What happened to Bernard and Rose-Marie Saulnier?

DOUBLE HOMICIDE OF SENIORS TIED TO DRUG TRADE, RCMP SOURCES SAY

The unsolved murders of two respected Moncton-area senior citizens just over a year ago appears to have been both an act of retaliation and a warning to others about the possible dangers of calling the police on drug traffickers, according to sources in the RCMP knowledgeable about the case.

The case illustrates how dangerous it has become to work as an informant for the police, said one of the sources, a ranking RCMP officer.

“Those two old people were fed to the wolves,” said the police source. “The RCMP did not do a proper risk assessment in this case.”

The murders took place on Sept. 7, 2019. The victims were Bernard A. Saulnier, 78, and his wife, Rose-Marie Saulnier, 74. Their bodies were found in their bungalow on Amirault Street, a main thoroughfare running through the Moncton suburb of Dieppe. Bernard Saulnier was a local entrepreneur who was past president of Acadia Electric, past president of the Dieppe Rotary Club and past president of NB Construction. Rose-Marie Saulnier had a degree in nursing, and was a nutritionist and naturopath. She owned a business in that field — Natural Choice Health Centre.

In the months and years leading up to the Saulniers' murder, the Maritime provinces, like many places in North America, have seen a rise in the use of illegal narcotics. The region is alleged to be largely controlled by outlaw biker gangs, especially the Hell's Angels. The Maritimes, with its long, largely unprotected coastline, is seen as a coveted base of operations for smuggling in drugs and distribution across North America.

The RCMP has been trying to go toe-to-toe with the bikers and shut down their operations in a never-ending and increasingly more difficult battle. One weapon the RCMP uses is informants, but turning bikers into police informants has become an overused tactic, some police observers say. In this light the RCMP has sought help from ordinary citizens, like the appeal it made in July 2018: “It is tough for us to infiltrate,” RCMP Sgt. Michael Sims told Global News reporter Natasha Pace.

“It is tough for us to get intelligence within these groups but we know there are people out there that can do that regularly and we certainly need them to call us and work with us.”

Among those who answered the RCMP call for help, RCMP sources say, were the Saulniers. They were concerned about the activities of one of their sons, Sylvio.

A review of Sylvio Saulnier's Facebook page, where his pit bull is featured in a photo, shows connections to a number of bikers, including Hell's Angels' Nomad member Robin Moulton. Believed to be in prison, Moulton has been cited recently by the RCMP as a key target in a series of anti-biker raids and arrests that have taken place in 2019 and this year in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Moulton's Facebook page, which he runs under the handle Robin Angel also features Sylvio Saulnier as a friend. His list of friends reads like a who's-who of the biker world.

When the Saulniers, in their attempt to be model citizens, made the call to the police they must have thought they were serving the greater good. “The police were raising the alarm in the community about the damage being done by the proliferation of drug use, particularly methamphetamines. The Saulniers were good people. They thought they were doing the right thing for the community by calling the police,” the RCMP source said. “With the information they had, it wouldn't have been difficult for the Mounties to act on it. A couple of days of surveillance and they would be able to get search warrants.”

On Aug. 28, 2019, RCMP police forces conducted raids on five properties in Moncton, Steeves Mountain and Douglas. One of the residences raided was 204 Dominion Street in Moncton. The house was listed at the time as being owned by Sylvio Saulnier. In the raids police seized, as the CBC reported at the time, about 14.5 kilograms of suspected crystal methamphetamine, 880 grams of suspected cocaine and crack cocaine.

On Sept. 6, the day before the bodies were discovered, the RCMP announced charges against five people arrested during the raids.

The Saulniers were likely murdered that night.

While the police have not revealed what happened inside the home, an observer familiar with the investigation said the scene was “graphic.” An RCMP source said the obvious intended victim was Bernard Saulnier and that his wife was likely collateral damage. “They thought they could carry on with their everyday life and then they got hit out of the blue with a bag of hammers,” a police source said.

