Police detectives investigating the slaying of Fouad Nayel have told his grieving family they have suspects in the homicide case.

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

James Sidney Allen, the ‘sadistic pedophile’ who killed eight-year-old Ricky Johnston in an Orleans swamp in 1975, has quietly been released from the Royal Ottawa Hospital’s secure forensic unit in Brockville, Ontario, the Citizen has learned.

Allen, now 51, was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1976 and has been held in a mental hospital ever since.

His discharge, granted by the Ontario Review Board earlier this month, comes one year after the same board refused his release after hearing from a doctor who warned “the risk associated with his pedophilic personality disorder … is that a vulnerable woman or child could be subject to significant harm.”

The family of the dead boy told the Citizen that the public should know that Allen is now living unsupervised for the first time in 37 years.

Because authorities didn’t warn the pubic, the Johnston family wants the public to know that they should guard their children from Allen, now living in an apartment down the road from a school on Pine Street in Brockville, Ont.

“To be quite honest, it’s not only the children that need to be protected but women as well,” said Ricky’s sister Sandra Johnston.

“From what I understand from the dispositions his problems also resonates with women.

“After what has been released in the last few days with Robert Pickton and the Connecticut murders, it’s imperative that we do our moral obligation to society and at least let them know that they are at risk,” Johnston said.

A Crown attorney who spoke at Allen’s Ontario Review Board hearing last year said that a discharge would provide Allen with “more freedom than is actually good for him.”

The review board ruled in 2011 that it would be in the best interests of public safety for Allen, diagnosed as a sadistic pedophile, to remain in a secure forensic unit.

Allen told the review board last year that he needed support from his hospital team, while at the same time asking for a discharge. A doctor told the review board, which annually reviews the cases of killers found unfit for trial, that Allen asks for two different things because his personality disorder is so ‘conflicted.”

In fact, documents reviewed by the Citizen show that last year Allen complained he wasn’t getting enough support from the hospital team and “they are not at hand all the time when he needs them.” The review board also noted in 2011 that ‘he relies on staff support and, insofar as the hospital team is concerned, its ability to respond to the accused’s response to stress is important for his risk management.”

In 1999, Allen was subjected to repeated hormone testing to see if his injection drugs were keeping a lid on his violent sexual urges. Reports show he was still aroused by “sexual sadism and pedophile.”

In recent years, hospital reports indicate “good suppression” from the drugs he administers himself.

Allen was released from the mental hospital earlier this month after he won a discharge, according to an Ontario Review Board order dated Dec. 3.

Allen, for the first time since he killed Ricky Johnston, is now living unsupervised in an apartment on Pine Street in Brockville, Ont., two blocks from a high school and two blocks from the St. Lawrence River.

Here’s the Halton Police video to accompany @Meghan_Hurley’s hit today on the blowtorch bandits that have so far ripped off almost $1,000,000 from bank machines. The kid with the torch knows what he’s doing. Almost like he went to school for it.
The video gets better after the police officer stops talking and all the police logos stop flashing, so wait a bit to see the Torch gang in action, stealing money with two simple tools: a crowbar and a blowtorch. With this much heat from the cops, I think they’ll cool down for Christmas.

Every year, in almost every town, there’s some nasty business this time of year. I was going to file something about those so desperate that they’ve turned to stealing meat at the Superstore. But this one happened at a home, on Second Street, in Cornwall. Nothing like a break & enter on Christmas Day.

The suspects, still at large, stole the following:

* 43” Samsung TV

* DVDs

* PS3 games

* Playstation

* A knife set

* cell phone

And they took the kids’ winter clothes. A boys blue and greay Columbia winter jacket, a girls blue and a two-toned jacket.If you know anything about the Christmas Day break & enter, or got one of the hot items as a gift, the cops want you to call them at 613-932-211030

Here’s the link if you want to share it with a sugar bear: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/Mountie+suing+RCMP+over+probe+into+secret+Ottawa+operation/7773111/story.html#ixzz2H0tpGSWV

@crimegarden

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

It was just before midnight down at the Fitzroy ferry dock when police divers hauled up Daron Graves’ brand new Dodge from the bottom of the Ottawa River.

