aspiring police officer Fudge, 22, at Le Skratch Bar and Grill, where Fudge had been drinking and celebrating his 22nd birthday and New Year’s Eve. Fudge died on Jan. 2, 2005, a day after he was attacked in separate assaults.

Chris Gobin, the Orléans teen accused of killing his mom in April, is one step closer to trial after waiving his preliminary inquiry on Friday.

The high schooler was tackled and arrested on a neighbour’s lawn on April 22 shortly after his father arrived home and discovered his longtime wife, Luce Lavertu, dead. Someone had slit her throat.

In the months leading to his arrest, friends and family said Gobin had become withdrawn, suffered from depression and missed school regularly.

In an online survey, the accused wrote that he hated going to school and when asked one of the worst things he could possibly hear, he typed “your mom died.”

Gobin, 18, is charged with first-degree murder and returns to court in February. He is awaiting trial at the Innes Road jail and none of the allegations have been proved in court. A preliminary inquiry — which the accused has waived — is a hearing to determine if there’s enough evidence to warrant a trial.

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com
Twitter.com/crimegarden

Michael Swan’s parents don’t celebrate Christmas anymore. It was his mom’s favourite time of year and she spent weeks decorating their Barrhaven home. These days, they don’t even bother putting up a tree.

They skip birthdays and anniversaries, too. It’s been too hard to celebrate anything since their son, just 19, was executed in his bedroom on Feb. 22, 2010, after he refused to tell three masked and armed intruders where he kept his money and weed.

They ordered him to get on his knees, and as his longtime girlfriend looked on in horror, they shot him in the back at point-blank range. The bullet pierced a lung and his heart. He died in less than a minute.

Dylon Barnett, 23, was convicted on second-degree murder in October, and on Thursday at his sentencing hearing in Courtroom No. 37, his victim’s parents, Rea and Dale Swan, stood in court and gave intimate details of their life since their son’s murder. They both said the ordeal of a five-year-long court process, in which they said they had no rights or voice, was gruelling.

Dylon Barnett, 23, was convicted in October 2014 of second-degree murder in the death of Michael Swan. Barnett will be sentenced on Feb. 4.

At best, they said, they felt like spectators. They felt victimized by it all, but still they stood in open court and put a human face on their son, no matter how hard.

Dale Swan, a private man, told court: “I take exception that I have to do this in open court and before one of the very individuals responsible for my son’s death. This in itself I consider a form of victimization, but I realize this will be my only opportunity to try to put a human face on what has been, up to now a very cold, clinical, detached legal process.”

He said every special occasion reminds them only of their dead son. Just this past Christmas Eve, he sensed his longtime wife was having a particularly hard time. He asked her what was wrong and she broke down in tears and told him: “I hate my life … I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up.”

In a moving victim-impact statement, Swan told court: “As a father, I consider myself a failure. Ultimately, it was my job to protect my child, to identify the dangers and do whatever was required to deal with them. I thought I was doing this, but it proved not to be enough. I must live with this guilt for the rest of my life.”

Michael Swan’s parents blame themselves, and to this day feel guilty for enjoying anything.

His tearful mother Rea told court her life will never be the same.

“Just enjoying a beautiful sunny day, a good meal or even a laugh at a good joke brings with it a feeling of guilt, she said. “How can I enjoy these things? My son is dead … I have been robbed of my son and the joys of life … There remains a large hole in my heart that will never go away. ”

She said the trials across the last five years have been exhausting.

They described their dead son as a natural athlete who could make you laugh. And, they said, he never held a grudge. She said he was a loving son whose future was stolen.

Superior Court Justice Douglas Rutherford told the Swans they shouldn’t blame themselves. “You cannot go on with life for fear of enjoying it,” the judge said.

Swan sold only marijuana, and like many suburban teens, loved to smoke it while watching hockey in his bedroom. He spent the last night of his life next to his girlfriend of 4½ years, watching Olympic hockey.

Then, the next moment, they were ordered onto their knees at gunpoint by three masked men — all from Toronto.

Swan was shot in the back right after he told them he didn’t know where he kept his marijuana and cash.

The shooter — not Barnett — then ordered Swan’s girlfriend to tell them where he stashed the loot. Having just witnessed the execution of her boyfriend, she told them immediately.

And so for money and weed, of all things, Michael Swan was killed.

“I relive every Sunday night, minute by minute, knowing the times and events that led to my son’s execution,” Rea Swan told court. “I have nightmares of the terror Michael experienced the night he was executed. My heart aches of knowing that my son lay on the floor in his room dying alone with no one to help. The image is forever imprinted in my brain and can never be removed.