Weeks afterward, the RCMP put out an alert for two vehicles seen in the area of the Saulnier's home. One, a black BMW sedan with darkened windows was seen on Sept. 3 not far from their home. The occupant got out of the car and used a pay phone. In the overnight hours of Sept. 6-7, two vehicles were seen near the Saulnier home, a black BMW and an Infiniti SUV.

If the murders were in retaliation for the tip to the police, which led to the raids and arrests, police sources don't seem to think the killers were bikers. “There are Hell's Angel links to this, but it's not the Hell's Angels style,” said an RCMP officer, whose observations were echoed by others familiar with the biker world. “The Hell's Angels will kill their own members for being informers but they don't go after civilians. And they wouldn't be driving flashy cars to do a hit. In the past, Angels' hit men preferred minivans. This sounds more like someone hired a street gang member to do the hit. It's definitely related to the bust somehow, but we just don't know how, yet.”

Last December, Luc Saulnier, the deceased couple's other son, sought an order in Moncton's Court of Queen's Bench banning access to his parents' estate files. In his claim, the younger Saulnier stated that allowing details of the estate to be open to the public, as is normally the practice, could expose family members to unknown danger.

The next month, on Jan. 16, as reported by the CBC, New Brunswick Justice Jean-Paul Ouellette issued a ban on access to the estate files. “Considering who could benefit from the estate, the circumstances of the deceased, the ongoing criminal investigation, the absence of information about the motives and identities of the murderers, publication of information could put both the beneficiaries and their family at significant risk of harm to their lives by unsavoury members of the public who could become aware of such inheritance,” Ouellette stated in his written ruling.

While the Saulniers were not likely confidential informants working with the RCMP, did they say too much? Had they innocently entered into a dangerous and treacherous world by calling the police out of concern for their community?

Police sources say there is another case in Atlantic Canada where confidential informants wound up dead. “It's well-known in the criminal world that the RCMP is not a safe place for anyone to be an informant,” an RCMP inside source said.

“The way the system works is that any confidential informant is identified and controlled by a handler. That handler knows everything. His supervisor may or may not know about the informant,” the source said. Only payroll knows the informants' number and the payment goes through the handler. It's a tight system.

“But when it comes to confidential informants, all the information about them is sent up the line to Ottawa, where all kinds of people see the information,” the police source said.

“You have these review groups in Ottawa where the senior person is being paid $125,000 a year and a clerk is being paid $40,000 a year and they have exactly the same access to everything,” said a source familiar with the process. “They go after the ones at the lower end. That's why the government is checking out everyone's finances every year trying to see who is living above their means.”

More than a year later, the New Brunswick RCMP Major Crime Unit says it is continuing to investigate the double homicide of Bernard Saulnier and Rose-Marie Saulnier.

“Investigators are working diligently to identify the person or persons responsible for their deaths,” said Cst. Hans Ouellette, media relations officer. “We continue to ask anyone with information related to this investigation to contact the RCMP or Crime Stoppers.”

Ouellette did not respond to questions about the Saulniers being informants, whether their murders were linked to the raids in August 2019, or provide any updates on the case. He did not comment on whether the RCMP were aware of leaks in the organization at the local level or in Ottawa, and were conducting checks on employees with access to informant information. The spokesman also did not comment on the deaths of alleged confidential informants in the Maritimes.

Whatever has happened to the Saulniers, the RCMP has reacted with definitive moves in the Maritimes to shore up its efforts in dealing with biker gangs. Last November, police sources say, Assistant Commissioner Larry Tremblay, who heads New Brunswick RCMP, took control of anti-biker operations in the Maritimes. Around the same time, Chief Superintendent Chris Leather, who is considered inside the force to be an expert on undercover operations, was moved into Nova Scotia as the criminal operations officer, the secondin-command to Assistant Commissioner Lee Bergerman.

Insiders say the focus of the RCMP serious crimes units in the Maritimes is on the Hell's Angels and other bikers.

THOSE TWO OLD PEOPLE WERE FED TO THE WOLVES.

FAIR HAVEN FUNERAL HOME Bernard and Rose-Marie Saulnier were murdered in their Moncton home on Sept. 7, 2019, in what is believed to have been a targeted killing.