Camille CLEROUX
Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Parricide - Killed neighbour so he could get her apartment
Number of victims: 3
Date of murders: 1990 / 2001 / 2010
Date of arrest: June 2, 2010
Date of birth: 1954
Victims profile: Lise Roy, 27 (his wife) / Jean Rock, 32 (his common-law wife) / Paula Leclair, 64 (neighbour)
Method of murder: Beating with a rock / ????
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Status: Pleaded guilty. Sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years on June 25, 2012
Ottawa serial killer gets life sentence for 3 murders
'I welcomed a monster into my home' father of victim says in statement
CBC News
June 26, 2012
An Ottawa man who killed two wives and a neighbour in three separate crimes over a two-decade period has been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years.
Camille Cleroux, 58, pleaded guilty in an Ottawa court Tuesday to the first-degree murder of neighbour Paula Leclair and to second-degree murder in the deaths of Jean Rock and Lise Roy.
Ontario Superior Court Judge Lynn Ratushny denied a defence request for credit for time already served.
"With a mind that has functioned in a way that yours has and does, there's no better place for you than in custody," Ratushny said in handing down the sentence.
"After hearing the stomach-churning details today, and your plan to kill these cherished women just to get them out of your way, we can all take some comfort knowing that you are incarcerated and likely will be for the rest of your life."
Killed neighbour over apartment
Cleroux was first arrested and charged in 2010 in the death of Leclair, 64, after her body was discovered in a wooded area near where she lived.
He lived in the same apartment building and had taken over her apartment, prompting her son to report her missing.
After the plea, the Crown attorney told the court Cleroux killed Leclair because he wanted her apartment.
"When she refused to let him move in, he killed her," James Cavanagh said.
Cavanagh said Cleroux led LeClair to the site where he had already dug her grave and then stabbed her repeatedly in the back before striking her in the head with a rock.
After he was taken into custody, Cleroux was charged in the deaths of two former wives. Roy disappeared in 1990 and Rock was last seen in 2003. During the course of the investigation, police found human remains at his former home on Heatherington Road in south Ottawa and later at a second site in a forest off Albion Road.
'My heart is broken beyond repair'
Family members delivered victim impact statements in court as part of the sentencing hearing immediately following the plea.
"No loved one should ever have to go through this pain," said Audrey Creelman, Rock's mother.
Jean Rock's stepmother read a statement from Rock's father, who had earlier suffered an apparent seizure in the courtroom.
"Our family is now incomplete and will never be the same," read John Rock's statement. "I welcomed a monster into my home and now I feel sick. My heart is broken beyond repair."
Rock's brother Daniel also gave a victim impact statement, saying "I think about old memories, and my heart breaks when I think we won't create new memories."
Leclair's son also provided a written victim impact statement to the judge.
Cleroux pleads guilty to three murders
By Tony Spears - SunNewsNetwork.ca
June 26th, 2012
OTTAWA - Serial killer Camille Cleroux, 58, pleaded guilty Tuesday to murdering two wives and a neighbour in a 20-year span.
"I'm gonna kill him," the father of victim Jean Rock roared in court as he learned how the diner dishwasher had duped the family for years to believe she was still alive.
"An animal, an animal," John Rock repeated as family tried to calm him and escorted him from the courtroom.
At that point, Judge Lynn Ratushny called the lunch recess.
Cleroux pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of neighbour Paula Leclair, 64, and to the second-degree murders of Rock, 32, his common-law wife, and Lise Roy, 27, his wife.
He will get an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.
Roy was killed in 1990, her bones wrapped in butcher paper and buried beneath a tomato garden that seemed to materialize overnight.
Cleroux had bludgeoned her to death with a rock.
Much of her remains, including her skull, have never been found.
Rock was murdered sometime after August 2003 during a tempestuous, 11-year relationship in which she kept leaving him but always came back.
Cleroux admitted to investigators that she pissed him off one too many times, so they went for a walk and he beat her to death with a rock.
He buried her where she fell, in a shallow grave near Kiwanis Cres.
To conceal the crime, Cleroux paid a woman with similar handwriting to write letters in Rock's name.