“Our family is forever broken; a piece of my heart is gone.”

Barnett will be sentenced on Feb. 4. The defence has requested parole eligibility after 10 years. The Crown has asked that he be locked up for 18 years before a chance at parole.

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

twitter.com/crimegarden

Prison officials say that Martin Pinkus, 47, convicted in the 1995 killing of a Gloucester gas bar attendant during a robbery attempt was found dead in his cell Wednesday.

Correctional Services Canada said prison workers at the medium-security Drumheller Institution in Alberta found Pinkus alone in his cell, began performing CPR and emergency services were called. Pinkus was taken to the Drumheller Health Centre where he was pronounced dead at 12:04 p.m.

An investigation into the cause of death is underway. Police will not say whether the death seems suspicious.

Pinkus was eligible for parole this year.

In December, 1999, Pinkus was sentenced to a mandatory life sentence for second-degree murder for his role in the August 1995 slaying of a Gloucester gas bar attendant on the night of Aug. 24, when Pinkus and an associate tried to rob the gas bar’s owner of drugs and money.

The attendant was shot in the back after he complied with orders to lie down in the parking lot.

At the time assistant Crown attorney Mark Moors called Pinkus’ crime “an unprovoked and cowardly killing.”

The attendant “was a completely defenceless victim. He posed absolutely no threat to Pinkus,” said Moors, who prosecuted Pinkus with then Ottawa Crown attorney Andrejs Berzins.

Pinkus was imprisoned for manslaughter in February 1989, after he shot a 31-year-old man named Dale Roth to death in a Wakefield cabin and dumped his body in the Gatineau River. Pinkus received a six-year prison sentence for that crime.

His criminal record also includes convictions in the mid-1980s for armed robbery and break-and-enter. At 17, he and an accomplice terrorized a New Brunswick family in a home invasion to steal $42, for which he was sentenced to four years behind bars.

vpilieci@ottawacitizen.com

Twitter.com/Vpilieci

Two men will serve at least seven more years in prison for their roles in the slaying of a Ottawa teenager over a small quantity of drugs, cash and some video games.

Family and friends of Michael Swan, who was 19 when he was shot and killed by intruders who broke into his home on Moodie Drive near Barrhaven in 2010, gathered in an Ottawa courtroom Wednesday morning to hear the sentencing of Kyle Mullen and Dylon Barnett, both 23. The two were convicted of second-degree murder in separate trials.

On Wednesday, both were sentenced to life in prison. Mullen will not be eligible for parole for 15 years, minus time already served, which means he could be seek parole as early as 2025. Barnett was sentenced to life in prison without eligibility for parole for 12 years, meaning he could apply for parole as early as 2022.

A third man involved in the case, Kristopher McLellan, who pulled the trigger that led to Swan’s death, was convicted of first-degree murder in late 2013 and is serving a life sentence. A fourth, Sam Tsega of Ottawa, who allegedly provided information to the others about where to find Swan, still awaits trial.

In rendering decisions, judges were forced to consider the history of two men who have led very different lives.

Mullen was abandoned by his mother in Toronto at a young age and left in the care of his father, who appears to have been uninvolved in the man’s life, the court had heard. He was never employed, has only a Grade 8 education and has a criminal record dating to his early teenage years. Mullen also claimed in court that he is of aboriginal decent, forcing delays in a sentencing that was originally scheduled for March 2014.

Mullen requested that a so-called Gladue report be conducted on him and his aboriginal background. Courts must consider such reports when deciding the fate of a person of aboriginal background.

In his decision, Justice Patrick Smith found that there was insufficient evidence to prove that Mullen was of aboriginal descent. His claim that his mother may be part native was dismissed by family members and there was no other documented proof that he is part of any native community. Justice Smith also pointed to the fact that Mullen claims he converted to Islam, becoming a Muslim for a brief period in 2011, while incarcerated. He has since claimed he does not practise any religion, according to Justice Smith.

Mullen was also involved in an assault while awaiting sentencing, which factored into the judge’s decision to sentence the 23-year-old to 15 years without the chance for parole instead of the minimum 10 years.

Barnett, also from Toronto, came from a middle-class family where he was raised primarily by his grandmother. He completed Grade 11 at Leaside High School in Toronto. According to a submission to the courts by his grandmother, the man excelled at sports and was showing a promising future in football and basketball. All of his friends have gone on to graduate from university.

