Valery Fabrikant, the former Concordia University professor who murdered four of his colleagues, has died in prison.
Fabrikant died Saturday at 86 at the Archambault Institution, around 50 kilometres north of Montreal, Correctional Service Canada said in a statement. He appears to have died of natural causes.
He was 33 years into a life sentence that he had been serving since June 1993.
On Aug. 24, 1992, Fabrikant shot Concordia University professors Michael Hogben, Matthew Douglass, Aaron Jaan Saber and Phoivos Ziogas. He also shot secretary Elizabeth Horwood, who survived.
A mechanical engineering professor who immigrated from the Soviet Union, Fabrikant began making allegations against people who had contributed to his articles in 1988.
He filed a lawsuit against two professors, claiming he had been forced to include their names on papers. He would later testify that the lawsuit was the source of his anger when he shot and killed his colleagues.
When Hogben — who was president of the faculty association — was shot, he was holding a letter informing Fabrikant that he could no longer visit the union’s office without an appointment.
Fabrikant’s conduct prior to the shootings had also caught the attention of the university, which planned to discipline him for psychological harassment.
During his trial and subsequent legal proceedings, Fabrikant opted to represent himself, claiming he had been “provoked” into shooting his colleagues because his life was in danger. Several judges dismissed his claims as baseless.
This report will be updated.
With files from The Gazette’s Paul Cherry.