The details of Camille Cleroux’s gruesome murders were enough to send one of the victim’s relatives into an emotional frenzy today.
CTV Ottawa’s Joanne Schnurr reports Jean Rock’s father broke down in court convulsing as he screamed “I want to kill him.”
Paramedics had to be called in.
The impact of three women killed at Cleroux’s hand was felt throughout the courtroom.
“I welcomed him, a monster, into our home and I feel sick,” said John Rock. “If I had seen through him, my daughter Jean would still be alive.”
Cleroux, 58, pleaded guilty to three counts of murder Tuesday morning. His victims were two ex-wives and a neighbour he killed because he wanted her apartment with a better view.
Judge Lynn Ratuschny found Cleroux guilty of first-degree murder of Paula Leclair and two counts of second-degree murder of Lise Roy and Jean Rock. The sentence is automatic life in prison with no chance of parole.
Devastated by it all, relatives are considering if any of this was preventable.
“Maybe I could have done something. How did I not know what this man is like?” said Jean Rock’s brother Daniel. “It is in my heart that the guilt lives.”
The court heard how Cleroux rolled one of the victims’ bodies down alongside the Rideau Canal in a shopping cart looking for a place to dump her. They heard how he bludgeoned his late wives to death with a rock, and was willing to kill 64-year-old Paula Leclair because he preferred her apartment unit.
The murders happened over a 20-year period.
His first wife Lise Roy disappeared in 1990 and his second wife Jean Rock in 2003. He was charged with killing former neighbour Leclair in 2010.
In Rock’s case, her family thought she was alive but being distant. They were getting letters they believed she wrote when in fact the letters were actually written by someone Cleroux had hired:
August 10, 2009,
Hi dad, Sorry I haven't written but I've been busy baking. I'm six months pregnant now but not sure what I'm having...
Dec 19, 2009
Hi dad,
I had a baby girl. I'm going to call her Lisa. Finally got my girl…
But Jean Rock had already been dead for three years. Cleroux had buried her body twice and when animals kept digging it up, he carted what was left in a shopping cart.
At first, he intended to dump her at Dow’s Lake but there were too many people. As an alternative, he pushed her remains into the canal.
NCC workers found the remains in 2006 but police couldn’t figure out who it was. There was no missing person’s report because of Cleroux’s ploy to keep her family believing she was still alive.
The Crown describes Cleroux as a monster in disguise – a former dishwasher who devised a diabolical plot to murder and erase the lives of three women.