His father, Dave Graves, stood at the dock  as police used a heavy crane to lift the 2013 Dodge Dart from the river.

They pulled the bodies of his wife and son from the car at 12:05 a.m.

That’s when he heard the music.

He was standing at the shoreline anchor point of the ferry dock this morning, going cold watching the police look for his wife Donna, 61, and son Daron, 29. He was standing on the dock “as far out into the river that I could go.” And he could hear this music.

He then realized there was no music. It was his own humming that he heard. He was humming a Christmas carol. It was Julie Andrews singing It Came Upon A Midnight Clear.

“In my heart I know Donna and Daron were talking to me. Listen to the words and music (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF4i5KWleDA) I heard the music before I realized that it was me who was humming — and the words began to appear in my mind,” Graves recalled.

“I spontaneously began clapping in joy,” he recalled.

Donna Graves, 61, and her son, Daron, 29, never made it home after another good night at the sports pub. They had gone for groceries and then hit The Prior Sports Bar and Restaurant for dinner and some billiards. His wife called him at home around 11 p.m. on Thursday and told him they’d be on their way home soon but they never made it.

He’s gone over different theories in his head about how his wife and son met death just 100 feet from his property, where sometime between Thursday night and Friday morning, their car plunged into a stretch of open water on the Ottawa River.

“I watched Daron come out of Donna’s womb and now I was watching as both Donna and Daron came out of another womb — Daron’s car — I was watching another birth not a death — a birth into the next step of the Ascension Journey,” he typed in a message to the Citizen.

Ottawa Police and the coroner’s office are now investigating the events that lead to the deaths of the mother and son who somehow drove past the laneway to their home on Ferry Hill Road, beyond the dock and out onto the ice a further 100 feet before they hit open water and plunged. The car landed upside down under nine metres of water. Police used explosives to blast a hole in the river ice for divers to access the water.

Daron had planned to celebrate his 30th birthday with friends and family around a campfire this Saturday night at their riverfront property. The father said he’s decided to go ahead with the campfire party, with him supplying the firewood and friends and family bringing their own drinks.

The recovery operation took four days and had divers braving dangerous conditions, notably cold temperatures and shifting ice.

“I’m not going to get over it, but I will get past it,” said Graves, a retired combat-systems engineer.

gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com

http://www.twitter.com/crimegarden

It turns out that Mike Duffy apparently got his CTV start over beers in a backyard. That’s how this story goes anyway. And here it is verbatim:

How Max Keeping and the W.K. snagged Duffy
The Ottawa Citizen
Sun Oct 2 1988
Page: C6
Section: Sunday Show; (Arts/Entertainment)
Byline: Tony Atherton
Source: CITIZEN

Max Keeping and the W.K. dreamed the whole thing up four years ago over a couple of beers in a backyard in Arnprior.

Wouldn’t it be nice, they mused, if they didn’t have to get their Sunday morning news hits from U.S. television _ CBS’s Sunday Morning and ABC’s This Week With David Brinkley? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was Canadian show with a national and international outlook to repatriate a time slot from Jimmy Swaggart?

It would have to be slick but thorough, and have pots of money for satellite link-ups around the world. It would also have to have one helluva host _ David Brinkley and Charles Kuralt combined.

Keeping, news director at CJOH, had a guy in mind. More than 20 years before, when he was still a reporter at a Halifax radio station, Keeping had played nursemaid to a 16-year-old stringer from Charlottetown. Now that they were both in Ottawa, they still chummed around.

Mike Duffy, Keeping thought, would be perfect.

