Hey Montreal, Your City Has an Escaped Murderer In It

via CBC & Correctional Service Canada.

Have you seen this recently escaped murderer? His name is Jean-Pierre Duclous, and in 1991, he beat a woman, shot her through the heart, wrapped her body up in a sheet, and tied it in a knot. In Canada, a brutal murder like that will land you in a Quebec prison for 25 years with no chance of parole. Unfortunately, Jean-Pierre just pulled the ol’ go to the hospital for a visit then escape from police trick. Yeap, that’s correct. The cops brought him to the hospital to treat “an unspecified medical condition,” from there he somehow evaded their watch, and he is now on the loose.

While a spokesperson for the prison told the CBC that prison escapes do not happen very often, there were four escapes from federal prisons in Quebec in 2012. That’s not nothing. And that doesn’t include detention centres like the one in Saint-Jérôme where two prisoners with ties to the Hells Angels escaped in March by organizing a helicopter to pick them up with ropes out of the prison yard James Bond style. Police did end up catching those guys, but not before one called a Montreal radio station 98.5 FM to say that he would rather die than go back to jail. Some people have placed the blame on overcrowding in local prisons as a reason why prisoners might feel the need to risk it all to get out. With new laws in place from the federal government—like the one that can send someone away for six months if they’re growing six weed plants—the overcrowding only stands to get worse.

In this case however, it really just sounds like the police need a better system for taking prisoners to see the doctor. Did this guy ask to go to the bathroom then hop through a window? How does a murderer just slip through the cops’ fingers like this? Should someone be getting fired for this unsettling fuck-up? The answer to all of these questions is, at the moment, “who knows.”

So anyway, if you are in the Montreal area and you do see Jean-Pierre, make sure you give 911 a call. Or call Info Crime Montreal at 514 393-1133. Be careful out there!