Ottawa Citizen

Escapee Bugden back behind bars

- AEDAN HELMER AND MEGAN GILLIS Ahelmer@postmedia.com With files from The Canadian Press

Police say a convicted murderer who walked away from the minimum security area of a New Brunswick prison is back in custody.

In a statement, the RCMP said 45-year-old Steven Bugden was arrested between Dorchester and Sackville, N.B., on Thursday. He was reported missing the previous evening after staff at the Dorchester Penitentia­ry noticed he was absent during the 10 p.m. head count.

Earlier Thursday, a man who had befriended both Angela Tong and the man who murdered her 21 years ago had been pleading for Bugden to turn himself in.

Gerry Brinkman said he still has vivid memories of that midMarch day in 1997 when he came home to the Hedley Court room he rented from Bugden, only to find it swarming with police.

His friend, Tong, a 22-year-old Carleton University student, a devout Christian later described by a judge as “an angel on Earth,” had been missing for 36 hours.

Bugden, who became infatuated with Tong as they grew up together in Kanata, had acquaintan­ces help him lure her to a Carling Avenue motel where he planned to propose, even though they’d never dated. When she tried to leave, he stabbed her 19 times in the back and head with a butcher knife from behind before stuffing her body into a duffel bag and dumping it in a snowbank.

Tong, who was weeks from graduation, was buried on her 23rd birthday.

“No one more shocked than me,” Brinkman said about hearing of Bugden’s escape after he was contacted Thursday by a reporter. “At first, I was stunned, then I was dismayed.”

Brinkman said he considered Tong “like a sister” and Bugden “was like a brother to me.”

“Steve, as near as anybody knew, was one of us,” said Brinkman. “He was a Christian, we prayed together, we were pretty close. Steve had his problems but we all do.”

Brinkman said while Bugden kept his feelings for Tong largely private, “I kind of suspected something was there, but I never thought he would take it to murder.”

Brinkman was pleading for Bugden to turn himself in to authoritie­s.

“When I knew him, we believed a lot of the same things. And we believed that when you do something wrong, you stand up and take your punishment like a man.

“You pleaded guilty,” said Brinkman, addressing Bugden directly. “You have to take your punishment, because you deserve it.”

Brinkman was president of Carleton University’s Bible study group when he first met Tong. She would later succeed him as president.

Passionate about her faith, Tong would meet with a non-denominati­onal Bible study group that included Brinkman and, eventually, Bugden, in a rented conference room in the basement of a Carling Avenue hotel, next to the Embassy West hotel where she was murdered.

Bugden, now 45, was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 15 years after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in 1999.

Emile Belliveau, assistant warden at Dorchester Penitentia­ry, described Bugden’s departure Wednesday as more of a “walkout” than an escape.

Bugden had been in the condo where he lived with about four other inmates during a count six hours earlier, said Belliveau.

“He was discovered not in his living unit at 10 o’clock last night, and as soon as that happened the correction­al officer responsibl­e for doing the official count contacted the local RCMP and reported that the inmate was missing from his living unit,” Belliveau said.

“They can walk out if they want. There’s no walls or perimeter around the minimum sector at the Dorchester Institutio­n,” he said.

Belliveau said Bugden had been considered low-risk for public safety and there had been no incidents with him at Dorchester prior to his escape.

“This is the last step for them to be introduced into the society,” he said. “If an inmate decides he wants to leave, he can do so on his own.”

Bugden’s name resurfaced in the news in 2009, when he sued the federal government for $50,000, claiming he’d suffered “extreme pain in his left testicle” and a hernia when exercise equipment he was using at the medium-security Bath Institutio­n near Kingston malfunctio­ned.

He claimed he was working out in the recreation area of the prison, using the leg-curl machine, when he “suddenly without warning heard a loud banging noise (and his) feet came forward and hit his buttocks,” according to court documents.

Bugden, then 37, claimed he was refused a trip to the hospital and lived with undiagnose­d pain for two years.

Kristine Kruszelnic­ki, who called herself Angela Tong ’s “best friend” while she was alive, had called Bugden’s escape “a nightmare” on a Facebook memorial site for the slain woman.

“If there’s any good to come out of this, the shenanigan­s he’s pulled in prison (recall his 2009 suing the prison for his gym injury) keep reminding the public of what he did to Angela,” wrote Kruszelnic­ki, who also tweeted that she was 18 when Tong went missing. “It keeps her name current and she lives on in that way, as long as she is remembered.”

Tong is among the many women commemorat­ed at the Minto Park Women’s Monument on Elgin Street, honouring women who were abused and murdered by men.

Carleton still offers a memorial bursary in Tong ’s name.

 ??  ?? Steven Bugden
Steven Bugden
 ??  ?? Angela Tong
Angela Tong

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