Murder of Cédrika Provencher | Jonathan Bettez remains the number one suspect for the police

Despite the years that pass, despite a judge’s criticism of his work, despite a lawsuit for $10 million in damages, the Sûreté du Québec persists and signs: Jonathan Bettez, a 43-year-old resident of Trois-Rivières, remains the main suspect in the murder of little Cédrika Provencher, who disappeared in 2007.

“Jonathan Bettez remains to this day the main suspect in the case concerning the disappearance, kidnapping and murder of a 9-year-old girl,” write the police force’s lawyers in new documents filed in court.

The documents were filed as part of a civil dispute between Mr. Bettez and the authorities. Mr. Bettez and his family are suing the police and the government, demanding $10 million in damages. They claim that the police ruined Mr. Bettez’s life by falsely presenting him as the person responsible for a tragedy that had moved all of Quebec.

Before the case is judged on the merits, the Attorney General of Quebec requested that part of the preliminary hearings in the damages suit take place behind closed doors, to protect its investigative means. It is to this end that police lawyers have just officially reiterated that Mr. Bettez remains the number one suspect. They add that the investigation remains active.

“It raises doubt”

Excerpts from the preliminary examination of a Sûreté du Québec investigator were also filed in court. This returns to the reasons which push the police to suspect Mr. Bettez, still to this day.

Witnesses allowed investigators to determine that Cédrika Provencher had been approached by a man who said he was looking for a dog, before his disappearance. The man was driving a red Acura with several special features. Only six people owned a similar vehicle. Five provided a verifiable alibi.

“There is only one owner who is not capable of giving an alibi. And the owner of this Acura is Mr. Jonathan Bettez,” explained investigator Chantal Daudelin.

Mr. Bettez also refused on several occasions to submit to a polygraph test, the famous “lie detector”.

“The fact of refusing does not prove that he is guilty, I am very aware of that, but it raises doubt,” she added.

“We do, the Security just asks to remove Mr. Bettez, but he does not give us the possibility of doing so,” she laments.

Eyewitnesses would have ruled out Bettez

The police officer said she saw similarities between Mr. Bettez’s face and a sketch created using the memories of witnesses who had seen the man in the red Acura. A resemblance categorically denied by Bettez’s lawyers.

“The composite portraits and physical description of eyewitnesses to the event do not correspond to Jonathan Bettez,” says M^e Jessy Héroux, the lawyer for the Bettez family, in a document filed in court.

M^e Héroux even announces that he will attack this argument during the civil trial. “Eyewitnesses dismissed Jonathan Bettez during an identification parade and indicated that he did not match the person they had seen,” he said.

“A composite portrait remains a composite portrait, but there are similarities, even resemblances,” asserts investigator Daudelin in her preliminary questioning.

She adds that the description of the clothes worn by the man who approached Cédrika Provencher evokes golf attire and that Mr. Bettez claims to have played golf that day.

A deviance that raises doubt

She also returns to one of the most controversial aspects of the investigation targeting Mr. Bettez. In 2015, as Mr. Bettez remained the only Acura owner unable to provide an alibi, the police had the idea to check whether he was consuming child pornography.

Investigators claim to have discovered that the IP address of a computer used by Mr. Bettez, during the hours he had access to it, frequented child pornography file exchange platforms. They also say they discovered traces of files suggesting child pornography which would have been deleted on computer media found in his possession.

Based on this discovery, Mr. Bettez was arrested and charged in connection with child pornography in 2016. The police evidence clearly indicated that the investigators’ actions were linked to the murder of Cédrika Provencher. The name and photo of Mr. Bettez went around Quebec. He says he was unable to return to a normal life and suffered enormously from the label that was attached to him.

In 2018, a judge acquitted Mr. Bettez by ruling that the evidence was insufficient and accusing the police of abusive actions and a “fishing trip”. It was subsequently that Mr. Bettez and his family filed a lawsuit for damages, accusing the police of their actions of “incredible cruelty”.

“The Sûreté du Québec wanted to harm Jonathan Bettez, convinced, despite the absence of reasonable grounds, that he was responsible for the disappearance of Cédrika Provencher,” specifies the prosecution.

But in her preliminary questioning, police officer Daudelin explains that the issue of child pornography seemed relevant in the context of an investigation into the kidnapping and murder of a 10-year-old child.

“It is clearly a deviance which justifies and which raises even more doubt about Mr. Jonathan Bettez,” she said.

Different from the others

“All these elements are elements which mean that in this investigation, Mr. Jonathan Bettez, to this day, is still a suspect. A suspect that we tried repeatedly to be able to rule out. We checked everything, everything, everything. He is far from being the only suspect who was investigated in this case,” insisted the police officer.

“The difference between Mr. Jonathan Bettez and all the others is that all the others were able to corroborate their version, and if not, well they agreed to take polygraph tests,” she declared.

The case will return to court on January 22.