Victim’s sister seeks justice in 40-year-old case
Sister of slain West Island man hopes passage of time will prompt witnesses to come forward
Anyone who believes that time does indeed heal all wounds should introduce themselves to Sandra Stewart.
Stewart’s brother, John Michael (known as Mike to his friends and family), was murdered four decades ago, when she was 15 and he was 19. No one has ever been arrested in the case and Stewart, a former West Island resident, recently decided she could no longer leave the past buried.
On the evening of Saturday, April 30, 1977, John Michael Stewart’s body was discovered in a wooded area in Rigaud by two people who were out for a walk looking for spring wildflowers to pick.
According to the coroner’s report, Mike Stewart, who grew up in Pointe-Claire and Baie-d’Urfé, was fatally shot. His body was found close to St-Georges Rd. Back then it was referred to as a rural road, and today the area on the mountain in Rigaud remains sparsely populated.
In an interview with the Montreal Gazette, Sandra Stewart said her brother’s death certificate lists the date of his death as April 27, 1977, which was likely the last day anyone saw him alive. Her brother, a talented painter in high school, began abusing drugs a couple of years before he was killed. Stewart says her family learned he had been selling drugs out of a hotel in Pointe-Claire. At the time, her parents were told that investigators believed his murder was related to drug trafficking.
“(The pain is still very present) because it has never been closed,” Stewart said after she broke into tears during the interview. She said that after her brother’s funeral (which was attended by undercover police officers) her divorced parents did not want to discuss his death. His remains were interred at Mount Royal Cemetery, but neither Stewart nor her mother has actually seen the gravesite.
Stewart, who now resides in Ontario, only learned of where her brother was buried this year, after feelings about his death surfaced within her and she decided to ask questions. She went to the gravesite during a trip to Montreal to visit her son in February. Unfortunately, the gravesite was covered with snow.
It was her son’s recent decision to move to Montreal that awoke Stewart’s feelings about her brother. Stewart graduated from Macdonald High School in SteAnne-de-Bellevue shortly after Mike Stewart died, and attended college in the Maritimes. She then moved to Ontario. The pain of her brother’s death left her believing “that Montreal was a bad place.”
The feelings that were stirred prompted Stewart to contact the Sûreté du Québec and inquire about what happened with their investigation into the murder. She was told that a box containing evidence was still available to detectives and that they would review the file to see if it was worth reopening as a cold case. (The SQ did not respond to a request seeking confirmation that they are reviewing the case.)
“I was told they need to find something new — a reason to convince them it is worth reopening,” Stewart said, adding she hopes an article like this one might convince witnesses to come forward. She hopes that someone who might have feared Mike Stewart’s killer back in 1977 no longer has reason to feel that fear.
Graeme Stewart, Sandra’s older brother (they have a younger brother named Alan), said he is able to recall accompanying his father to an SQ detachment west of Montreal about a year after the murder. They went there seeking answers, but received little information.
“My father was pushing for answers,” he said. “Two (SQ) detectives said that we shouldn’t go looking (for information on our own). They said it was too dangerous.”
Mike Stewart’s body was found less than two kilometres from an outlaw motorcycle gang’s hangout. The crime tabloid Allô Police published an article making a very brief mention of his death. “The victim wanted to break into Montreal’s cocaine market, but was definitively prevented from doing so,” the tabloid reported, without attributing that theory to anyone.
At the time of Mike Stewart’s death, the Hells Angels were about to form their first chapter in Canada. (The Montreal chapter was chartered in December 1977.) The gang’s violent efforts to take control of cocaine trafficking in Montreal before the chapter was established are well documented.
Sandra Stewart doubts her brother graduated from a smalltime dealer selling to support his own habit out of a hotel in Pointe-Claire to someone who posed a threat to organized crime in Montreal.
“I was told (by the SQ) he died as the result of a bad drug deal — that they took his money. He supposedly had a lot of money (before he was killed),” she said.
Stewart said she has difficulty accepting that her brother would be remembered simply as a slain drug dealer. She and her mother, Valerie Russell, remember him as a sensitive teen who impressed his art teachers in high school. Russell said she still has one of his paintings hanging in her bedroom, and recalled that his art teacher at the time “used it to show other students how (a painting) should be done.”
“My brother was an artist,” Sandra Stewart said. “He seemed to be bored with (Lindsay Place) High School (in Pointe-Claire). I suppose if (he was a teenager) now, he would be in a school for the gifted. I think that’s what led him to drugs. He felt so out of place in a regular school.”
Her lasting memory of her brother is from shortly after their parents split up. The family went to an animal shelter and picked out a dog (“a mutt named Gerry”) together.
“Gerry loved Michael,” she said. “I could always tell when Michael had arrived home based on how Gerry would react when he walked in the door.”
Russell’s last memory of her son is from a family dinner at their home in Baie-d’Urfé. As Mike Stewart said goodbye to his mother, she noticed how much his drug use had changed him.
“It was the last time I saw him. As he left — he always cuddled me — I never felt such a skinny body in all my life. He was just skin and bones,” Russell said, adding she is impressed with her daughter’s ability to push for answers that were too painful for Russell to ask.
“It’s a very small hope,” Russell said of the possibility the SQ will reopen the case. “But it’s a hope.”
Anyone with information on John Michael Stewart’s murder can contact the Sûreté du Québec at 1-800-659-4264.
Two (SQ) detectives said that we shouldn’t go looking (for information on our own). They said it was too dangerous.