The W.K. agreed. The W.K. (a Duffyism _ for Whiz Kid) is John Beattie, son of singer Mac Beattie, the ”king of the oldtimers,” a genuine Valley folk hero. These days, the W.K. is building his own legend.

At 15, Beattie used to chase fires with a home-video camera and sell the tape to local stations. Since landing a videotape editor’s job with CJOH straight out of high school in 1976, Beattie has fairly flown through the hoops of TV production, including stints with CBC’s Midday, The Journal and NBC.

He’s now back in Ottawa as executive news producer with CJOH, but he was working at CBC Ottawa that lazy summer Sunday in Arnprior.

At the time CJOH was in foment. The station had just been purchased by Standard Broadcasting of Toronto, and it seemed that all sorts of things were possible. Maybe, Keeping thought, he could sell the idea to his new boss, Allan Slaight.

Slaight didn’t bite, but Keeping didn’t give up the dream. He and Beattie kept refining it over the years. They advised Duffy _ the most popular newsman on Canadian TV _ they had designs on him.

”I said, ‘Sure, guys, sounds like a great idea. Keep me posted’,” Duffy recalls. He had a lot of respect for the pair, but felt they’d spent a little too long under hot studio lights. There was no way a private TV station from a secondary market was ever going to be able to pull off such a show.

Of course, that was before CJOH was engulfed by a gale-force wind named Doug Bassett, president of Baton Broadcasting. Bassett’s bluster bowled over the CRTC at a hearing on the sale of CJOH last winter and swept Duffy off his cosy perch at CBC just a few months later.

Bassett warmed to the idea of the Sunday morning show as soon as Keeping and Beattie pitched it. And once enthused, Doug Bassett is a hard man to deny. Sunday Edition was born.

The show needed money, Bassett was told. You got it, he said.

”I’ve never been told what the budget is,” says Beattie. ”They’re saying spend what it takes. You can never say you’ve got carte blanche, but we’re pretty close to it.”

The show needed Mike Duffy, Bassett was told. Go get him, he replied.

But Duffy wasn’t satisfied with just a fat increase in his own pay. ”I wanted money for satellites, not salaries,” he says.

He wanted to know whether Sunday Edition could work. He hired buddy Peter Mansbridge’s accountant to make sure all the bolts had nuts. He quizzed a former CRTC commissioner about Bassett’s performance in the past. And then he jumped.

”I had two day of euphoria (after the decision), and then on the third day I was physically ill,” he says.

Duffy has since mastered his panic, but some of his friends at CBC still aren’t sure he made the right choice.

Despite the good graces of Bassett, the show’s fabric is extremely thin by network standards. Four producers and Duffy are the only permanent staff. It relies heavily on CTV affiliates carrying the show to help flesh it out. And Beattie is pulling every gonzo trick he knows to wangle the cheapest satellite transmission costs.

There’s a persistent feeling at CBC that Duffy’s dabbling in private TV is a mid-life flight of fancy. Most expect him to return to the embrace of the Mother Corp.

Even Mansbridge, supportive throughout Duffy’s career crisis (as Duffy was through his last fall), notes that Sunday morning’s a tough time for a news program.

But for Duffy and his producers, there is no such thing as too much news. Beattie has visions of Monday Edition, Tuesday Edition, Wednesday Edition… Sunday morning is the ideal launching pad.

”There’s a gulf in Sunday morning. CBC radio has great programming, but on TV if you want good information, you have to watch the Americans.”

But no more, promises Beattie.
-30-
gdimmock@ottawacitizen.com
http://www.twitter.com/crimegarden

I don’t know if Paul (Sasquatch) Porter has actually told the gang, but he did reveal his plan for the parole board. They didn’t let him out. He’s been a model inmate, has a plan, support and a job, but the parole board said his years as a prominent outlaw biker didn’t do him any good. Mind you, even if Sas did make parole, there’d be nowhere for him to go. The parole board called three halfway houses. All said there’s no room at the inn. He’ll be out within the year and says he’s going to run a tow-truck company and fix motorbikes on the side. Always good to make a little money on the side.

