When true crime hits close to home

by Mallory Burnside-Holmes

In our true-crime-obsessed age, we have a choice of thousands of podcasts and binge-able docuseries that dissect crimes that take place the world over. But what about crimes that hit closer to home? Stories that are already personal to the authors who write them and the readers who read them, and who will recognize the names, know the faces and have memories of where they were when they learned the terrible news?

The names of Const. Michael O’Leary, Cpl. Aurele Bourgeois and Karissa Boudreau will bring up dark memories for many Atlantic Canadians. The first two were police officers murdered in New Brunswick in 1974; the last a child killed by her own mother in Nova Scotia in 2008. They are also the subjects of three new books authored by a criminal historian, an RCMP officer and a journalist, and will take you on three very different journeys of criminal cases that happened close to home.

Growing up, Amy Bell knew her father, Ed Bell, was a former criminal defence lawyer. She also knew that he never talked about it. While packing up her father’s house a few years ago as he approached the end of his life, she discovered a mysterious Polaroid photo of a shirtless, longhaired man covered in bruises. She asked her father about the photo, but he said nothing. However, a visiting friend turned to her and said, “Oh, didn’t you know? Everybody knows this. This was the most famous murder case in Moncton.”

The case he was referring to is the 1974 killing of two Moncton police officers, Bourgeois and O’Leary, by Richard Ambrose and James Hutchison. Ambrose and Hutchison had kidnapped a local child and collected a ransom. The two police officers were pursuing them when they were killed. The child was not hurt. Ed Bell was a lawyer in the area at the time, and when he saw the men had been arrested, he decided that as everyone deserves a defence in court, he would step up to perform what he considered his legal duty and represent them. Amy Bell was a newborn when he made that decision, and her family began to unravel around her. In Life Sentence: How My Father Defended Two Murderers and Lost Himself, she recounts some of her personal struggle to make sense of her father’s decisions, while also exploring the awful crime. As she details in her book, being a defence lawyer for two cop-killers proved socially and emotionally tumultuous — especially as capital punishment was still legal in Canada and the killers faced the death penalty. Both were convicted, but not executed.

For Bell, writing Life Sentence was a difficult experience. She’s a history professor in Ontario with a special focus on crime. Usually, she approaches the subject as an objective observer, not a subjective participant. “Because when you’re a historian, you’re usually quite distanced from your subject, so to try and write a book that was filled with very painful experiences for me, and also really the story of the tragedy of my dad’s life, was very painful,” she told Atlantic Books Today

At the same time, she found herself fascinated by the historical practices of the case. The book covers topics like forensics, chain-of-evidence procedures and prisoners’ rights before Canada created the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It also presents a critical view of the Moncton police force as it existed in the 1970s. The initial response to the kidnapping was disorganized, which may have exposed the officers to extra risk. And the photo Amy Bell discovered of Ambrose displays bruises from injuries he suffered while in police custody.

Two other new books explore the wounds left by the 2008 murder of 12-year-old Karissa Boudreau in Bridgewater, N.S. Retired RCMP officer John Elliott’s A Mother’s Betrayal was three years in the making and offers his perspective as a lead officer on the case that shocked people in the small community and beyond. The young girl’s mother, Penny Boudreau, reported her missing in late January 2008. She and her family held several press conferences pleading for her safe return. But as Elliott reveals, the police investigation eventually came to believe that Boudreau had killed her daughter the day she went missing. The intensive, months-long investigation where they sought to prove that forms the main part of the book. It stretched many officers to their breaking point.

Elliott offers his unique vantage point of knowing the case from the inside out. The book includes police documents, such as the official statement of facts and victim-impact statements, and breaks down how a top-tier murder investigation is run, including the Mr. Big operation that ultimately led to securing Boudreau’s confession and conviction. How they got her confession, and the way that stunned the officers who heard it, stuck with Elliott long after the case was closed and Boudreau pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. A significant portion of the book

“The police force does not come out in a great light,” Bell said. “It isn’t just my opinion. There were other investigative bodies that were saying the same thing [at the time].” However, she notes that then-and-now comparisons aren’t all that helpful, as Canada has since adopted the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and abolished the death penalty. Life Sentence is a stirring mix of fact and personal experience that paints a picture of the Ambrose and Hutchison case that hasn’t been seen before. Bell calls readers to examine their perceptions of defence lawyers and the lives they must lead to uphold our country’s legal system. While Life Sentence does an excellent job of detailing the case itself, Bell said it’s also personal. “This is really a New Brunswick story. I want people there to read and to understand the perspective of my dad and of his life.” includes interviews with other officers who worked the case 15 years ago. Elliott was surprised by how many of his former colleagues not only thought about the case as much as he did, but also suffered from PTSD from their work.

“I wasn’t alone in what I was writing about,” Elliott said in an interview. “All the other investigators were very supportive [and] positive. They were on the same wavelength as I was: it’s a story that has to be told.”

Why revisit a period of time that’s had such a haunting impact on his life? Firstly, he says, for Karissa. “There was so much more to her than how her mother had painted her during the investigation. Really, she was a 12-year-old little girl with dreams and aspirations, and she deserved more than what her mother made her out to be.”

Elliott also strives to bring awareness to the emotional work police officers take home with them. This case in particular led to his retirement three years later. “There is so much more to an investigation than what you see on TV,” he repeated throughout the interview.

When asked what he found most enriching about his writing experience, Elliott replied, “Having the book out in the world. I didn’t have to be on my own anymore.”

While A Mother’s Betrayal offers the inside-out perspective, Sherri Aikenhead’s Mommy Don’t brings a wider, outside-in perspective of Karissa Boudreau’s murder. Aikenhead, a former journalist, worked as the communications director for the Nova Scotia Department of Justice at the time of the murder. She experienced the nightmarish unfolding of Karissa’s death much the same way her fellow community members did.

As much as Aikenhead’s goal was to write a tribute to Karissa, who would be 27 today, she also wanted to explore Penny Boudreau. She had no criminal past, no hint of violence, until she brutally killed her daughter. In her confessions, she said her daughter’s last words were “Mommy, don’t,” a phrase that haunted Aikenhead and many others.

Boudreau is serving a life sentence that will include imprisonment until at least 2028, but she has in recent years been granted temporary escorted passes from prison to attend church and visit friends.

Now that the community is faced with the prospect of Boudreau’s eventual freedom, Aikenhead says we are pressed to ask the question: “Has this woman changed?

It’s a controversial question and a burning one, this theme of redemption and can we really be rehabilitated while in prison,” Aikenhead said. “Is this a different woman that would leave [prison] and come into the community? Or is it in fact someone that has [not] changed at all?”

Aikenhead said the process of writing this book was “daunting.” “I literally started with the first detective who went out on the missing person’s call that night,” she said, and from there she conducted nearly 30 interviews with other officers (including Elliott), friends and family of the Boudreau family and obtained the day-by-day police report of the entire investigation.

Aikenhead wanted to share one key piece of what motivated her for the five years she spent writing Mommy Don’t. “I want people to read it and to think about the justice system, Karissa and what it’s like to be in a small town and have something like this happen.”

She understands people’s fascination with true crime and unthinkable murders. “You know, these are people we work with, go to school with. Ordinary people. What makes them cross a line that most people don’t? You want to know what pushes them over the edge.” ■

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