“He was never in ‘the projects,’ never in a gang or hung out with thugs at school. His life was quite the contrary,” read his grandmother’s statement, released as part of Justice Douglas Rutherford’s sentencing decision. “This is the paradox, how Dylon got involved in this crime is truly a mystery to me. To this day I still do not understand it.”

 Late on Feb. 21, 2010, three masked men, all dressed in black and with handguns drawn, stormed into a home at 4139 Moodie Dr. and forced Swan, his girlfriend and roommates to their knees, demanding to know where he kept his money and marijuana. Swan, a known marijuana dealer, was renting the property.

One pressed a gun into Swan’s back and asked him again.

Then, according to his girlfriend’s testimony, Swan reached for something — she thinks his cellphone — and at that moment, McLellan shot him.

His friends tried to tend to the wounded Swan but were told not to touch him.

The intruders took $3,000, some video games, almost two kilograms of marijuana and cellphones and led the girlfriend and roommates to a basement sauna, where they were told to stay for 10 minutes.

By the time emergency crews arrived, Swan was dead.

Police used those cellular phones to track the trio as they left Ottawa. They were apprehended by police on Highway 410 between Brockville and Ganonoque.

Mullen and Barnett were also ordered to provide DNA samples to police and are banned for owning firearms or other dangerous weapons for the rest of their lives.

vpilieci@ottawacitizen.com

As testimony from a woman facing second-degree murder charges in the 2010 death of a chip truck driver entered its third day Thursday, prosecuting attorneys turned their attention to the accused’s spotty memory of events related to the case.

Rachelle Denis, 43, is accused of killing Tony El-Kassis, a Richmond-area man she ran over in the parking lot of the Richmond Plaza on July 2, 2010 before fleeing to her mother’s home nearby. El-Kassis, 60, died a few days later.

The defence has conceded that the trial revolves on whether Denis knew what she was doing when the incident occurred. The jury has been told to anticipate evidence from doctors that will suggest Denis was in an “automatic” state when she ran him down. The jury has heard that Denis has no memory of what happened after she pulled into the plaza parking lot on a grocery run. She blacked out right after she saw El-Kassis, the jury has heard.

On Thursday, Denis testified that she remembers seeing “someone that looked like” El-Kassis while turning into the parking lot of the Richmond Plaza before she “blacked out.” When she came to, she said the first thing she remembers was picking her head up off the car’s airbag, which had deployed when the car ran into a brick wall at the plaza. She remembers seeing El-Kassis lying on the ground and she realized she “must have hit him,” before noticing crowds of people at the scene. She then made the snap decision to drive her badly damaged car to her mother’s house which was nearby.

“I felt disoriented,” she told the court, adding that when she saw the people gathering she believed the injured El-Kassis would get medical attention. “I knew he would get the help he needed.”

Denis testified that she wasn’t thinking clearly and was in a state of shock. After prodding by the prosecution, Denis admitted that her foot had remained on the accelerator until she decided to flee the parking lot. Denis had previously told police she tried to brake before hitting the brick wall.

Early on in the police’s investigation, Denis also claimed that “it was clearly an accident. I swear to God. I didn’t intend to hurt anyone or myself. I went to go park and I lost control of the car.”

On the stand, Denis admitted that her memory is spotty and she claims she gets sudden “flashbacks” that allow her to more clearly recall the actual events of various incidents leading up to and including the crash.

While fleeing the scene, the mother of five children admitted that she knew the police would soon find her as the car was badly damaged and leaking fluid, leaving a trail. She said she was surprised the car made it to her mother’s home before breaking down.

Denis has claimed El-Kassis was a rapist who sexually assaulted her multiple times and even stabbed her with a pocket knife in between her legs during one of his unwanted sexual advances. Yet, phone records from Denis’ house introduced Thursday show dozens of calls from Denis to El-Kassis, who was married, and Denis has admitted to inviting the man into her home several times.

Denis has also admitted that El-Kassis would help her family by buying groceries and supplying advice.

The prosecution questioned Denis’ memory lapses. Each time she was asked about a difficult subject, such as a 2009 report claiming domestic abuse that led to an investigation by the Children’s Aid Society, Denis couldn’t remember details. She also claimed she couldn’t remember calling El-Kassis as many times as the phone records indicated.

“Whatever my state of mind at the time, I don’t remember calling that often,” she said.

On Thursday, Denis admitted to falsifying a separation with her husband, which led to him moving out, in March 2009 in order to draw welfare payments from the government to help the family with $50,000 worth of debt that they had accumulated.