The new details come from prison files:

Hells Angels boss Paul “Sasquatch” Porter, who led a mass defection of rival bikers in 2001 to give the crime corporation the first Ontario franchises in its 60-year history, now wants out of the gang business and intends to turn in his colours with “honour” so he’s not looking over his shoulder in retirement.

Porter, who had been a founding member of the Rock Machine biker gang before joining the Hells Angels, was sentenced to two years in prison in 2012 after Ottawa police, acting on a tip, pulled over his 1964 Cadillac Deville and found nine ounces of cocaine in his girlfriend’s purse. Because Porter pleaded guilty, few details about the drug trafficking case were revealed publicly.

Prison files, however, show that Porter owned up right away and told police that the cocaine was his and that he’d put it in the purse without his girlfriend’s knowledge. Charges against her were withdrawn after Porter agreed to enter a guilty plea, the terms of which included police returning his vintage Cadillac.

Porter, now 50, was denied parole in June. According to parole board records, Porter confirmed last month he would leave the Hells Angels for good as long as membership of the Ottawa-based Ontario Nomads chapter increased so his exit would not force it to close. Hells Angels by-laws require each chapter to have at least six members to keep official status. The prison documents suggest Porter’s exit could jeopardize the chapter’s membership requirement of six.

“The (parole) board discussed your relationship with the (Hells Angels) and confirmed that it is your stated intention to leave ‘with honour’ so that you would not place yourself at risk in the future, as you would if you were to leave dishonorably,” board members said in their June decision.

“You claim that you have never been violent, either as a member of the Rock Machine or the Hells Angels even during the time that the two groups were engaged in a deadly war. You appeared to want the board to believe that these motorcycle gangs were violent but … that you were uninvolved. Rather, you claimed to be a peacemaker during that time.”

Porter, who has been working as a cleaner while he serves his sentence at an undisclosed prison, received a score on an evaluation indicating he is a low risk to re-offend — enough to earn most prisoners parole. What’s more, Porter has been a model inmate with no institutional charges or security concerns, according to his prison file.

But, the parole board ruled, “In spite of this score your case management team believes the results … could be an under-estimate of your risk given your connections to motorcycle gangs.”

The Hells Angels boss is being kept in prison because of his leadership role in the global crime corporation, according to the board.

“Although your criminal history is not particularly dense, it does include convictions for drugs and weapons, but more importantly, we cannot ignore your participation in a leadership role within (a) motorcycle gang for many years. We believe that you have deeply entrenched criminal values and attitudes and that your adherence to your criminal associates is particularly strong. This is a risk issue that has not been mitigated following your arrest or conviction, and has convinced the board that your risk to the community would be undue at this time. Therefore, day parole and full parole are denied,” the board ruled.

The action kicks in just after 2:28 min into the video. Oh, and the swears are in English, followed by a boatload of OMGs.

I’m told Steven Gareau’s new murder trial is scheduled for Sept. 3 in friendly Halifax, where he was convicted in the  2000 Hells Angels contract killing of Steve Simmons. Anyway, Gareau, now 57, won a new trial after filing a handwritten appeal from his prison cell. The Appeal Court of Nova Scotia agreed that the trial judge made  a fatal error by letting the jury consider, let alone hear, that accomplices had already been sent to prison for the murder.

There were several other grounds but that was a big one. It should also be noted that the prized RCMP informant who testified that he didn’t know for sure if Gareau (Nepean) actually knew about the murder plot.

The informant should know. After all, he was the getaway driver who later buried the smoking gun. It was his insurance card when the police came calling. His charge was dropped and he went to work as an informant, like he had done for the Mounties, off and on, across 20 years.

It paid off for police and prosecutors who won convictions against all of the accused men.