Cleroux then hand-delivered the letters to Rock's father - two or three a year from 2004 to 2010 - which said Rock didn't want to have direct contact with her family.
They also conveyed touching details of her fictional life with a trucker, Pierre, and their growing family.
"My dear Dad," read one letter dated April 26, 2004. "I named the baby John. The baby is well, he weighs seven pounds now and he's going to be tall like the Rock side. ... (He has) Indian skin like me, dad."
Cleroux even enclosed pictures of children, all the while paying his forger $10 per letter.
But area construction threatened to uncover the body, so he dug it up and buried it in woods nearby.
But this time he noticed animals had disturbed the grave, so he put her bones in a purple mesh bag, put that in a shopping cart and planned to wheel it to Dow's Lake to dump it, in the summer of 2006.
He paused along the way to pick up pine cones to sell in the market.
There were too many people at Dow's Lake so he dumped the body in the canal near Albion Rd. and Bronson Ave.
National Capital Commission staff recovered it after the canal was drained in the fall of 2006.
The bones weren't linked to Rock because she hadn't been reported missing.
Court heard Cleroux killed Paula Leclair because her apartment had a nice view.
He also thought it would fit his stuff better, and he liked that it was rent-controlled.
But Leclair didn't want to move out, so he took her for a walk and killed her in the woods near their Fairlea Cres. home on May 20, 2010.
Then he moved in.
Cleroux believed Leclair was alone in the world, so he hadn't counted on her son showing up at the apartment.
When the son opened the door on May 29, he saw his mother's possessions gone and that strange new ones had taken their place.
That's when Cleroux stepped off the elevator and noticed Leclair's son standing in the apartment.
Cleroux, cool as a cucumber, told him Leclair had gone on vacation and had left him the apartment - and then boldly asked to take the son's key.
The son went straight to police, who arrested Cleroux.
Before the interview was over, he had confessed to killing Leclair in cold blood.
The sentencing hearing continues Tuesday afternoon.
Cleroux guilty of 3 murders
By Tony Spears - Ottawa Sun
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
In the mind of a cruel, pitiless diner dishwasher, the three women had become inconvenient.
So serial killer Camille Cleroux made sure they would never inconvenience him again.
Lise Roy, his wife, had discovered his lust for young flesh.
Jean Rock, his common-law partner, made him mad one too many times.
And Paula Leclair, his neighbour, had to die because he liked the view from her apartment.
Three women.
Three bodies.
And on Tuesday, three life sentences for murder.
Cleroux, 58, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the May 20, 2010 death of Leclair, and to second-degree murder in the 2003 killing of Rock, and the 1990 death of Roy.
Judge Lynn Ratushny sentenced him to life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years on all counts.
“With a mind that has functioned in the way yours has and does, there is no better place for you than to be in custody,” Ratushny said.
“We are all comforted, to some extent, that you are incarcerated and will likely remain incarcerated for the rest of your life.”
There will be no comfort for these women. But we can tell their stories.
* * *
On July 4, 1987, Lise Roy married her murderer.
She was stunning.
A young, dark-haired bride in a flowing white dress, a posy of blooms in her left hand as Cleroux snaked an arm around her waist for a photo.
He had short hair and a black moustache, and a light grey suit with ruffles down his shirt.
They lived at 1535 Heatherington Rd., unit 153.
But what happiness there was did not last long.
For Cleroux was a man with disturbing appetites, whose sexual urges ran to young children. It was his secret, but Roy discovered it.
And so she had to die.
Sometime in April of 1990, she confronted Cleroux.
He picked up a rock and bashed her to death.
She was 27.
Come night fall, he buried her body in their backyard.
In the morning, neighbours saw a brand-new vegetable garden.
Tomatoes grew in the dirt, roots reaching down to her bones, wrapped in butcher’s paper.
Meanwhile Cleroux had gone to the police. His wife had beaten him, he sobbed to detectives — beaten him and run away to Montreal.
Police issued a warrant for her arrest, which remained outstanding almost to this day.
Some of Roy’s remains were recovered from the garden plot, but not all. Her skull is still missing. Police searched Heatherington Park, where a neighbour had seen Cleroux lugging heavy bags, but the park has changed since 1990. It has been partly built over.
