After having gone through the legal version of a rollercoaster ride over the past 15 years, a former cop recently changed his perspective and finally admitted he murdered a man while the victim’s fiancé watched in horror.
“I regret what happened that night. I will regret it for the rest of my life,” Michel Usereau, 50, said through tears at the Montreal courthouse on Friday after he pleaded guilty to murdering Jean-Jacques Melkonian on March 20, 2001. He also pleaded guilty to assaulting Melkonian’s fiancé, Stéphanie Fragman, with a firearm. As part of a joint statement of facts submitted to Superior Court Justice Marc David on Friday, Usereau claims he and Melkonian struggled before he shot him and that Fragman was shot by accident during the struggle.
Usereau was a police officer working part-time north of Montreal when he opted to work full-time for a security firm, where he had recently been promoted in 2001. Melkonian was fired from the same company when Usereau was promoted. Following his departure, Melkonian formed his own security firm and competed for contracts with Usereau. As part of his guilty plea, Usereau claims that two weeks before the homicide, Melkonian threatened him because he felt Usereau was using unfair practices to outbid his upstart business.
“According to Mr. Usereau, the climate of threats and tension brought upon paranoia in him to a point where he procured a firearm and kept it with him at all times,” lawyers from both sides of the case stated in the document submitted to David.
“I wasn’t there to kill him. I went there to intimidate him. I regret it,” Usereau said in his final words to the judge. With the guilty plea, Usereau automatically received a life sentence. David agreed with a joint recommendation, made by prosecutor Catherine Perreault and defence lawyer Patrick Davis, that Usereau’s parole eligibility be set at 15 years. He was arrested in September 2002, which means he can request a hearing before the Parole Board of Canada as soon as possible.
After the hearing, Davis told reporters Usereau decided to plead guilty because his perspective recently changed after having spent years fighting the charges he faced.
Before David agreed with the sentence recommendation, Usereau was put through an unusual situation where Fragman decided to look him in the face while she delivered the final part of her victim-impact statement. What she said while facing Usereau was incomprehensible because she sobbed as she said it. But Usereau appeared to get the message. He broke down and cried after she did.
Before breaking down in tears, Fragman told David that she and Melkonian were to be married in August 2001.
“Instead I went to the cemetery (on what was supposed to be the wedding day) dressed in black, instead of white as a bride should be,” she said, while adding she feels fortunate to have built a new life after seeing it be destroyed by Usereau in 2001. She said she has married and has two young sons who have no idea what happened to her in the past. She said her boys have yet to see a movie, or played a video game, that involves someone carrying a firearm.
The following is a chronology of Usereau’s case:
February 1999: Usereau was hired by the Ste-Thérèse police on a probationary basis. He was also employed by a security firm. In February 2001, he turned down an offer to join the police force on a permanent basis and opted to stick with the security firm.
March 20, 2001: Melkonian, 29, was fatally shot just before midnight outside his home on Drolet St. Fragman, then 26, was shot in the shoulder while she struggled with Usereau. During the struggle, Fragman managed to tear the hood off Usereau’s winter jacket and it was left at the scene of the shooting. A firearm was recovered along a path that an eyewitness said the shooter used to flee the scene.
Early September 2002: Montreal police investigators asked Usereau for a sample of his DNA. The sample of blood Usereau gave to investigators provided an exact match to one of three DNA samples recovered from the hood of the jacket.
Sept. 26, 2002: Usereau was charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder.
Jan. 13, 2005: Usereau’s first trial before a jury began.
Jan. 23, 2005: At around 4:30 p.m., Montreal Det-Sgt. Denis Matteau, the lead investigator in the homicide investigation, used his own service revolver to end his life inside the headquarters where he worked for the major crimes unit in Place Versailles. It was a Sunday and Matteau had been scheduled to testify the following morning. Before he shot himself, he talked over the phone with his superior officer and his brother-in-law and said he was concerned about the case. He was specifically concerned over notes he had taken concerning another potential suspect in the murder. Matteau told his superior officer he had written out two versions of the information and was concerned he would be grilled over the differences between them if he were to be cross-examined by Usereau’s lawyer.
Jan. 26, 2005: The presiding judge in Usereau’s first trial declared a mistrial due to Matteau’s suicide.
Oct. 25, 2005: In a second trial, a jury found Usereau guilty of first-degree murder and attempted murder.
May 6, 2010: The Quebec Court of Appeal overturned the jury’s verdict and ordered a third trial.
May 17, 2010 to Oct. 28, 2015: The case was stalled over the course of more than 40 hearing dates held at the Montreal courthouse, including several to determine which attorney would represent Usereau in his third trial.
pcherry@postmedia.com
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