A Quebec Superior Court judge will decide in October if she accepts a recommendation to sentence a woman, with a history of heavy drug abuse and mental illness, to an 18-year prison term for killing an 81-year-old woman she did not know inside the victim’s apartment.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in my career,” said Justice Hélène Di Salvo at the Montreal courthouse late Thursday afternoon following a disturbing and sometimes emotional hearing.
The judge, and former prosecutor, was referring to how it took the victim’s niece, Edith Perreault, to realize that 81-year-old Rollande Ducharme was the victim of a homicide instead of an accident, as was first assumed by the doctor who was with first responders when the body was found.
Following the niece’s sleuthing, a pathologist discovered that Ducharme suffered 34 wounds while Elyse Quenneville-Proulx, now 38, attacked her with knives in the victim’s home during a drug-fuelled rage.
Quenneville-Proulx pleaded guilty to manslaughter on Thursday. A mental health expert who evaluated her determined she was able to tell right from wrong when she killed the victim on Oct. 20, 2022.
At other points in the hearing, the judge had to ask lawyers on both sides of the case to be certain that Quenneville-Proulx and Ducharme did not know each other at all before the brutal slaying inside Cité des retraités NDF, a seniors residence on De Pontoise St. in the Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie borough.
According to a 24-page joint statement of facts read into the court record by prosecutor Jade Coderre, Quenneville-Proulx was likely high on a cocktail of illicit drugs when she got into the victim’s apartment and killed her. Joint statements of fact presented in other homicide cases rarely go beyond six pages.
Quenneville-Proulx later told the police she slept next to the victim’s body for about 30 minutes before leaving the apartment and wandered the streets until she interacted with a person who called 911.
Quenneville-Proulx also said she recalled some of Ducharme’s last words as being: “I forgive you,” when she apologized for breaking into the apartment.
Another stunning detail to come out in court on Thursday was that it took a long investigation by Montreal police to retrace the killer’s steps before they realized she had interacted with police minutes after she killed Ducharme.
After the person who talked to Quenneville-Proulx, on Beaubien St., called 911, Quenneville-Proulx told first responders and the Montreal police that she had been kidnapped and was stabbed in the neck. Coderre said Quenneville-Proulx appeared disoriented at the time and was taken to a hospital while Ducharme’s body went unnoticed for two days inside her apartment.
Defence lawyer Patrick Davis criticized the Santa Cabrini Hospital for not treating Quenneville-Proulx immediately despite how she arrived “strapped to a stretcher.” He suggested many questions would have been answered quickly had a doctor attended to Quenneville-Proulx that day. Instead, she left the hospital without being treated.
“That’s my editorial for the day,” Davis said, sounding somewhat upset while asking Di Salvo to accept the recommendation of an 18-year prison term.
Two days after Ducharme was killed, someone who knew her called the residence where she had lived for 30 years and asked if someone could look in on her. Staff found Ducharme on the floor of her bedroom.
Her body was rigid and someone called 911, Coderre told the court. Firefighters and ambulance technicians arrived soon after. It was obvious to them that she had been injured and was no longer alive.
Ambulance technicians waited hours with Ducharme’s body for a doctor to arrive to declare her dead.
“When police arrived it was indicated to them that, according to the evaluation done by the doctor, the death was accidental and that (it appeared) the victim had fallen out of bed and her face was injured,” Coderre said.
Coderre said a coroner initially decided that a police investigation into the death “was not necessary.”
The following day, on Oct. 23, 2022, the keys to Ducharme’s apartment were handed over to her relatives, including her niece Edith Perreault.
Coderre said it was Perreault who noticed “several abnormal elements” inside her aunt’s apartment.
“She had the presence of mind to put on a pair of gloves and take the steps required to look through the apartment,” Coderre said, adding Perreault found the presence of empty beer cans odd because her aunt didn’t drink beer.
Perreault found other clues as well. That same day, Coderre said, another resident in the building found a blood stain in another part of the residence.
On Oct. 25, 2022, following “the niece’s deductions”, the coroner ordered the Montreal police to the apartment to finally conduct a homicide investigation.
A few days later, a pathologist who examined Ducharme’s body found 34 knife wounds. The most serious were stab wounds to her face, neck and chest, Coderre said.
On Thursday, Di Salvo congratulated Perreault for “pushing the investigation the way that you did.”
Coderre said police investigators used footage from surveillance cameras, inside and outside the building, to trace the killer’s movements. In some of the footage, Quenneville-Proulx was recorded carrying a knife.
They were able to follow her movements, after she killed Ducharme, to the point where she was seen by the police and ambulance technicians, near the intersection of 39th Ave. and Beaubien St. Investigators were also informed of how Quenneville-Proulx was taken to Santa Cabrini Hospital, but was not treated by a doctor. The first responders told investigators she kept changing her story and later claimed she just had a sore throat, as opposed to having been stabbed in the throat during a kidnapping.
It was days later, early in November 2022, that investigators finally located Quenneville-Proulx at Jean-Talon Hospital.
When she was asked for a list of the medications she took, she told the police that she knew they were asking because “of the murder of the old woman in the residence,” Coderre said.
“She said (Ducharme) was her grandmother and that she is everyone’s grandmother.”
She was placed under arrest shortly after uttering those words. She later admitted to police that she had used a lot of drugs that day and that she recalled cleaning knives inside Ducharme’s apartment.
Another time, she said: “I’m guilty. That’s it. That’s all,” Coderre said before listing Quenneville-Proulx’s history of mental illness that causes her to experience psychosis when she used heavy drugs like cocaine, crack and speed, sometimes together.
Near the end of Thurday’s court hearing, Perreault delivered a moving and well-written victim impact statement that somewhat served as a eulogy for her aunt.
“Her volunteering had an immense place in her life,” Perreault said. “Every day, she gave her time to others without accounting for her energy or her movements.
“We could always turn to her for advice because she knew how to listen. She understood without having to judge. Discussing something with her was always a pleasure.
“That is why it is still difficult for us to understand how someone so wonderful could be the victim of such violence.”