Gareau’s retrial in Halifax is going to be quite the show, with the RCMP informant returning to court to testify again at his onetime friend’s murder trial. The informant met with police and prosecutors in Ottawa a few weeks ago to start going over the old wiretaps and court transcripts.

We’ll leave the trial for the appeal court in wonderful Halifax.

Until then, I’ll be combing Ottawa hotels looking for the informant’s hotel bill. I understand he ordered the cheese cake.

And it is hard to find sympathy for Steven Gareau, for this is not his first killing rap. Back in the 1980s, you might well remember the night he killed his friend with an axe over drugs.

Joe Starratt only lasted 10 days on the outside.

The child-porn criminal presented himself in court as remorseful back in 2011. His lawyer, according to a report in the Chronicle-Herald, said Starratt was feeling ‘shameful’. Oh, and that he wanted counselling in prison.

The judge gave him two years for distributing child porn. According to Halifax’s paper of record, a woman went to police after Starratt (Dartmouth/New Minas, N.S) mentioned in an online conversation that he wanted to have sex with little girls. So the cops assumed her identity and busted him. He pleaded guilty and started serving two years on June 3, 2011. He was let out of Westmorland Institution (N.B.) on statutory release a few months ago (May 21) but he only lasted 10 lousy days.

He was arrested on May 31 at 8:45 p.m. on fresh child pornography charges. I’ve heard two different versions of events so I’ll get back to you if I get to see the file. So I don’t know exactly what happened but it is a fact that he’s been arrested again for more alleged child-porn crimes.

Sometimes, prison doesn’t work. It certainly hasn’t for Joe Starratt, publicly branded again for being in the worst crowd.

twitter.com/crimegarden

Detectives working the homicide of retiree Diane Lahaie believe her killer may have deliberately set a fiery explosion in the victim’s home using a BBQ propane tank, which has been recovered from debris inside the small Gatineau bungalow. The explosion, around 9 a.m. on the last Saturday in July, blew out the bay window and shook the neighbour’s house.

Her body was found on the main floor and one police officer who saw the body reported that it looked like the victim had not only burns, but also bruises.

The evidence raised suspicions right away, and if that wasn’t enough, Lahaie’s 2004 Pontiac Sunfire had been stolen from the laneway of her semi-detached bungalow at 14 Gaspé Street in a working-class neighbourhood. She lived alone and had little interaction with neighbours who didn’t even know her name.

The police, at first, wouldn’t say if it was her car they were looking for on July 27, and wouldn’t say where they later found it that night. They eventually said it was her car but wouldn’t say where they found it. It had been abandoned in a grocery store parking lot, a 15-minute drive from the 64-year-old woman’s home. There was no media blitz because police don’t think it was a random killing.

The early working police theory is that the tank was set near the body and left to fill the home with propane to cause an explosion. It is not yet known if Lahaie was killed before the explosion or because of it and investigators are awaiting more detailed results from the autopsy. The explosion makes it much more difficult for investigators to study the crime scene and the evidence seized from it.

Investigators have also turned to security video from businesses — including a bank — that have cameras trained on the parking lot where Lahaie’s car was found hours after her body was found in the debris of her home.

Police are hunting for the suspect who abandoned the victim’s car and hope security footage can give them a clear image, or at least show which way they left the parking lot and how so they can try to retrace their steps using security video from other locations in Gatineau.

The police have also appealed for the public’s help to solve the city’s third homicide this year.

Police also made a point of saying that Lahaie lived a law-abiding life and there were no indications of any trouble because they had never been called to her home until the day she was murdered.

Police have also done their best to assure the public they have nothing to fear because Lahaie was targeted and not the subject of a random attack.

Detectives are awaiting more results from the crime lab and anyone with information about the case can call them at 819.243.2346, ext. 6677.

His alleged victim, Michael Swan, graduated from the same Ottawa high school.

Tsega, now 22, has been going to Carleton University ever since he made bail back in 2010. It is rare for an accused killer to get bail, let alone an exception to play lacrosse out of town. Either he’s always been a straight arrow, or his lawyer Giuseppe Cipriano is living up to the reputation of Edelson Law, which stands ferris-wheel tall and just as bright.