“We were heavily in debt and that was the only way I could think of to get income,” she said from the stand.

She also admitted that on Nov. 30, 2009, she vandalized El-Kassis’s chip wagon by spray-painting the word “Rapist” in two locations on his chip wagon. She also spray-painted the words “sexual abuser” on a nearby storage trailer. Denis said she took her son with her while she defaced El-Kassis’s property.

“The system failed me,” she told the court. “It was my way of expressing myself.”

The case continues Friday.

Under the bridge on Highway 416, where it crosses the Jock River in Barrhaven, graffiti artist Drone and his girlfriend worked under cover of darkness for 10 nights to pay tribute to 19-year-old Michael Swan, who was executed five years ago in his bedroom by Toronto hoods over a bag of weed.

He was shot in the back at point-blank range in his bedroom in the early hours of Feb. 22, 2010, as he knelt down at gunpoint next to his girlfriend after watching the Canada versus the U.S. hockey game at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The bullet pierced a lung and his heart. He died in less than a minute.

The graffiti artist usually pays tribute to Swan, who was just 19, on the anniversary of his killing. This year, the extreme cold got in the way. It took him 10 nights, and he had lots of help from his girlfriend.

The Scottish-themed piece says “Mike Swan 1990-2010″ and pays respect to his family crest, the one that reads Constant and Faithful. Last year Drone paid tribute to Swan with a piece that highlighted the words Constant and Faithful. When graffiti writers in Montreal heard that it was later tagged over by others, they drove to Barrhaven and restored it out of respect for the slain Barrhaven teen.

“It shows that people still remember him and that even at a young age of 19, he has a lasting legacy in Barrhaven,” brother Alex Swan said Wednesday.

19-year-old man Michael Swan died in less than a minute after a bullet pierced his heart.

Swan’s family has been broken since the 2010 killing. His mom’s favourite holiday was Christmas, but the family stopped celebrating it — they don’t even put up a tree. They skip birthdays, too.

Sadly, his parents blame themselves, and to this day feel guilty for enjoying anything.

At the sentencing hearing for one of the convicted, Dale Swan, a private man, said: “I take exception that I have to do this in open court and before one of the very individuals responsible for my son’s death. This in itself I consider a form of victimization, but I realize this will be my only opportunity to try to put a human face on what has been, up to now a very cold, clinical, detached legal process.”

He said every special occasion reminds them only of their dead son. Just this past Christmas Eve, he sensed his longtime wife was having a particularly hard time. When he asked her what was wrong, Rea Swan broke down in tears and told him: “I hate my life … I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up.”

Kyle Mullen and Dylon Barnett, both 23, were convicted of second-degree murder in separate trials and sentenced in early February to life in prison. With time already served, Mullen will not be eligible for parole until at least 2025; Barnett could apply for parole as early as 2022. Triggerman Kristopher McLellan was convicted of first-degree murder in late 2013 and is serving a life sentence, and a fourth, Sam Tsega of Ottawa alleged to have provided information about where to find Swan, is awaiting trial.

Dale Swan still considers himself a failure as a father.

“Ultimately, it was my job to protect my child, to identify the dangers and do whatever was required to deal with them. I thought I was doing this, but it proved not to be enough. I must live with this guilt for the rest of my life.”

Rea Swan — they met at a bank where she was a teller and he a customer — told court that life will never be the same.

“Just enjoying a beautiful sunny day, a good meal or even a laugh at a good joke brings with it a feeling of guilt, she said. “How can I enjoy these things? My son is dead … I have been robbed of my son and the joys of life … There remains a large hole in my heart that will never go away. ”

The memorial graffiti that goes up every year somewhere in Barrhaven gives them a small dose of comfort.

After all, the last five years of trials has been exhausting.

They describe their son as a natural athlete who could make you laugh. And, they said, he never held a grudge. They’ll also rightly tell you that his future was stolen.

Swan sold only marijuana, and like many suburban Ottawa teens, loved to smoke it while watching hockey in his bedroom. He spent the last night of his life next to his girlfriend of 4½ years, watching the big game.

Then, the next moment, they were ordered onto their knees at gunpoint by three masked men — all from Toronto.

“I relive every Sunday night, minute by minute, knowing the times and events that led to my son’s execution,” Rea Swan told court at the sentencing hearing.

“I have nightmares of the terror Michael experienced the night he was executed. My heart aches of knowing that my son lay on the floor in his room dying alone with no one to help. The image is forever imprinted in my brain and can never be removed.

