Mason Tex Montgrand, 21, died of multiple stab wounds on August 16th, 2011.
Montgrand was Edmonton's thirty-fourth homicide victim of the year.
Lance Matthew Shane Regan, 24, was charged with first-degree murder.
For the second time in 2011, city homicide detectives had to deal with a death at the Edmonton Institution.
On February 26th, 45-year-old Gyozo Victor Barasso had been stabbed in a what was said to be a gang-related killing.
Four months later, police charged five inmates in connection with Barasso's death after a nation-wide investigation.
Two of the men were charged with first-degree murder, while the three others faced charges of being accessories to murder after the fact and obstruction of justice.
The latest call came in at about 7:00 p.m. on August 16th after a 21-year-old man had died.
There was no cause of death initially indicated but reports quickly circulated that he was still alive when prison staff found him suffering from stab wounds.
The inmate went into medical distress and staff administered cardio-pulmonary resuscitation. He was declared dead a short time later.
While officials said little at first, media broke the story that the aboriginal man's death involved a fight between rival gangs inside G-unit, a cellblock used to house troublesome inmates.
Corrections Canada spokesman Rick Dyhm soon confirmed that the fight had been caught on videotape and that it took place on a unit that houses members of different gangs.
"Both of the individuals in question were gang members – different gangs," Dyhm said.
"But we were of the opinion they were able to co-exist as gang members."
Dyhm said the man had only been at Edmonton Institution since July 4th and that he was a member of the Scorpion Brothers gang based in Saskatchewan.
He was thought to be involved a fight with a member of the Terror Squad, another Saskatchewan gang (see item below).
"At this point we don't know what was the precipitating event in terms of this assault," Dyhm said.
"The inmates were on that unit having showers and there was an altercation between two of them.
"It may not have had anything to do with gang affiliation. It may have been a personal issue," Dyhm said.
"We've had a lot of murders over the years, and it's 'I don't like you, you don’t like me.' "
Dyhm also confirmed the apparent cause of death.
"The individual had puncture wounds, so there was some type of object involved," he said.
"Given my experience, those are the types of weapons that are predominant with our prison population."
Dyhm said the victim was not sharing a cell with the inmate he fought and had not committed any acts of major concern for prison staff.
The other inmate involved in the fight was placed in segregation.
It was later revealed that when prison staff noticed the fight, they first used a loudspeaker to tell inmates to stop and then fired tear gas into the area.
The federal facility, originally built in 1978 to house 222 prisoners (and known locally as the "Max"), was placed under lockdown as Corrections Canada and Edmonton police investigated. An additional external investigator could also be brought in later.
According to Dyhm, 277 inmates were being housed at the time of the man's death, including about 90 serving out life sentences. The spokesman said the prison can hold 305 through double-bunking.
Inmate advocates were not only concerned with over-crowding issues but the changing nature of prison populations – read more »
In addition to Barasso's death in February, 59-year-old Barry Raymond Stewart died in an Edmonton Remand Centre cell on May 12th after being stomped on the head 15 times allegedly by a cellmate a psychologist recommended be housed alone due to an unstable mental condition.
On June 19th, 38-year-old David Tung Louie was stabbed inside Bowden Institution, a medium security federal penitentiary housing 557 inmates, 100 kilometres north of Calgary – read more »
Louie had been at Bowden since January 2010, serving a 12-year sentence for a variety of weapons, drugs and robbery offences stemming from a violent home invasion committed in Calgary in 2003.
Louie had earlier been ordered deported in February 1994 following a weapons conviction in 1992.
A spokesman for Canada Border Services Agency said criminal matters are given priority over deportation matters, so sometimes the ousting of those ordered deported is delayed to deal with other issues first.
Louie appealed his deportation order in 1994.
In October 1997, the appeal was abandoned as Louie did not show up to a hearing and mail sent to his address was returned.
In 1998, the appeal was resurrected and Louie was scheduled for a hearing in November of that year.
But prior to the hearing, the federal government provided information that Louie had lost his right to appeal and by January 1999, the case was officially dismissed, meaning his deportation order from five years earlier stood.
But Louie ran afoul of the law in 2003 and was back in court in two years later – this time facing 19 charges in connection with the Calgary home invasion robbery.
Police charged Bowden inmate Keith Clinton Sandmaier, 33, with second-degree murder in Louie's death.
The former Sherwood Park man was serving a sentence for assaulting a police officer, obstruction, impaired driving and theft over $5,000.
 |
"A prison sentence shouldn't be a death sentence," Maureen Collins of the John Howard Society said.