* * *
Jean Rock met her killer in June 1992.
She was young and troubled, prone to seizures and blow ups with her family.
Her relationship with Cleroux was stormy, fraught with break-ups and make-ups.
She’d always come back to Ottawa, and to her lover Cleroux, the dishwasher at Mello’s.
One day, he snapped.
Walking through the woods near Fairlea Cres. on a fall day in 2003, he picked up a rock and bashed her head in, burying her where she fell in a shallow grave.
She was 32.
Cleroux formed a plan to cover his crime.
He knew someone with handwriting that resembled Rock’s. For $10 a letter, the forger wrote to Rock’s family, pretending to be the dead woman. Cleroux told her what to write and then hand-delivered them to her family.
The letters said Rock didn’t want direct contact with her family.
But he did not stop there.
Cleroux invented a fictional life for Rock, a fantasy wherein she found love and a family in a trucker named Pierre.
“My dear Dad,” an April 2004 letter to father John Rock began.
It announced the birth of her son.
“I named the baby John. The baby is well, he weighs 7 lbs. and he is going to be tall like the Rock side.”
“Black hair and brown eyes and Indian skin dark like you daddy.”
In court, John Rock could not contain himself.
“An animal, an animal,” he gasped. “I’m gonna kill him!”
The letters, about three a year, continued from 2004 to 2010.
But they were not the only indignity foisted upon the raven-haired woman.
Construction crews neared her unmarked grave and Cleroux got scared. He dug up her remains in 2004 and buried them in nearby Fairlea Park.
Animals uncovered the bones, so in the summer of 2006 he put her remains in a purple mesh bag, put the bag in a shopping cart and wheeled it to Bronson Ave. where it crosses the Rideau Canal and hurled the bag in.
Crews discovered the bones in the fall after the canal was drained.
DNA tests were inconclusive. Rock had never been declared missing.
* * *
Paula Leclair, 64, had a view to kill for.
She and Cleroux were neighbours in a Heatherington highrise. She lived in #907. He was in #802.
But her unit was better suited to his stuff, Cleroux thought. And the view looked over the Fairlea woods.
Cleroux had already dug her grave when Leclair went for a walk with him on May 20, 2010.
He pulled out a 6-inch knife he’d swiped from Mello’s and drove her towards the grave, stabbing her in the back.
He picked up a rock and caved in her skull.
Hours later he was in her apartment and then carrying her stuff to a dumpster in the back.
But Leclair had a son who loved her.
And Andre Leclair grew worried when she hadn’t called him so, on May 29, he went to visit her.
He found the apartment full of Cleroux’s belongings, just as Cleroux walked over from the elevator.
Cleroux kept cool and told Andre Leclair that his mother had given him the flat. He even asked for Andre’s key.
Andre Leclair went to the police.
Cleroux again tried to put them off the scent, employing his forger to write more letters in which “Leclair” said that she had left the apartment to him and that she wanted no more contact with her family.
But before his interview with Det. John Monette was over, Cleroux had confessed to murdering Leclair in cold blood.
He was at last behind bars.
Where he will remain for the rest of his life.
Camille Cleroux case timeline:
June 26 - Serial killer Camille Cleroux pleads guilty to one count of first-degree murder and two of second degree murder Tuesday in the deaths of two ex-wives and his neighbour.
April 20, 2012: Police confirm they’ve found more human remains connected to Cleroux in a forested section of Fairlea Woods.
March 20, 2012: Cleroux’s preliminary hearing ends and he agrees to stand trial on three counts of first-degree murder.
Nov. 16, 2011: Cops start digging for human remains in Heatherington Park. Police say their investigation into the human remains found at 1535 Heatherington Ave. led them to the second site.
Nov. 4, 2011: Police investigators conclude their dig at 1535 Heatherington Ave. The human remains are shipped to Toronto for analysis.
Nov. 4, 2011: Preliminary hearing for accused serial killer Camille Cleroux adjourned after human remains found at his former home.
Oct. 31, 2011: Workers find human remains in the backyard at 1535 Heatherington Ave. A neighbour tells the Sun that accused serial killer Camille Cleroux once lived at the property. Police begin digging.
