Gatineau police have charged 28-year-old Shakti Ramsurrun with three counts of first-degree murder in connection with Thursday's fatal stabbings in Aylmer.

Fifty eight-year-old Claude Levesque, 63-year-old Louise LeBoeuf and her daughter, 21-year-old Anne-Katherine Powers were found dead at 64 Rue Felix Leclerc just after 1 p.m. Thursday.

Powers and Ramsurrun were married, but separated. Friends said Powers complained about abuse and was talking about getting a divorce.

"We are too different," Powers told a friend in an online messaging exchange May 3, about a month and a half after they had separated.

"I definitely think he would be better off on his island . . . All of his family and friends are there."

Powers and Ramsurrun met on a cruise where he was working as a server in 2009, later having a child in his native Mauritius.

Police said he moved into her home with her parents about six months ago and has been a Canadian citizen since then.

"I know it was tough for him to be here because it is such a different place," said Powers' friend Virginie Lamoute. "We tried to make him understand how Canadians live . . . but he wasn't fitting in."

Lamoute said Powers told her about threats Ramsurrun made while he was drunk.

"He told them to eat in the garbage five times, if not he would kill her mom with a knife," she said. "That's what she told me."

Police said Ramsurrun wasn't known to them and they hadn't been called to the home before.

Suspect arrested without incident at his workplace

Ramsurran was arrested near the crime scene Thursday with his 15-month-old child and interrogated Friday morning before the charges were laid.

He's an employee of the Rivermead Golf Club, which borders the home where the bodies were found.

That's also where Powers' parents red Pontiac Montana van was found, children's toys visible through the open trunk.

Police said he used that van to leave the murder scene, explaining why they were treating the vehicle as a second crime scene.

64 Rue Felix Leclerc was recently listed online as a bed-and-breakfast.

With a report from CTV Ottawa's Catherine Lathem