Turns out it’s a bit of both. Tsega gets good grades, plays university lacrosse, and has no criminal record. The judge granted bail three years ago because Tsega, in their expert opinion, does not pose a danger to the public. The judge granted bail after reviewing the crown evidence, which is shielded by a publication ban.

I met Michael Swan’s family and friends on the day of the murder. They said good things about him. To them, he was not just the latest victim in another drug killing.

He was still a teenager, known as a guy who worked long hours and could handle himself in the corners of a hockey rink. Carleton University has suspended his accused killer who has not yet been tried by a jury.

The story I filed is drawn from the president’s letter to Tsega, who lives in Ottawa on strict bail conditions, including a curfew. Here’s the quick hit:

Rockland Mayor Marcel Guibord, two councillors and his former business partner are expected to be charged Wednesday in an alleged criminal plot, the Citizen has learned.

The breach-of-trust charges follow a two-year investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police’s anti-rackets squad.

The probe targeted Guibord, councillors Guy Félio and Diane Choinière, and the mayor’s one-time business partner and Rockland lawyer, Stéphane Lalonde.

The OPP case against them is anchored in their own email exchanges. The emails date back to November 2010, and weeks before the freshly elected politicians were sworn into office.

The emails, reviewed by the Citizen, suggest that Lalonde was encouraging the mayor and councillors to oust the town manager, and went so far as to lay out a scheme to do so.

He encouraged them to file complaints about the town manager’s performance in their first week of office. “After he’s received five or six comprehensive notices, the door won’t be far!” Lalonde said in an email.

Daniel Gatien, the town manager at the time, was suing Lalonde for defamation and the previous council had agreed to pay their top civil servant’s legal expenses.

In emails to the mayor and councillors, Lalonde proposed that the new council revoke that arrangement, and force the town manager to foot his own legal fight against Lalonde, the defendant in the civil suit.

The council ended up paying out more than $372,000 in severance and fees to get rid of the manager, who was quickly hired as an executive at another municipality.

An odd twist in the case is that the mayor sparked the probe himself when he reported that someone had stolen emails from his home computer.

The investigation took a turn when detectives reviewed the contents of the emails, which they recovered after being anonymously dropped outside someone’s home in Rockland.

The Citizen asked the mayor about the contents in 2012. Guibord said the emails in question may not be authentic. Asked why he would report them stolen if they were fake, he declined to answer.

Lalonde, himself a one-time municipal councillor, has been interviewed by police and has told the Citizen he is “absolutely not worried” about the criminal investigation, confident the emails can’t be used against him as evidence because they are legally confidential under solicitor-client privilege. “So forget it. It ain’t going to happen. In your dreams,” he previously told the Citizen.

“What did I do? A lawyer provides advice and it’s supposed to be privileged,” Lalonde said.

But police are using the emails as evidence and the Citizen has learned that Clarence-Rockland’s municipal council never retained Lalonde for his services, nor did Lalonde ever bill for them.

Félio told the Citizen he didn’t answer any questions when police came calling, saying his lawyer advised him not to say a word.

Choinière has also told the Citizen she doesn’t want to talk about the case.

None of the allegations have been proven in court. The mayor and councillors are expected to be formally charged Wednesday.

Dave Woodard, 45, the bus driver

Click here for the names and photos of the dead passengers http://tinyurl.com/l343sef

RIP

…

Spent the morning at the deadly fire. This is what I filed:

GARY DIMMOCK

OTTAWA CITIZEN

Just wanted to get the total out now that the money’s been counted.

There were stories of death, survival and hope. There was plenty of pink, and even more spirit.

They raised some crazy dough on Sunday. Well done, Ottawa City.

I can’t wait to see the photo gallery. People went all out. Again, congratulations Ottawa.