June 25, 2010: Camille Cleroux charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jean Rock in 2001 and Lise Roy in 1990.
June 2010: After hearing of first-degree murder charges against Cleroux, former neighbour Robert Fling approaches cops about hearing screams from Cleroux’s Heatherington Ave. house 20 years earlier. He admits he wasn’t “100% sure.”
June 3, 2010: Camille Cleroux, 56, charged with first-degree murder in the death of Paula Leclair. He had moved into her apartment and told Leclair’s son that she had given Cleroux the apartment after winning the lottery and moving to Florida.
May 2010: Paula Leclair, 64, goes missing from her Fairlea Cres. apartment. Her body is found days later in a nearby wooded area.
2001: Jean Rock, 32, believed to be Cleroux’s common-law wife, disappears.
1990: Lise Roy, 27, was married to Cleroux when she disappeared.
Bones found in accused serial killer Camille Cleroux’s garden belonged to former wife
By Andrew Seymour - The Ottawa Citizen
December 21, 2011
Camille Cleroux and his first wife, Lise Roy, at their wedding in the early 1980s. Roy’s bones were found in the garden of the Heatherington Road townhouse where the couple once lived. Roy disappeared in 1990.
The bones found in the backyard of a home once occupied by an accused serial killer have been identified as belonging to one of the missing wives of Camille Cléroux, Lise Roy.
The identification was determined by DNA analysis, the Citizen has learned.
Cléroux’s preliminary hearing on three counts of first-degree murder was put on hold earlier in November after police recovered human remains in the yard of a Heatherington Road home. A brief court appearance on Wednesday set a date in the new year for Cleroux’s next court appearance.
The hearing was interrupted because police were made aware of the possible existence of two possible burial sites. Police also dug up a nearby park in the Heatherington Road area.
Police found a pair of thigh and leg bones along with portions of a forearm and numerous fingers following five days of digging at the townhouse, prosecutor Dallas Mack told the court during an earlier appearance by Cleroux.
The bones were discovered by accident by a landscaping crew and were not buried deeply. They were discovered by the work crew as they dug with shovels.
Cléroux, 57, is accused of killing three women. The body of 64-year-old Paula Leclair was discovered in old train yards near Walkley Road last June.
The bodies of Lise Roy and Jean Rock had not been found when Cléroux was charged in connection with their deaths about three weeks after Leclair’s body was recovered.
Both women were former spouses.
Roy was last seen in 1990, while Rock, Cléroux’s common-law wife, vanished in 2003. Both women lived with him at the Heatherington Road townhouse.
A publication ban prevents the reporting of any evidence heard during the preliminary hearing, which had been under way for nine days before being adjourned earlier in November.
Cléroux’s preliminary hearing is expected to resume in March for four day of testimony, which will include a DNA expert and a forensic anthropologist.
A former neighbour of Cléroux’s told the Citizen at the time the excavation started at 1535 Heatherington Rd. that he had asked about Lise Roy one day when he hadn’t seen her. The next day Cleroux opened a new vegetable garden and planted tomatoes and cucumbers in the backyard. That is where Lise Roy’s remains were found.
“I was always wondering what the hell happened,” said Joseph Abdallah. “He was always telling people she left him.”
On a summer day about 20 years ago, Abdallah, who was 16 at the time, knocked on Cléroux’s back door. Abdallah and his friends often went to Cleroux’s home to smoke marijuana and hang out.
Cléroux answered the door red-faced, sweating and wearing only underwear.
“He said, ‘Not now, guys. Not now,’ “ Abdallah recalled.
The next day, an 2.5-metre by 2.5-metre garden had appeared in the previously empty backyard. Abdallah never saw Cléroux’s wife again.
Backgrounder: Camille Cleroux
OttawaSun.com
November 16, 2011
Camille Cleroux is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Paula Leclair, Jean Rock and Lise Roy.
Cleroux was married to Roy when she disappeared in 1990. It’s believed Jean Rock was his common-law wife when she went missing in 2001. Neither disappearance was reported to police.
When Leclair disappeared, Cleroux had moved into her apartment and told her son that she had won the lottery and moved to Florida. He asked a neighbour to forge a letter from Leclair giving him permission to take over the apartment.