“Our family is forever broken; a piece of my heart is gone.”

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

twitter.com/crimegarden

A Gatineau artist with a toddler of her own has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in a gruesome double homicide committed in a townhouse where a three-year-old girl was found unharmed.

The bodies of Amanda Trottier and Travis Votour, both 23, were discovered on the main floor of the Eardley Terrace home the couple shared in Aylmer the morning of Jan. 6, 2014. Trottier’s daughter was upstairs.

Amanda Trottier and Travis Votour

Gatineau police initially investigated the homicides, but members of the provincial Sûreté du Québec force took over the case when police said there could be links to organized crime — a revelation that came a little more than a week into the police investigation, after the victims’ families began speculating that drugs had motivated the killings.

Sonia Vilon, 39, was arrested by Sûreté du Québec on Monday morning. She appeared in Gatineau court Tuesday morning.

Moments after the announcement by Quebec’s provincial police force, Trottier’s mother took to Facebook to express her relief at news of an arrest.

“Justice just crying tears of joy,” Victoria Lebrasseur wrote online, adding later: “My prayers are being answered.”

Lebrasseur said she didn’t know the woman accused of killing her daughter but wrote that finally “the truth will come out.”

The 16-month police investigation produced “voluminous” evidence, Crown prosecutor Sylvain Petitclerc said Tuesday at the Gatineau courthouse.

Police have not confirmed how Trottier and Votour were killed but neighbours reported hearing what sounded like gunshots thundering from the townhouse the young couple shared.

In December, police set up a command post near the scene of the homicide after receiving what they said was new information. Police did not detail what that tip was but said they hoped others would come forward with information that could help identify the killer.

According to an artist biography posted on a free online art gallery called Art-3000, Vilon drew and painted from the time she was a child, preferring to paint abstract art with oils and acrylics.

“I love to let my creativity run wild and let go my imagination to what brings me joy when I paint,” she wrote.

In 1999, Vilon attended the Ottawa School of Art. She continued to paint until 2005, she wrote, when she became partially paralyzed due to illness. Eventually, she resumed painting part-time.

“I thank life every day for being here,” she wrote. “I dedicate part of my life to what I love to do and that is painting from the heart.”

The homicide victims and the accused killer, charged with what police say were premeditated slayings, were known to police.

Vilon was charged with several firearms offences in Ottawa in April 2011, but those charges were withdrawn that July. She was also charged in 2011 with drug possession in Gatineau but was later acquitted. She was once again charged with drug possession in July 2014 and appeared in court to face that set of charges in October of last year, all the while Quebec provincial police continued to investigate the killings for which she is now charged.

Votour had a minor criminal record and, at the time of his death, was facing drug possession and assault charges for allegedly assaulting a police officer. The charges were laid in the summer of 2013.

In 2011, he was sentenced to five days in jail after pleading guilty to a set of charges including assault, threatening death or bodily harm, breach of recognizance and damaging property.

Two Sûreté du Québec detectives arrived at a home listed to “S Vilon” on Lacasse Street in Gatineau on Tuesday afternoon. Neighbours said that Vilon’s parents rent the home and that she occasionally visits them there.

An investigator who said he could not speak to media, knocked on the door then identified himself as a provincial police officer to a woman inside the house. The officer left the home minutes later.

A man who arrived at the home a short time later, after Vilon had appeared in court, declined to speak to the Citizen.

Neighbours said they saw a police presence at Vilon’s parents’ home Monday, both a police cruiser and a pair of detectives.

Vilon, however, was arrested at her Gatineau home Monday morning.

Vilon’s neighbour at that Rue du Crepuscule apartment said the woman was usually home with her young son so she assumed the woman was on maternity leave. Vilon lived at the home with a boyfriend, who hasn’t been seen in several weeks.

Police say the investigation is not yet closed and that additional arrests could still be made.

Vilon remains in custody. She is next scheduled to appear in court May 22.

With files from Meghan Hurley and Norman Provencher

syogaretnam@ottawacitizen.com

aseymour@ottawacitizen.com

Mark Haslett had had enough of his roommate’s whistling.

And when Rolland “Rolly” Laflamme wouldn’t stop, he was knifed in the stomach and left bleeding to death on the top floor of a Carling Avenue rooming house on the night of Feb. 11, 2013.

In a sensational twist on Wednesday, prosecutors used a 3 1/2-hour audio recording the accused made of the events in question at his second-degree murder trial. Jurors listening intently to the recording heard Haslett, 27, politely asking his roommate to stop it with that damned whistling.

