The Cumberland Conspiracy
About twenty kilometers east of Ottawa, Ontario lay the sleepy little village of Cumberland. Mystery is not new to this village, now considered a suburb of Ottawa. Late one foggy evening in the middle of a January thaw, a person or persons came calling at the home of Michel Giroux, 24, and his seven-month pregnant, common-law wife Manon Bourdeau, 27. A day or two later Giroux was found lying in his living room partially in the doorway of the bedroom, a hole in his chest and one in his head. A shotgun fired at close range was apparently the murder weapon. Bourdeau was found in the bedroom with a shotgun wound to the back of her head. She appeared to have been cowering between the bed and the wall. So ends the story of Giroux and Bourdeau, but a mystery more complex than the Da Vinci Code begins. In the courts and newspapers the murders became known as the “Cumberland Murders.” The front page of the Globe & Mail, January 13, 2007 described this case as “The longest and most costly criminal trial in Canadian history.”
However, this is not a story about the double murder of two entry level drug dealers.
The murders occurred around 10:00 pm on Tuesday, January 16, 1990 or sometime on Wednesday the 17th depending on what evidence we put our faith in. A neighbour, Ronald Potvin discovered the bodies of Giroux and Bourdeau around 3:00 pm on Thursday, January 18 and reported the find to police. Autopsies were performed on Friday morning and the coroner put the time of death at between twenty-four to forty-eight hours earlier (Wednesday am to Thursday am) on one victim, and twenty-four to thirty-six hours earlier (Wednesday pm to Thursday am) on the other body.
Within days, police were looking at a member of the Outlaw Motorcycle gang, David Dunbar, as a possible suspect. Dunbar allegedly sold drugs at the Carlsbad Hotel in Carlsbad Springs where Giroux previously hung out and where his common-law wife had worked as a waitress. While interviewing patrons, the OPP investigators were told by reluctant witnesses that Dunbar was allegedly Giroux’s supplier and that he had been looking for Giroux one night. At least one close friend of Giroux told inspectors that Dunbar suspected Giroux of being a police informant and Giroux was avoiding Dunbar by staying away from the hotel and confided that he owed Dunbar money.
However, it was the following four that were charged with the Cumberland Murders eleven months later on December 19, 1990. They were held without bail in an Ottawa detention centre.
·Robert Stewart, 38 years of age at the time and a resident of Orleans, was a minor drug distributor and also ran a backhoe and body shop businesses. A father of two boys and husband to Linda, he was a “Senior A” alpine skier on the Gatineau Zone team for three years. He also won a second place in the Henley Regatta in lightweight 4 rowing.
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·Rick Mallory, 44 years of age and a resident of Vanier, was Stewart’s collector. He was a fitness buff and a three-time world champion arm wrestler.
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·Richard Trudel, 23 years of age and a resident of Ottawa, worked for Stewart in distribution. He was a drywall renovator and home decorator.
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·James Sauvé, 29 years of age, previously convicted of manslaughter, was a friend of Rick Trudel and was a resident of a Hull, Quebec halfway house.
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The trials of the four accused were severed. Trudel and Sauvé were tried together and Stewart and Mallory were tried together. In this simplified version of events, the latter trial is the subject of focus.
On May 20, 1996 (six years after the murders) Richard Trudel and James Sauvé were convicted as charged and sentenced to life without parole for a minimum of twenty-five years.
Robert Stewart and Richard Mallory were convicted on February 1, 2000 (nine years and two months after the murders). Stewart got life without parole for twenty-five years for first degree murder, and Mallory got life without parole for fifteen years for second degree murder.
This story is not about four hapless young men who were trying to make ends meet by selling drugs.
Two months prior to the murders of Giroux and Bourdeau two suicides occurred. Heather Lamarche and Richard Riddell of the Rockland OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) detachment were involved in the investigation of the Roy suicide at Stewart’s home. Dennis Roy was an ex-member of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang. The other suicide was Paulo Trudel, the brother of Richard Trudel, one of the four who would later be charged in the Cumberland Murders. The Kanata OPP detachment investigated Trudel’s suicide and Lou Okmanas was in charge of both suicides and the Cumberland Murders. He retired two weeks after ordering the arrests of the four, and an officer by the name of Lyle MacCharles took over for him.
In the case of Roy, he arrived at Stewart’s house in the company of Rick Mallory. Mallory was Stewart’s collector of drug debts. He would also later become one of the four accused. Roy was the best friend of Mallory and had introduced Stewart to a biker in Montreal. All three were doing well because of the introduction. Their supply of cocaine was increased. Roy was taking more than his share from the arrangement and had been told by Mallory and Stewart to slow down his partying ways. Roy was on the run from the Controni mob and could not afford to go back to prison where he would most certainly be killed. Before Stewart could tell him that he was finished with him, Roy drew a long barrel 38 revolver saying he wouldn’t be a problem anymore. He shot himself in the head and slumped into a chair. He sat there in Stewart’s chair snoring, but very little blood was dripping from the wound. Stewart and Mallory put him in a car and Mallory drove him to a hospital where he succumbed to his wound. The Ottawa newspaper would write the next day that his body was found in a ditch. Coincidentally it was supposed to have been a ditch in front of property that Stewart’s father and Michael Vanasse were involved in. Stewart spent weeks telling Roy’s friends that the newspaper got it wrong and what had really happened.
