This guy scared the police because of his coolness, his calm, his… I hate to say the word, but I’m going to say it anyway: of his efficiency. This guy was a ghost for years, a ghost that carried out violent home robberies in the Montreal area.
He entered most often in the middle of the night, or in the evening, always taking his victims by surprise: “Money, jewelry”, he ordered, at the point of the revolver.
And when he was resisted, he would shoot.
Results of two waves of robberies in 2006 and 2009: one dead, several injured, even more traumatized citizens.
The police finally discovered his name in 2013, seven years after his first home robberies: Septimus Neverson.
The first time I wrote about this ghost that escaped police investigators was in 2010. I had put end to end information which circulated in the ranks of the police force to tell to the readers of Press details of a spectacular and terrifying hostage-taking in the summer of 2009.
That night, in Côte-des-Neiges, the assailant had used a hostage as a human shield to push back the first police officer called to the scene, after he had shot the man of the house in the stomach …
The hostage was a 10-year-old child.
Neverson ended up being captured by the police in Trinidad and Tobago, at the request of the team of Quebec police officers who eventually identified him, thanks to DNA evidence corroborated by a crucial testimony, that of a man who knew Neverson was committing these heists from home.
For years, these police officers from the joint serial crime investigation management squad (GECS) led by investigator Pascal Côté, from the SPVM, had virtually no clue allowing them to link these crimes to a suspect…
In fact, they didn’t have a suspect.
They knew the man was black. That he had a Caribbean accent. One victim was categorical: he had a Trinidad and Tobago accent.
They had a ladder left behind at the scene of the summer 2009 hostage-taking. Ladder that led to a blurry image of the suspect buying this ladder from a Montreal hardware store.
And in Laval, two police officers – an investigator and a forensic identity technician – particularly excited discovered a tiny fiber of tissue containing the suspect’s DNA …
But this DNA was not contained in any database in America.
In short, these scattered clues led to nothing and no one.
The ghost that killed, injured and traumatized so many people from 2006 to 2013 therefore remained elusive.
What I’m telling you here is what I’m telling you in more detail in the documentary series The persuit, which ends on Radio-Canada this Saturday evening, a series conceived by my comrades Manuelle Légaré and André Saint-Pierre. As soon as he read my 2010 paper on the hostage-taking, producer Guillaume Lespérance wanted to bring this story to the screen. It will have taken 11 years.
Neverson was eventually captured when an acquaintance reported him to the police in 2013. He asked to see an investigator who had multiple sources in the criminal community, Fayçal Djelidi.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, PRESS ARCHIVES
Investigator Fayçal Djelidi (right)
The man denounced Neverson, and the details he gave to Djelidi and her partner Bob Hargassner in 2013 suddenly breathed new life into the hunt for Neverson, the domino that brought down all the pieces of the investigation.
The theme song of The persuit is Here Comes the River, by Montrealer Patrick Watson, a work that evokes lives in turmoil. It was Manuelle Légaré’s idea. I quote a passage, which I translate:
No one told you it would be so hard
Something rumbles behind your eyes
You are lost, but you hang on … losing your footing
There ain’t no word in this world that will ease your pain
Occasionally
It will fall on your shoulders
But you’re going to stay standing, through it all …
When someone is violently killed, the shock wave hits dozens of people. When Jacques Sénécal was killed in Laval for having resisted Neverson in 2006, his son and his wife were the most shocked, of course. They were in the house.
But Jacques’ brother Denis, more than 100 km away, suffered just as much from the shock wave. These two were more than brothers: they were best friends. When Jacques was killed, Denis’ life trajectory was permanently altered.
He lost his zest for life for years. No one had told Denis Sénécal that life would be so hard.
And that no words could ease such pain.
The persuit also gave voice to the police officers who hunted down this ghost that was Neverson. The police are a highly perfectible institution, often criticized. Sometimes unfairly, sometimes quite rightly. I was personally impressed by the relentlessness the police used in hunting down Neverson for years, of course motivated by the search for justice …
But also motivated by this desire to bring comfort to dozens of victims traumatized by the ghost. Determined to relieve the shock wave caused by the Neverson phantom.
I was able to speak, for this series, to human and meticulous investigators. I’m glad our society can count on people like that to hunt down people like Neverson.
I wish I could have spoken to Neverson. He refused all of our interview requests, from his Quebec prison, where he hopes his appeal will be accepted. He is serving a life sentence for his crimes.
In Port of Spain, I was able to speak to the Trinidadian police officer who arrested Neverson, under an international arrest warrant. He showed us the corner where he apprehended the suspect. The shooting took place under the surveillance of armed police: the investigator would not have returned to this neighborhood without them. This country is grappling with major issues of violence, linked to poverty in the archipelago.
We also met Neverson’s wife, Gillian. She lives in a slum, in one of the harshest areas of the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, a very, very poor country.
The fruit of Neverson’s crimes, it was she who received it. She told me she didn’t know how Neverson got the money he sent her from Montreal. I believe her.
Thousands of immigrants work hard – and legally – in Canada to support their families, in their countries of origin. It is an admirable and good gesture. Neverson chose to support his wife in the meanest possible way.
Since Neverson has been imprisoned, his wife has not received any money. Gillian lives in even harsher poverty in Port of Spain. In her own way, this woman is a victim, too.
And since she gave an interview to the team of The persuit, Gillian has heard no more from Septimus Neverson. He now refuses to speak to her.
There are people whose hearts and souls are unfathomably dark.