“Rolly, um, can you please with the whistling. I’m trying to study. I’d appreciate if you didn’t whistle so loud in the common area,” Haslett is heard saying on the tape.

“Anything else?” Laflamme, 54, asks.

“No, that’s it,” Haslett says.

Then Laflamme says, “You’re never out here anyway. Keep it to yourself. Whatever. We’re never in the same room anyway. And you’re going to tell me what? Have a nice day.”

Then jurors heard what sounds like knocking on a door, three separate times.

And then they heard Laflamme whistling again, then, seconds later, the sound of Laflamme moaning and swearing.

The jury also heard other events captured on the recording — notably when the accused later went to the liquor store and helped himself to a bottle of red wine and started downing it in the aisle.

“I’ll have to call the cops if you don’t put that down. You can’t drink that here,” an LCBO employee tells the accused.

The accused’s own recorder — stuffed in his pocket — also captures comments from another customer at the Carling Avenue liquor store, who says, “You’re lucky I don’t own this bar because I’d rip it out of your hands!”

The customer then tells Haslett to put the bottle down and the screw-top cap back on.

Haslett then leaves the liquor store and goes back home where he meets Ottawa police still at the crime scene. Captured on the recording is an arresting officer saying, “Don’t move, OK. You got anything on you that’s going to hurt me? A knife?”

Haslett replies, “No”, and an officer cuffs him and says, “Not too tight there, bud?”

An officer is then heard asking Haslett if he had made a recording. Matter-of-factly, Haslett tells an officer not only how to work the recorder but tells him its USB device can be found in his bedroom.

“I’ll even show you where it is.”

An Ottawa police officer, knowing he was being audio-recorded, asks the accused killer if he’s got permission to go into his bedroom and search for the USB.

Haslett tells the officer, “Sure, yeah,” then offers up his bedroom keys.

The jury has also heard a chilling, 10-minute 911 call, with Laflamme bleeding out and begging again and again for an ambulance.

“I’m bleeding to death. I’ve just been stabbed,” Laflamme tells the 911 operator. “Get somebody over here. I’m f — ing bleeding like you wouldn’t believe.”

Police seized a blood-stained combat knife and a rambling diary from the accused killer’s bedroom.

The trial before Superior Court Justice Charles Hackland is scheduled for two weeks. Haslett is represented by Samir Adam and Sean May.

The trial resumes Thursday.

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

twitter.com/crimegarden

Howard Richmond says he was playing “the bad man” in a rape-fantasy tryst when he stabbed his wife to death in the bushes just after midnight on July 25, 2013.

Describing to a jury how he was dressed in black and armed with a screwdriver and knife, Richmond said he hid in the bushes at the edge of a darkened parking lot, sprang out on cue as Melissa walked by and “slipped into character.”

The soldier pulled her into the bushes at knifepoint and then heard a loud noise that triggered a flashback of horror from his Croatia mission in 1992, he testified at his first-degree murder trial on Friday.

“I saw the little girl and I could see myself stabbing Melissa. I don’t know why I was doing it. I felt like I was fighting for my life,” Richmond said.

In testimony earlier this week, Richmond, now 52, said he and his wife, 28, would have sex in public places and engage in bondage and rape-scenario role-playing until he lost interest in sex when his PTSD symptoms accelerated.

He has admitted killing Melissa, but his defence team has urged the jury to find him not criminally responsible because he was in the throes of chronic PTSD and could not form the intent to kill, let alone know it was wrong.

It took months for him to remember that night, and he has only been able to piece together parts of what happened through recovered memory, he told the court.

He said that deep down, he didn’t remember killing his wife, but in the face of compelling police evidence, he must have done it.

Under examination by defence lawyer Jason Gilbert, Richmond said he’s angry for not having the self-control to stop himself.

Richmond told the jury that the drive home after the killing was “fuzzy.” He remembers crying in the shower but doesn’t recall hiding his bloody clothes and the screwdriver and knife in the basement.

He said he went to bed and the next morning texted his wife to thank her for letting him sleep in. Then he wondered where she was and later reported her missing.

Her body was found days later on the edge of a ravine near the shopping centre parking lot, not far from her car.

In several police interviews, Richmond maintained his innocence and presented himself as a grieving husband bent on exacting revenge on whoever killed his wife.

Richmond was arrested on Aug. 2, 2013, and his time in jail awaiting trial has been troubling. Yelling and screaming by other inmates and the sound of slamming doors regularly trigger flashbacks from his Croatia mission, he said.

When a Muslim prisoner was placed in his cell, he slept during the day because he feared he would be attacked in his sleep at night, he said. He also worried that he would lose control and kill any inmate who challenged him to fight.

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

www.twitter.com/crimegarden

Everything about Adrian Daou’s murder confession is so unreliable that it’s like trying to shove a square peg into a round hole, his defence lawyer told the jury at his first-degree murder trial Friday.

In closing arguments, Annik Wills reminded the jury that Daou, 24, was desperate to get out of segregation at the Innes Road jail, suicidal and under a psychiatrist’s care when he gave a bizarre confession to police in February 2013 that he was the man with the axe who killed Jennifer Stewart in a Vanier parking lot in August 2010.

He told detectives that he wanted out of jail, and figured that if he confessed to a murder, he’d get transferred to a federal prison where he’d have more space to do his time, the court heard. The Vanier rapper told police that he hatched the murder plot for notorious hip-hop fame, and did so days after he told a doctor that his finger was possessed and that he had to bite it off to rid himself of demons, court heard.

Wills told the jury that the Crown highlighted the fact that detectives had kept hold-back details only the killer would know, but the reality, she said, was that all the facts Daou gave police were readily available in newspaper stories. The court has heard that he was reading newspaper stories about the slaying online when he told an ex-girlfriend that he was the killer.

In his confession to police, Daou got descriptions of some of the axe wounds wrong, and said he first struck her with an axe in the chest when, in fact, Stewart, 36, did not suffer any chest wounds. His lawyer also noted that Daou even got the weapon wrong, first telling police that he used a military knife when Stewart had actually been killed by an axe, according to a pathologist.

Wills reminded the jury that the axe the prosecutors held up for the jury wasn’t actually the murder weapon, which has still not been recovered.

“That axe is not the murder weapon. That’s a prop,” Wills told court.

The police, unable to find the murder weapon, bought the axe at Canadian Tire to show the jury what it looked like.

“Whatever happened to that axe?” she asked.

Though the murder weapon would have been a key piece of evidence, she reminded the jury that the police never bothered to track down the man Daou said dumped it. Beyond leaving a single voice mail, the Ottawa police took no other steps to interview the key witness.

“They made a phone call and they left a voice mail. That’s it,” Wills said.

The police have no murder weapon, no witnesses and no DNA in the case. In fact, Wills reminded the jury on Friday that another man’s DNA was found on her body.

Daou, who has given a false murder confession in the past, was fed Colonnade Pizza at Ottawa police headquarters after serving 22 days in an isolation cell at the Innes Road jail, where he had nothing except a bunk and a suicide jacket — not even a Bible, court heard.

The lawyer highlighted the fact that police don’t have “one single shred” of physical evidence, and that Daou’s DNA did not match the genetic footprint found on Stewart’s body.

Wills also reminded the jury that Daou was delusional when he gave the ever-changing confession to police, saying he was hearing messages from the radio instructing him to kill.

If the jury concludes that Daou killed Stewart, Wills urged the jury to find him not criminally responsible because he is a schizophrenic and wouldn’t be able to form the intent to kill, let alone know it’s wrong.

Daou has pleaded not guilty and the trial continues Monday.

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

www.twitter.com/crimegarden

An Ontario judge has ruled there will be no opportunity for early parole for convicted murderer Cherrylle Dell, who is currently serving a life sentence for killing her estranged husband more than two decades ago by giving him white wine laced with antifreeze.

Dell, who is now in her 60s, had filed a “faint hope” application more than two years ago in a bid for a reduction to the amount of her sentence she must serve before being eligible for parole.

Convicted of first-degree murder in the 1995 slaying of her husband, Scott Dell, in Killaloe, northwest of Ottawa, Dell is not eligible to file for parole until 2022. She was also charged in the murder of her lesbian lover, Nancy Fillmore, but pleaded guilty to the much lesser charge of counselling Fillmore’s killer, Brent Crawford, to intimidate her.

The first step in the faint hope application process is to convince a judge that there is a “substantial likelihood” a jury would recommend early parole. Dell failed to meet that threshold, Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger ruled on Monday.

In his written decision, Maranger found that Dell has “lied pathologically about her life story.” Her “persistent misrepresentations” and “inability to tell the truth” while incarcerated for the murder make it unlikely a jury would recommend to the National Parole Board that it should consider granting her an early release, in the judge’s opinion.

