Man jailed for warden’s murder in 1978 to get taste of freedom
One of Quebec’s most notorious inmates serving time at a federal penitentiary will be getting a slight taste of freedom for the first time in four decades.
Gerald Gauthier, 72, was recently granted permission to leave a penitentiary without an escort for the first time since his arrest in 1978 for the murder of Michel Roy, a prison warden who was killed while he was clearing snow in front of his home in Pointe-auxTrembles. Gauthier, who was illegally at large at the time, went to Roy’s home with two other convicts.
Their plan was to send a message about the poor conditions they experienced at the Archambault Institution, a penitentiary in SteAnne-des-Plaines. One of the other convicts shot Roy, but according to an accomplice who later became an informant, Gauthier wanted to kill Roy ’s family as well and had to be talked out of it.
Gauthier was convicted of firstdegree murder on Jan. 16, 1982. Two years later, he acted as a lookout while a fellow inmate was murdered inside a penitentiary in Ontario and, later that same year, he strangled another inmate to a point where Gauthier assumed the man was dead. Those crimes and the fact that Gauthier tried to escape from a penitentiary in 1998 have contributed to the Parole Board of Canada’s decisions (three since 2005) to deny him both day and full parole.
Last week, the parole board denied Gauthier either form of parole once again. But the two parole board members who presided over Gauthier’s hearing — Michel Lafrenière and Richard Dupuis — agreed with a recommendation that Gauthier be allowed to leave the minimum-security penitentiary in Laval, where he is currently incarcerated, for one day per month.
According to a written summary of the parole board’s decision, the goal of the unescorted leaves is to prepare Gauthier for life inside a halfway house, if he is eventually granted day parole, and so he can become reacquainted with his relatives.
His first leave will involve an eight-hour visit to a halfway house. For his second leave, Gauthier will be allowed to visit relatives for 24 hours with the goal of setting up a network that can support him if he is paroled in the future.
“(The parole board) has been informed that your conduct while incarcerated (over the past decade) does not justify being refused and that the risk of reoffending is not unacceptable within the framework of this program,” the author of the summary wrote.
“In fact, this program appears to offer hope in terms of motivating you toward a gradual return to society in stages.”