It was later revealed that on the Saturday following the discovery of the bodies of Giroux and Bourdeau, Mike McFadden had a few stories to tell. The newspapers picked up on his story and reported that the murders took place at 10:00 pm on the Tuesday. In barroom conversation at the Carlsbad Hotel, McFadden told patrons that he looked in on Giroux on Tuesday January 16 around 10:00 pm and found Giroux lying on the floor gurgling. He did not report his find to police, but made a second trip to the home Wednesday night. The bodies were still there and again he did not report it. Very strange behaviour to say the least, but he later took a polygraph examination regarding his story and passed the test.
Lois Davidson would later testify that she visited Giroux and Bourdeau on Sunday the 14th and helped them count out $7,000 that they were going to use to purchase drugs. She also visited them about 8:00 pm on Tuesday the 16 th, and they were alive. After their bodies were discovered, neither the money nor drugs were ever found.
Six to eight days following the murders, Doug Ready went to police to tell them that his brother-in-law, Robert Stewart had recently been in an argument with a couple over a missing all-terrain-vehicle that Stewart was looking for. He had come by this information by way of a conversation with Stewart at a family Christmas party and thought it could have been the same couple. Since Stewart lived on the same road, two miles from the victims, the police suddenly shifted their focus to Stewart.
Now enters the main character, Denis Gaudreault, the Crown’s star witness. Following the murders he quickly moved to British Columbia, later citing that he ripped off Stewart for $23,000 and feared for his life. During the eleven-month investigation, Stewart was unaware of the police focus on him and it was business as usual. On February 1st, in an attempt to collect his money, Stewart visited Richard Gravelle who was partially responsible for the Gaudreault debt. His wife, Gaudreault’s sister Sylvie Gravelle jumped in Stewart’s way and Stewart threatened her. She was so badly scared that she ran to the police and tried to implicate Stewart in the “Cumberland” and “Martin” murders. (The Martin Murder is another story.) She even called the Roy and Trudel suicides murders. The police told her that they were only interested in the Cumberland Murders and Stewart’s involvement.
They provided her with recording equipment to entrap Stewart, but Stewart never returned. She phoned her brother in BC and told him that he had to implicate Stewart in the murders. She taped all her calls for the police.
After being shown newspaper clippings about the murders, Gaudreault had his sister tell the police that Bourdeau had been shot while asleep on her bed. Only Gaudreault and the newspaper got this piece of information wrong. On February 7, 1990 after much coaxing from his sister, Gaudreault provided information, later referred to as the “eliminated speech,” which was the Ottawa Citizen article of January 23, 1990 verbatim. This false information was planted in the paper by Superintendant Wib Craig of the OPP to identify false informants. Gaudreault eventually must have seen it as an opportunity to get Stewart out of his life and reap financial rewards as well so he agreed to a meeting. The investigators flew out to interview him. His story about the murder scene mirrored the details printed in the January 23, Ottawa Citizen Newspaper. In the first interview on February 13, 1990 with officers Lamarche and Okmanas he named Rick Trudel and Rick Mallory as having driven out in a red truck to commit the murders. He never mentioned anything about Stewart or Sauvé.
Sauvé was in a halfway house in Quebec finishing up a manslaughter conviction of someone from Gloucester and Trudel had his 1980 Cadillac. Trudel gave the car to Stewart to perform some repairs on it while he was in Mexico. On an evening out with friends, Stewart decided to leave the bar early. He left the Cadillac in the bar parking lot because he had been drinking and caught a taxi home. Patrolman Anthony Costantini of the Gloucester Police Department stopped Stewart just before he entered the cab and asked for identification. Stewart didn’t have a license with him, but gave him his correct name and address. Costantini ran a check on the Cadillac and came up with Jim Sauvé as the owner of the car. Knowing that Sauvé wasn’t in the bar, he considered it abandoned and had it towed to a police compound.
The police connected all four to the car, each for varying reasons, but never found Gaudreault’s prints in or on the car because he was never in it.
On March 27, 1990 the police showed Gaudreault a chart with the white 1980 Cadillac as the centre piece to the investigation and Sauvé as the owner.
