“Former Winnipeg Man Charged with Second-Degree Murder of Crystal Saunders: A Pattern of Disturbing Behavior Revealed”

THE former Winnipeg man who was charged recently for allegedly killing a woman and dumping her body in a ditch in 2007 had been accused of stalking and harassing his ex-fiancée in 2012, after he was criminally convicted of forging her cheques.

The alleged harassment, detailed in a protection order file reviewed Tuesday by the Free Press, is part of a pattern of 42-year-old Kevin Charles Queau’s alarming behaviour toward women, which included convictions and a five-year prison sentence for choking two women — one of whom he sexually assaulted — in British Columbia about six years after the slaying.

Manitoba RCMP announced last Monday that Queau was charged with second-degree murder in the cold-case of 24-year-old Crystal Saunders. He is presumed innocent and is due to appear in Manitoba provincial court on the charge March 4.

Saunders, 24, was last seen alive by an on-duty Winnipeg police officer late on April 18, 2007, getting into a vehicle at Sargent Avenue and Sherbrook Street in the West End.

An off-duty RCMP officer was checking his fur trap line when he found her body in a ditch near St. Ambroise, about 75 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, the next morning.

In March 2012, Queau pleaded guilty in Manitoba provincial court to five counts of forgery and two counts of theft under $5,000. He was given a suspended sentence, probation and ordered to pay $3,800 in restitution.

Queau forged three cheques belonging to his then-fiancée in 2008 and 2010, court heard, but she became aware of his forgery only after their engagement ended sometime in 2010. She alerted Winnipeg police, court heard. Queau, already living in B.C. at that time, was arrested when he arrived on a flight at Winnipeg’s airport in 2011.

In June 2012, Queau’s ex-fiancée applied for a protection order in the Manitoba Court of King’s Bench, alleging he sent her an unusual and unsolicited greeting card, damaged vehicles on her property and left a book titled After Your Relationship Ends on her vehicle on the day of his criminal court proceedings earlier in the year.

The woman wrote in her protection order application that Queau had stalked her over the course of two years, despite not having contact with him, including by calling and stopping by her place of work, damaging two vehicles on her property, stealing items from her porch and sending her items through the mail.

“On a very regular basis, Kevin continues to intimidate me with phone calls at work, visits to my home, mailing inappropriate things to my home address,” the woman wrote. “I have been dealing with this harassment for two years, there is no sign that it will be stopping.”

She wrote that Queau had cut parts under the hood of her car.

In the protection order application, the woman included a photocopy of an anniversary card she said Queau mailed her in 2012 on the date they had planned to marry in 2010.

“To my darling wife,” reads the front of the card, which includes a photograph of a chimpanzee wearing boxer shorts and holding roses. “For our anniversary, I got you a card that’ll remind you of me.”

Vancouver provincial court documents show Queau pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a woman in 2013 and to the aggravated assault of a woman in 2014.

In 2015, he received a five-year sentence and was ordered to provide a DNA sample for a national law enforcement databank. He was put on the sex offender registry for life.

Mounties said technological advancements allowed previously insufficient DNA found on Saunders’ remains to be entered into the DNA databank in 2014. A match was then linked to Queau.

Interviews with people who knew Queau suggested he was violent with other women physically and sexually.

Other court records show Queau has convictions for thefts in Saskatchewan and a forgery in Alberta in 2012. Queau was fined for obstructing a peace officer and for speeding and driving without a licence in Victoria, B.C., in 2013.

Without going into greater detail, RCMP said last week that Saunders and Queau, who was born in Winnipeg, were in contact the night she was last seen.

Her mother said in 2007 her vulnerable daughter had been forced into the sex trade. Her brother said last week he wants the public to remember his 24-year-old sister, who identified as Métis, as a loving and caring young woman, rather than for the challenges she faced in life.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca