Wanted man Philippe Steele-Morin has lengthy criminal past, court records show
The man who has become the centre of the investigation into the disappearance and possible homicide of Little Burgundy resident Tricia Boisvert is a man who has been sought by police for months in other cases and managed to trick officers in October to avoid being arrested.
Philippe Steele-Morin, 30, a friend of Boisvert’s, is believed to have been the last person to see her before she disappeared on Friday. According to media reports, Boisvert expressed concern to another friend that Steele-Morin was about to come over to see her on Friday at her apartment on Notre-Dame St., near the corner of Dominion St. Boisvert reportedly referred to him as her “crazy friend” and described Steele-Morin as being in a panic.
“Presently, Mr. Steele is considered a suspect in this case. He is the last person who saw Boisvert Friday night, so it is for that reason that he is considered a suspect,” said Montreal police Constable Simon Delorme.
Steele-Morin is believed to be a resident of Gatineau, on the outskirts of Ottawa, where Boisvert resided for many years before she moved to Montreal about two years ago. But Steele-Morin has been a difficult man for the police to pin down since last summer.
On Aug. 14, Boisvert failed to show up for a court date in a case filed against him at the provincial courthouse in Gatineau. He and two other men were charged in April with fraud and possessing or trafficking in credit card data. SteeleMorin failed to show up for two of the three court dates set in his case and a bench warrant was issued for his arrest in August. At the time, he had listed his home address as a house on a quiet suburban street in Gatineau facing a park on the shore of the Ottawa River.
Court records also reveal that between July 7 and Oct. 29, seven other arrest warrants were issued against Steele-Morin in two courthouses in Quebec — Gatineau and St-Jérôme. In one, he is charged with assaulting a woman, reportedly not Boisvert, in a case of conjugal violence and with stealing the woman’s car. The assault case lists Steele-Morin’s address as being in St-André d’Argenteuil, a small town also on the shore of the Ottawa River.
By October, when the three more recent indictments were filed, it was apparent the Gatineau police had no idea where Steele-Morin was residing as his whereabouts is listed as “no fixed address.” None of the seven arrest warrants were ever carried out, although it appears a police officer, or officers, with the Gatineau police did interact with Steele-Morin in October.
Oneof thes even arrest warrants issued accuses him of obstructing a police officer and providing a false identity while he was being investigated for drug trafficking. The alleged offence occurred on Oct. 8, possibly the last time the police came close to apprehending Steele-Morin.
The other arrest warrants issued last year involve alleged violations of a sentence he received on March 7, 2011, for drug trafficking. In that case, also heard in Gatineau, Steele-Morin was sentenced to a four-month prison term followed by three years of supervised probation.
Steele-Morin also spent much of the decade previous to his 2011 conviction behind bars. In 2004, while he was residing at a halfway house in Gatineau, he was charged with uttering threats while in possession of a loaded and restricted firearm. He pleaded guilty to the firearms offence within days and a 12-month sentence was tacked on to an existing two-year sentence he was serving at the time for a series of break-ins.