On May 9 or 10 he changed his story to him being the driver of the Cadillac with Stewart beside him and Trudel, Mallory and Sauvé in the back driving out to the murder scene. Also on May 9 or 10, officer Lamarche brought up Sauvé’s name, saying that the RCMP had a witness that named Sauvé as the shooter. The RCMP never had such a witness who said that. She just had a feeling that Sauvé was the shooter and wanted to see Gaudreault’s reaction. She said she was surprised that he adopted the idea so easily.
On June 14 Gaudreault said that they stopped to talk to Jamie Declare (he called him Beauclare) to have him witness that they were together. Declare couldn’t remember a thing until he was put under hypnosis several times by George Matheson, a psychiatrist who would later lose his license to practice because of fraud and sexual misconduct. Gaudreault also said that when they returned to Stewart’s house all excited and dancing around, Stewart’s wife Linda Beland drove him home. Interestingly enough, during ninety-seven conversations with Beland, the OPP investigators never asked if she drove Gaudreault home that night. They did ask her if she had ever driven Gaudreault home. To that she answered, “No, not that I recall.” She doesn’t even remember the five of them being together let alone excited or dancing.
Eventually Colin Burrill an auxiliary OPP officer, who was also a security officer for the bus company, moved in with Beland and raised Stewart’s two sons from April 1991 to December 1998 while Stewart was incarcerated. Stewart never talked to his wife about the case during that time because she was likely to be a Crown witness and she was living with an auxiliary police officer. She would eventually testify for the defense in Stewart’s co-accused’s trial and for the Crown April 9, 1999 in Stewart’s trial. Over thirty defense counsels worked this case, but not one ever interviewed Linda Beland.
Gaudreault returned to Ontario and on June 13 he took the police on a road trip to Giroux’s house in a video-taped drive by. During the trip, they passed the house twice. The newspaper had reported the wrong address. He noticed the camera swing toward a sign by the driveway. It reads, “The Laporte Gardens” and is a landmark in the area. They passed the house twice more before taking a break. At that time he asked the officers if they were going the right way. There were only three houses at the top of this country hill and one was vacant. Not once in thirteen hours of videotape does Gaudreault mention the night of the murders.
Also in June of 1990, Gaudreault arranged to meet Stewart in a hotel room wired for sound and video by police. There, an undercover agent gave Stewart $58,000. Stewart left with the money. Later they came back with $333,000. Over the summer Stewart picked a different hotel or motel each time, unknowingly forcing the police to wire different locations. Finally, when Stewart picked a location in Quebec, which would mean bringing in the QPP, the deal fell flat. It’s interesting that while Gaudreault professed a fear of Stewart, he would enter into negotiations with him.
This story is not about a crown witness that has lied so many times that it’s a wonder that he even knows his real name.
Another prime suspect that the police ignored was John Last, an ex-Satan’s Choice member. He was known to police as a violent person who used a shotgun when ripping off drugs and shooting people. His girlfriend Rose moved into the Giroux house after the bodies were removed. Lois Anne Davidson advised the lead detective, Rick Riddell that John Last had a video of the murder scene, bodies and all, and was showing it around town, boasting that he got away with murder and helped set up four innocent men to take the fall. The police made a copy of the video and returned it to Davidson when she begged for it so Last wouldn’t find out that she exposed him. About a month later, Last and a Lee Baptiste were on their way to settle an account, “to shoot” Last’s former drug partner, Bob Pendrith. They were pulled over by the Manotick OPP and a gun was found in the car. Last made a deal and was released on bail after turning over the video. Lee Baptiste is now in a federal penitentiary for the beating deaths of a woman and man, both coke dealers.
On December 19, 1990 the four were arrested and charged with the murders of Giroux and Bourdeau. They were held without bail in an Ottawa detention centre in spite of Gaudreault being identified by police as a false informant (eliminated speech).
In establishing an alibi for the Wednesday night in the preliminary hearing, which lasted three and a half years, Stewart’s lawyer submitted a photocopy of a page from his sister’s day-planner. Stewart had been in the company of his sister Firth Gillies and his wife Linda Beland. Justice Belanger refused to accept a photocopy. Stewart’s sister had moved to Denver, Colorado and said it could take a while to find her records still packed in boxes. The judge gave her six weeks to find the original day-planner. Shortly after that, the FBI raided her house. The FBI was quoted as saying, “Where are your fireplaces? We want to see if you have burnt any evidence.” A phone call by Mike Gillies to FBI headquarters resulted in a denial that a raid ever took place. Mr. Edelson, a defense counsel provided the court with a photocopy of the search warrant. Mr. Edelson went further by saying that “the police directly and indirectly threatened the immigration status of Firth and her husband, both of whom are Canadian citizens working on green cards in the United States. One can only ponder with wonderment, your Honour, what the police and this Crown counsel have been doing with witnesses who aren’t cooperative in this case, if this is what they do to witnesses who are.” The Crown and Defense have differing theories as to the missing day-planner, and the testimony of his sister was not enough. Yet the Witness Protection Program paid Gaudreault $400,000 for his testimony.