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Denis Bégin’s vehicle was recorded on video while parked in front of the building before the arson fire began.
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A convicted killer who was on the lam when the fire that killed seven people in Old Montreal was set in March has admitted he was at the crime scene minutes before the blaze began.
Denis Bégin, 63, walked away from a minimum-security penitentiary in 2019 while he was serving time for a 1993 murder. He was still on the lam and was considered one of Quebec’s most wanted criminals when, on March 16, 2023, someone deliberately set a fire in a residential building in Old Montreal that killed seven people.
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Bégin was arrested in May and was returned behind bars at a penitentiary in Ste-Anne-des-Plaines.
A case brought before Superior Court Justice Daniel Royer at the Montreal courthouse on Friday reveals new details about how Bégin became a suspect in the fire. Bégin is challenging his incarceration at the Port Cartier Institution, a maximum-security penitentiary 850 kilometres northeast of Montreal.
He was transferred there in October, after La Presse published an article identifying Bégin as a suspect in the fire.
According to a summary prepared by Correctional Service Canada (CSC) included in the case brought before Royer, Bégin has conceded he was at the building when the fire started. He claims to know the identity of the person who set the fire and says he offered to reveal the identity to the Montreal police in exchange for a statutory release on his current life sentence.
He also admitted he planned his escape in 2019 because he could no longer tolerate life inside a penitentiary.
“Questioned in connection with his long period on the run (2019-2023), Mr. Bégin says he quickly obtained false identity documents to begin a new start. He operated under different names (Maurice Boucher, Claude Therrien), worked for different companies, then started his own maintenance company,” Correctional Service Canada wrote.
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“(Bégin) claims that he led an orderly life with his partner, a partner whose name he prefers not to mention. He claims that the woman was unaware of his detainee/escaped status and he refuses to identify the woman, claiming that their relationship has been on the rocks since his arrest. As for the circumstances of his arrest, they are, to say the least, nebulous. Mr. Bégin claimed to have been unmasked (as an escapee) by the authorities in the context of a police investigation supervised by the Montreal police major crimes squad. He (initially) refused to identify the nature of the alleged crime, but claimed to have been targeted as the main witness in a case involving a serious crime, adding that he was perhaps a witness to the said crime, that he would have been in the wrong place at wrong time, that he had gone to look for tools on the site of a construction site and was identified by the police as part of the investigation.
“He claims to have committed no crime and clearly states that collaboration with the police could be possible if he benefits from it. He also believes that the police could help him obtain a release if he co-operates with the investigation.”
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After hearing Bégin’s version of events, CSC called the Montreal police in June. A major crimes investigator said Bégin’s vehicle was recorded on video parked in front of the building. In the video he is seen going into the building and then coming out five minutes later. The fire is visible in the video shortly after Bégin left.
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The investigator told CSC that they met with Bégin, as well as several other people who own the same type of vehicle, but began to have doubts as to whether his name was actually Maurice Boucher. She said Bégin claimed he went to the building that was torched to retrieve some tools he had left while working there and denied any involvement in the fire.
With the doubts over his true identity, the Montreal police obtained a warrant to have Bégin fingerprinted. That revealed Bégin was actually a convicted killer wanted on a warrant for escaping in 2019.
Bégin’s apartment was searched and he was interrogated as a suspect in the fire. It was then that he claimed “that he saw that person who possibly started the fire. He said he possessed a photo that could prove the identity of this person (stored in a secured cloud), but he wanted a contract that would protect him from all accusations in exchange for the photo, which was refused.”
The investigator also told CSC that Bégin remains as “suspect/witness” in the investigation into the fire.
No one has been charged so far in connection with the fire.
pcherry@postmedia.com
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