Cleroux, 57, is estranged from his family, who described him as a “drifter” and a “loner.” Police said he also had four children.
Cleroux is in the Ottawa Carleton Detention Centre.
Key dates:
Nov. 16, 2011: Cops start digging for human remains in Heatherington Park. Police say their investigation into the human remains found at 1535 Heatherington Ave. led them to the second site.
Nov. 4, 2011: Police investigators conclude their dig at 1535 Heatherington Ave. The human remains are shipped to Toronto for analysis.
Nov. 4, 2011: Preliminary hearing for accused serial killer Camille Cleroux adjourned after human remains found at his former home.
Oct. 31, 2011: Workers find human remains in the backyard at 1535 Heatherington Ave. A neighbour tells the Sun that accused serial killer Camille Cleroux once lived at the property. Police begin digging.
June 25, 2010: Camille Cleroux charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jean Rock in 2001 and Lise Roy in 1990.
June 2010: After hearing of first-degree murder charges against Cleroux, former neighbour Robert Fling approaches cops about hearing screams from Cleroux’s Heatherington Ave. house 20 years earlier. He admits he wasn’t “100% sure.”
June 3, 2010: Camille Cleroux, 56, charged with first-degree murder in the death of Paula Leclair. He had moved into her apartment and told Leclair’s son that she had given Cleroux the apartment after winning the lottery and moving to Florida.
May 2010: Paula Leclair, 64, goes missing from her Fairlea Cres. apartment. Her body is found days later in a nearby wooded area.
2001: Jean Rock, 32, believed to be Cleroux's common-law wife, disappears.
1990: Lise Roy, 27, was married to Cleroux when she disappeared.
Murder accused was black sheep of family
Camille Cleroux appears in Ottawa court
By Kenneth Jackson and Megan Gillis - Ottawa Sun
Thursday, June 03, 2010
The day Camille Cleroux was arrested for the murder of his neighbour he walked by his sister's vegetable stand and didn't say hello.
She saw him and her daughter yelled out for him.
He kept walking like the dozens of other strangers going by the busy market street.
That's what Cleroux was to his family, a stranger.
"I don't know much about my brother," said his sister, who asked her name not be used.
She spoke of Cleroux as if he was just another guy she could have sold lettuce to at the stand she's been running for the last 25 years.
She said Cleroux moved out of his parents' Navan home when he was about 18 and never looked back.
She wasn't in court Thursday when he made a brief court appearance charged with the first-degree murder of Paula Leclair, 64.
None of his family were there.
His closely-cropped grey head was barely taller than the approximately 5-ft.-tall plexiglass barrier around the prisoner's box. His hands clasped in front of him, he said nothing beyond giving his name.
Cleroux's sister learned about the murder charge Thursday morning.
"I was shocked when I read it in the newspaper this morning," she said with no emotion. She described her brother as a "drifter" and "loner" but she doesn't think he could be violent.
"He had a good childhood," she said of Cleroux who has five brothers and sisters. "I'm thinking of my parents who are 77-years-old, the both of them."
The murder charge is going to break their hearts she said.
Police allege Cleroux killed Leclair because he wanted her apartment, unit 907 at 2969 Fairlea Cres., in Heron Gate.
Cleroux lived at unit 802 and was a packrat. Neighbours said his place was full of junk, including three large flat-screen TVs. He had VHS taps stacked up on the wall.
He gave his notice two months ago but with no place to go, Leclair's apartment caught his attention.
Leclair was reported missing Saturday by her son.
Police said Cleroux told people Leclair gave him the unit. He said she'd won $50,000 in the lottery and had gone to Florida.
Police found her body in a heavily wooded area in the Walkley Yards, about a half kilometre south of Fairlea Cres. Police said he led detectives to the body after he was arrested.
Cleroux fathered two children, a boy and a girl, about 30 years ago but his sister didn't believe he ever sent them a Christmas card.
"They wouldn't know him as father," she said. "They don't know him."
Cleroux's brother raised the boy and the girl stayed with the biological mother.
The last time she spoke to Cleroux was at Mellos, a downtown diner where he was a cook "forever."
Cleroux will next appear in court June 14.
