A Mystery

Curtis Allan Dagenais appeared in North Batteford, Saskatchewan this morning for a bail hearing. He turned himself in at his home of Spiritwood's RCMP Detachment after being at large for 12 days. He's been charged with murder for the deaths of Cst. Robin Cameron and Cst. Marc Bourdages, and attempted murder for the other nameless officer who backed them up.

When the judge asked him if he understood the charges he answered "no". When she read them out again, he answered "yeah". It took barely five minutes to remand him and whisk him back to a solitary cell to await his next court date. He's a chip off the old block of his father, Arthur Dagenais, who's charged with "obstructing justice". He refused to leave the area the RCMP were searching for his son - the police got a court order to get him out of the area. Arthur's court date is Dec. 5th and he'll be in custody till then.

Both father and son allegedly hate police and have had numerous run-ins with them all of their lives. Both have police records for charges of assault - the father for domestic violence, and the son for assaulting a highway traffic officer. Curtis has had five violent charges against him, and was nearly named a "dangerous offender" by a whisker except that he hasn't done enough jail time to be considered a "dangerous offender".

There were interviews done by The Globe and Mail, Canada's national Newspaper, calling for stricter sentences from judges in handing out even the minimum sentences allowed for assault. While Canada has been much stricter on domestic violence in past years, simple assault is usually passed over with probation and a fine for a first offense, and perhaps a short 30 days and higher fine for a second offence.

I believe I said in another post that criminals are "career" in their behaviour, they are very often narcisstic in personality, not just sociopathic, and aggressive towards those in authority. Paranoid and often loners, they are often unstable mentally which leads them to substance abuse which leads to more crime.

What caused Dagenais to turn himself in, instead of committing suicide as the killer of four Mounties did last March, will be interesting to find out. It's a mystery right now, but points to a self-involved, narcisstic personality disorder. Narcissists don't kill themselves. The world revolves around them. He won't feel any remorse - no doubt he's still thinking he can get his father to change his mind about his will and deeding half of his farm to his mother - after all, that's what started his murderous rampage in the first place.

No doubt his mother Elsie, and sister Grace, are very glad that both husband/father and son/brother are in jail for what will be a number of months.

And if the judges who had had Dagenais in their courtrooms five times previously had been a bit bolder in their sentencing - had paid attention to him, he wouldn't have been out on July 7th in Spiritwood to kill Cst. Cameron and Cst. Bourdages. He would have been behind bars indefinitely as a dangerous offender, a menace to society, and safe in his cell - never to hurt his family or community again.

If you want to know how this ties in with writing - other than my being an ex-police officer - I say take a look at a real killer and follow the story of how this all unfolds.

EDIT: despite my attempts to include a photo of Dagenais in this post, neither would upload properly. Either there's a problem with Blogger or the pictures were protected for copyright, although I have used copyrighted pictures before and given them the proper credit. So I'm sorry that you couldn't have seen his face - it might have inspired some of you for a character sketch.