Maranger found “glaring and persistent” examples of Dell’s lies that included claims she was of aboriginal heritage, that she has a university education, that she has no history of substance abuse and that her husband had sexually assaulted their children. She also made misrepresentations about her role and responsibility in the intimidation of Fillmore, who had told police that Dell was the one who killed her husband before being herself killed by the 16-year-old Crawford.

As recently as 2012, Dell continued to use the untrue sexual assault allegations as a means of justifying the murder, Maranger found. Maranger said Dell’s campaign to discredit her husband with false allegations in the years before his death to gain advantage in the family court process was one that was “relentless, ruthless and frankly unprecedented” in his experience as a judge.

Scott Dell was killed after drinking a lethal cocktail of white wine laced with antifreeze in 1995. His estranged wife, Cherrylle Dell, was convicted of first-degree murder.

Maranger said it was only recently that Dell participated earnestly in treatment and showed any sort of genuine remorse for the harm she had caused. Prison records, including certificates of achievement, program performance reports and community assessments showed that Dell had made some progress and attempts at rehabilitation, Maranger found, although he added that her level of remorse could best be characterized as “weak to moderate.” But Dell’s “long-standing inability to tell the truth about who she is” made it difficult to gauge any positive feedback from Corrections Canada, the judge found.

In his decision, Maranger said he considered the circumstances of the offence, which involved Dell resorting to murder after her husband’s throat cancer went into remission and it appeared he wouldn’t die as a result of the disease. Dell’s motive was financial and to gain custody of the children, the court found.

Related

• Archival: How sex, lies and antifreeze convicted the `Angel' of death, Cherrylle Dell

“The buildup to the commission of this offence, the diabolical nature of the murder, and the cold-blooded attitude that seems to be the hallmark of the applicant would not bode well for her chances of convincing a jury that she should be allowed to attempt earlier parole than 25 years,” wrote Maranger.

“After considering the evidence regarding the character of the applicant, her overall conduct while incarcerated, and the offence she committed, I asked myself the question: On the balance of probabilities is there evidence upon which a reasonable jury, acting judiciously, would be substantially likely to award a reduction in the applicant’s parole ineligibility? The answer in my view is very clearly no.”

The faint hope provisions of the Criminal Code have since been abolished, although Dell was still eligible because her conviction predated changes to the law.

A friend of Scott Dell believes the judge made the right decision.

“I hope she never gets out,” said Elsa Steenberg, who says she fears the day when Cherrylle Dell will be able to apply for parole.

Steenberg said members of the community still dedicate a song to Scott Dell’s memory near his birthday every March during blues night at the Wilno Tavern.

aseymour@postmedia.com

twitter.com/andrew_seymour

Navid Niran died because he wanted a cigarette, the Crown told an Ottawa jury on Tuesday. 

On Jan. 21, 2012, the 24-year-old father of a newborn son was celebrating a friend’s birthday at a Dalhousie Street nightclub. Niran stepped outside on the rooftop patio and tried to get a smoke from a stranger who was busy on his phone and was clearly angered by Niran’s repeated requests. 

So annoyed, the Crown said, in opening remarks for the first-degree murder trial of Ahmed Hafizi, 22, that the man waited outside in a black sedan for Niran to emerge from the bar. Shortly before 2:30 a.m., Niran left the club and the accused struck, the Crown alleges.

Niran was stabbed four times, twice in the stomach, and twice in the heart with a knife with a nine-centimetre blade, court heard.

“He was waiting to kill,” Crown attorney Julien Lalande told the jury, adding, “This all started over a cigarette.”

The prosecutor told the jury that Hafizi was running away before Niran hit the sidewalk. 

A police officer was flagged down and right after paramedics got Niran inside an ambulance, his heart stopped. Surgeons later would try to revive him by pumping his heart manually, but failed. 

The jury heard that Niran didn’t have a chance to defend himself in the 11-second attack, seemingly confirmed by an autopsy that concluded he had no defensive wounds.

The prosecutor also told the jury ‘This case is not a whodunnit,” noting that the accused has admitted he was in an “altercation” with Niran on the night in question.

The jury was also shown video footage from inside the club on Jan. 22 which shows Niran in the club heading toward the patio.

The Crown said that Niran’s blood was on the knife, and the accused’s DNA was on the handle of the weapon. 

Earlier in the day, Hafizi, represented by Oliver Abergel and Howard Krongold, formally pleaded not guilty.

The trial continues before Ontario Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips.

gdimmock@postmedia.com