by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

Good thing he wasn’t a drinker
A man who doesn’t consider himself a heavy drinker - even though he says he has drunk nine beers a day for the last 40 years - killed his drinking buddy at 6338 Marquette in January. The victim, Jean-Alfred Guay, 55, had a blood alcohol level of .38, usually enough to put a man in a coma. Gérald Lavoie, 62 and also tipsy at the time, says he killed the man before he got beat up himself.

Neighbourhood conspiracy
of poop The pride of Shawinigan, Jean-Guy Brousseau, 70, knifed his 73-year-old neighbour to death in November 2001 because he thought she was involved in a plot to put feces in the drainpipes and he didn’t like the smell. He was acquitted because he is insane.

Justice delayed
It was a bad year for fugitives and others trying to escape the long arm of the law. Gerard Morrissette, 56, had been sought for a double murder 15 years ago. Cops finally found him living in Ontario. While the French were trying Daniel Peyratout, 45, in absentia and sentencing him to 20 years for sexual assault, Canada was busy giving him citizenship. He was busted in Brigham in May after a 12-year manhunt. Monique Goulet, 55, was accused, 17 years later, of having a Hull disc jockey killed in September 1985. Jacques Rousseau allegedly drowned his first wife in West Brôme in 1966 and tried to strangle his second wife behind a Chabanel street clothing factory in 1978. Rousseau had been on the lam throughout the States since 1981, using the stolen identity of a Dallas radio newsreader. He was caught, but not until he ran up a $384,000 (U.S.) hospital bill to treat his Alzheimer’s. Christine Lepage, 47, a funeral home employee, was busted for a 1981 murder in Brossard. Her fingerprints tell us that she allegedly shot Germain Derome, right in front of the now-deceased movie star Julien Bessette. New York cops finally concluded that well-known DJ Alain Montpetit murdered model Marie-Josée Saint-Antoine in June 1982 after she refused to set him up with another female. Montpetit died after having sniffed too much cocaine a little while later. Albert Thibault, a legendary criminal who was most recently sought in connection with importing six tons of cocaine and laundering $5-million in 1992, was found living on l’Île D’Orléans in October.

Kids and their issues
A 10-year-old boy jumped off a second storey alcove in the Longueuil courthouse and his seven-year-old sister repeatedly smashed her head against a wall in October when they learnt their father had been charged with sexual assault.

Love a man in a uniform
Laurent Minier, 25, dressed like a cop and had the word “Police” tattooed on his arms. But he was very conflicted, as he always insulted cops at every turn. He eventually attacked a female cop near his Beauport home with a screwdriver. Cops speculated that Minier’s sore ’cuz he flunked out of police academy. Another cop-o-phile, male stripper Sebastien Langlois, 26, walked around Verdun dressed as a cop, complete with pellet gun, walkie-talkie and fake badge. He was arrested by the real deal in February.

Not your average retirement bash
Carlos Carrascosa was known by his LaSalle bosses to be a great gardener of hydroponic marijuana. But when he decided to retire from his $1,000-a-week job, his two bosses decided they’d have to kill him for knowing too much. But to his bosses’ surprise, he showed up to his goodbye party with four friends. Two of the five were killed and another was injured by the time the evening was out. The duo went on trial this fall.

World o’ drunk drivers
Cop roadblocks to net drunks showed that most people drove sober. South Shore cops had to check 13,622 cars to catch 22 drivers last month, while a July sweep at the Viau bridge saw only one of 667 motorists nabbed for steering while on the sauce. But lots of public figures were nailed for automobile crimes. PQ MNA David Payne was arrested for impaired driving in March, MP Odina Desrochers of the Bloc Québécois faced charges of leaving the scene of an accident in January and Quebec City Liberal MP Jean-Guy Carignan was convicted for a hit-and-run. Alleged mob godfather Vito Rizzuto flunked a breathalyzer in July.

Bad cop! Bad cop!
Cops and ex-cops got their names on the wrong side of the crime ledger en masse this year. Montreal cop Sgt. André Vohl, 41, was arrested for sexual assault while on duty in January, and within a few days SQ officer Pierre Dubord, 45, was slapped with sexual assault and charged with forcibly confining a woman he met through a dating service. Four-and-a-half years of prison were what former RCMP anti-fraud expert Craig Richards was given in January as punishment for using his powers for evil, not good. In February, the police ethics commission blasted Constable Martine Gendron for allowing her dog to maul a man accused of making threats. In March, the police ethics commission cleared François Charron, who shot a flower thief in the back. In April, a 37-year-old off-duty cop with 13 years on the MUC police force was accused of shoplifting in a Beaconsfield grocery store. Former RCMP agent Michel Jarry, 52, was mentally unfit to stand trial for blowing his neighbour’s head off in Ste-Hyacinthe two years earlier. Ex-SQ agent Gaetan Rivest was sued for beating a confession out of a suspect, and Justice Officer Marlène Chalfoun went on trial for hiring hoods to commit sexual assault. In June, Montreal cops announced they were investigating a 25-year-old officer for fabricating evidence. In July, Montreal police were roundly derided for not preventing the murder of Hells’ Steven “Bull” Bertrand at the Tokyo sushi restaurant on Parc even though they were aware that the hit was planned. Michel Usereau, 35, a former Ste-Thérèse cop, was charged with murder in September. In December, former RCMP agent Jocelyn Hotte was convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend.

One all dressed with anchovies, olives and smack
A pizzeria at 820 Atwater was busted for delivering heroin along with the usual fare in January. The heroin was customarily delivered inside the pizza box alongside the mouthwatering slices of the Italian specialty. Owner Hamid Ghazim, 39, and delivery guy Fereidoun Farziani, 35 - who had earlier been busted for arson - were arrested.

Check the fuel gauge on the car you steal
Yannick Leblanc went up to breakneck speeds of 140 km/h while being chased by Victoriaville cops in May. The chase ended when his stolen ’88 Pontiac ran out of gas.

May his fellow inmates do the same to him
In June, Isaac Renquinha, 33, was convicted of the premeditated murder of his girlfriend, Pierrette Charrette, 43, a resident of St-Antoine-des-Laurentides. He killed her out of jealousy with a foot-long wooden dildo. She died of internal injuries. The Supreme Court declared the dildo to be a lethal weapon.

A beautiful trip behind bars: priceless
Steven Singer, 37, of Côte St-Luc had 8,500 credit cards, not all under his name, of course. He phoned elderly Americans and persuaded them to reveal their numbers and then he punched them into a handy machine in his home, which printed the new card. He used around $115,000 of other people’s money to travel the world.

Not a blindingly brilliant heist
A well-known customer attacked and robbed waitress Maryse Grondin, 41, in Hull. The attackers’ lousy strategy was to poke the waitress in the eyes to blind her so she wouldn’t be able to finger him as a witness. She suffered 150 stitches but is more or less all right now. Her assailant was arrested in March.

A thousand ways to haul off a bank machine
In January, thieves smashed into a bank machine in Two Mountains. A few days later, a crew used a metal-cutting chainsaw to rip off a bank machine in Place Longueuil in the middle of the night. Also in January, a man was caught pulling a bank machine from a wall with his car in St-Gilles, a crime that was imitated a few days later in Quebec City. In October, thieves used a tractor to steal a cash machine from a movie theatre in St-Eustache.

Dangerous hurdles of justice
Last year Michael Kibbe died jumping over a wall trying to escape the Guy police station last year. The exact same thing happened again when a 19-year-old man ran off from cops and scaled the wall, but this one survived a 3.5-metre tumble in October.

It’s warmer in the middle of the road
A man was killed on a Drummondville street in November. No big surprise, considering the 57 year old was lying in the middle of the street when somebody drove over him at 3:30 a.m.

We love this car, we’ll take it now
In August, a couple in their 40s took a Nissan out for a test drive from a dealership in Pointe-Claire. The prospective purchasers sped off in the vehicle.

Cattle rustlers hit Quebec
Somebody stole two cows, shot five in the head and carved up four in October at Réjean Choinière’s farm in the Eastern Townships.

Not your average anonymous dick
A horseshoe tattoo on his genitalia did in Patrice Leonard, who was fingered by four hookers he had allegedly attacked. The sex labourers all were able to describe the words written in his groin area, which led him to the slammer in November.

Land on this, motherfucker!
In November, vandals in a pick-up truck smashed up much of the Raëlian’s UFO landing pad in the Eastern Townships, causing $100,000 in damage.

Monster car chases
Sixteen St-Eustache cops pursued a front-end loader in a bizarre chase. The truck was trying to abscond from the scene of a crime. Cops fired away with great gusto at the slow-moving vehicle on a memorable November day.

He won’t have a leg to stand on in court
A Montrealer was busted in Toronto bringing a kilo of cocaine into the country inside his false leg in August.

Teachers not so perverted
after all A substitute teacher convicted of molesting 16 children in one morning had his sentence overturned in August. The Appeals Court judge pointed out that even the most depraved pervert couldn’t have acted that fast. Chicoutimi school teacher Jean Gagnon was cleared of a similar conviction. His false accuser landed 23 months in a correctional institution. Her original complaint against the teacher had been lifted word for word from a book called Quand j’avais douze ans.

Criminals taking an active part in their capture
In July, a man walked into a police station and started asking lots and lots of questions about the investigation of a 14-year-old murdered two months earlier in Rivières-des-Prairies. Two months later, the cops realized that the guy seemed pretty suspicious, but they couldn’t find him anymore. Cops were swifter in March when Robin Leblanc, 24, popped into a Laval cop shop to complain that police had been harassing him too often. The nervous lad was quickly recognized as the dead ringer for a police sketch of somebody who had been molesting young girls. He had allegedly fondled a 12-year-old girl while he posed as an undercover cop who was arresting her for shoplifting.

The winning ways of a young axe murderer
Simon Chamberland, who chopped up his grandma with an axe in Ste-Marie de Beauce, made his mark anew when he tried to murder a 66-year-old fellow inmate in March. The victim, a sex offender, was permanently disfigured.

Sex tourists for Christ
Two New Jersey priests visiting the city were busted for trying to pick up underage male prostitutes in July. They face upcoming criminal charges.

The ol’ cash and carry
A thief with a bizarre m.o. made an interesting debut on Montreal’s crime scene this May when he introduced Montrealers to the trunk-method of robbery, as he demonstrated in a Kirkland parking lot. The robber would steal from a victim, toss him in the trunk and then drive around with him in the trunk for a while. He did it at least three times.

A career in broadcast journalism awaits
Two ham radio guys broke into a Montreal police radio frequency in January and proceeded to mock, taunt, swear at and otherwise impugn the dignity of our local constabulary for a full 90 minutes.

Can he have his testicles back then?
Jacques Corneau, a convicted child molester, had his testicles removed in hopes that the authorities would allow him out of prison. The Supreme Court of Canada said no, he’ll have to serve out his sentence all the same.

The high cost of table dances
In April, Josée “Samantha” Dubreuil, 26, a blonde stripper at the Pigalle in Gatineau, was convicted of stealing a $124,000-winning lottery ticket from her boyfriend, who had previously paid for her breast implants. The boyfriend, Terry Leblanc, 35, of Toronto, had won a total of $10-million, mostly in sports lottos. He had given Dubreuil $14,000 for her implants, although he had apparently never actually slept with her. The two discussed marriage, which she told him would cost $75,000. After she hooked up with another guy, Leblanc got a secretly taped confession of the theft. Dubreuil still claimed in court that the winning ticket was a gift. The judge was unimpressed.

Wrench the bench
Thieves seeking scrap metal stole the aluminum from park benches in Campbell, Gadbois Vinet and Argenson Parks in Little Burgundy in May. •