A 20-year-old admitted to killing and dismembering a sixty-year-old to avenge a friend who was allegedly sexually assaulted.
Nicolas Côté pleaded guilty Thursday morning at the Longueuil courthouse to charges of second-degree murder and indignity to the corpse of Luc Lafontaine. He therefore automatically receives life in prison.
The accused had started exchanging sexual text messages with the 64-year-old man two weeks before the crime in an attempt to “fool” him.
This is because in the preceding months, he had learned that Mr. Lafontaine had sexually assaulted his friend when he was a minor. The young man had never filed a complaint with the police.
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COURTESY PHOTO INTERMUNICIPAL POLICE REGION ROUSSILLON
In two weeks, Nicolas Côté had sent 117 messages to his victim, including 23 on the day of the murder. Photos of genitals were also exchanged.
On October 22, 2022, Nicolas Côté went to the home of Luc Lafontaine, in La Prairie, on the South Shore of Montreal. The goal was then clear: the “materialization” of the sexual gestures described in the text messages.
Stabbed
The accused, however, wanted to “hook” the victim and “ultimately provoke and confront him” regarding the actions taken against his friend and “other young men around them”, we can read in the joint summary of the facts read in court.
“It got out of hand. Lafontaine began to make advances towards Nicolas. He panicked and grabbed the first case he saw and hit Luc on the head,” admitted Côté’s friend, Zoé Boutin, following his arrest.
According to the forensic pathologist’s report, Luc Lafontaine received five hammer blows to the head.
The sixty-year-old then began to utter “insults and threats towards the accused”.
The latter went into the kitchen to get a knife. Then, he stabbed Luc Lafontaine 25 times, in the neck and head. Three wounds were fatal, including one to the heart.
Nicolas Côté then dismembered the victim into several parts and attempted to clean up the crime scene for several hours.
He then sent three text messages to the victim in order to divert suspicion.
Disappearance
Mr. Lafontaine was reported missing the next day, after relatives became concerned about his absence from a family party.
Photo QMI Agency, Thierry Laforce
The police were quickly able to conclude that the last call received by the victim came from Nicolas Côté. Questioned by investigators, the accused claimed “to have never met the victim”.
Then, on the evening of October 24, 2022, while he was being followed, the accused drove to his girlfriend’s house, then to the parking lot of a school where he had left the body the day before.
They then returned to Nicolas Côté’s house to take a canoe and went to a boat descent in Saint-Basile-le-Grand.
The body of Luc Lafontaine was found in this car, while Nicolas Côté and Zoé Boutin were preparing to transport him in a canoe.
Thierry Laforce / QMI Agency
As Côté and Boutin prepared to put the bags in the boat, the police officers following them made their arrests.
Nicolas Côté will return to court in May to find out the period before which he may be eligible for parole.
Zoé Boutin, 20, pleaded guilty last December to a charge of indignity to a corpse. The Sainte-Catherine resident will return to court next June for her sentence.