Collins said the recent jailhouse violence could be a symptom of overcrowding but also a change in inmate demographics.
"You have a lot of older people in jail and a lot of very young people who may have strong gang affiliations," she said.
"There is a real incompatibility within the prison population. The old 'Con Code' is being eroded and that makes it more unsettled for everyone on the inside."
Corrections Canada spokesman Rick Dyhm said measures were taken to ensure inmate compatibility.
He said prisoners are interviewed during the admission process and separated to various units based on known or suspected gang affiliations.
The institution then monitors each prisoner's gang status for changes, and has preventive security staff tasked with intercepting prisoner communications, such as phone calls and mail.
"We have constant vigilance in terms of our prison population and what plans they have," Dhym said.
"We're a maximum-security penitentiary. We've got numerous different gangs, so we work at separating them.
"There's always security concerns and issues at a maximum-security penitentiary.
"We are always trying to do whatever we can to ensure something like this does not happen," Dyhm said.
"But we've got 280 maximum-security inmates and they are maximum-security inmates for a reason."
In January 2011, the federal government identified the Max as one of nearly 30 prisons slated for expansion under its tough-on-crime agenda. $35 million was committed to add 96 beds by 2014.
About 400 staff work at the facility.
Before the autopsy and notification of next of kin had been completed, police chief Rod Knecht referred to the death as Edmonton's 34th homicide of 2011 during an unrelated media interview on Global Edmonton the morning after officers were first called.
In addition to revealing that the inmate's death was a murder, Knecht said despite the year's high homicide rate Edmontonians didn't need to be concerned.
"We know that 50% of them are people that know each other quite well," Knecht said, likely not aware of the irony of his remarks.
"50% of them are happening behind closed doors, they are not in public places so you know Edmonton is a safe city."
But that a murder could be committed behind the closed doors of a maximum security prison might seem surprising at first – read more »
"They are incredibly creative," Corrections Canada spokesman Rick Dyhm said of his charges.
"They have 24 hours a day, seven days a week to think of things."
Dyhm said anything that can be carried – including plastic bags – could be fashioned into something lethal.
"You name it – they can make a weapon out of it."
Dyhm said prison staff do their best to control potentially lethal items.
"These guys are in maximum security for a reason – they're young, violent, aggressive and a significant number are involved in gangs," he said.
"It's an ongoing process. As we become aware of things that can be weaponised, we do something about it."
Edmonton security instructor Oliver Salvador said criminals will always find a way, converting baseball caps, credit cards – even paper – into an instrument of death.
"A hardened criminal is your worst nightmare, because he learned in prison how to make a weapon out of anything," he said.
But a piece of paper?
"Depending on how you fold it, you could slash a throat with it, absolutely," Salvador said.
 |
A day later, on August 18th, police officially announced that 21-year old Mason Tex Montgrand had died of multiple stab wounds.
While the investigation into Montgrand's death was still underway, police said charges were pending against a fellow inmate.
On August 26th, police announced they had charged 24-year-old Lance Matthew Shane Regan with first-degree murder in connection with Montgrand's death.
No details about what Regan was serving time for at the Max were given. Police also did not confirm whether or not Regan was the inmate initially suspected in the killing or if he had gang ties.
Court records indicated Montgrand was serving 13 years and six months for a list of convictions, including manslaughter, aggravated assault, break and enter, forcible confinement, using an imitation firearm while committing an indictable offence, assaulting a peace officer, assault causing bodily harm and failure to comply with a probation order.
The La Loche, Saskatchewan man last spoke to his mother a week before he died – read more »
"He told me, 'Don't worry about me mom – I'll be OK,' " Helen Montgrand said from her Saskatchewan home.
"I was worried about him."
Montgrand's family never had the chance to visit Mason during the six weeks since he was transferred to Edmonton but they kept in regular contact by phone.
Helen said her son often spoke of fights inside the prison.
"This is hard for me," she said. "I'm gonna miss him."
Montgrand came from a large family, with three sisters and a brother, several aunts and numerous cousins.
The family brought his body back to La Loche for burial.
The Saskatchewan-based Scorpion Brothers and Terror Squad gangs were formed when rival First Nations started to mix inside that province's correctional system – read more »
La Loche, a town of of 2,400 about 580 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, has been identified by RCMP as a "hot spot" for criminal activity.
Despite the town's size, the RCMP detachment handles more than 9,000 investigations annually.
According to the May 30th, 2008, edition of the RCMP newsletter The Gazette – a quarterly publication circulated to accredited police forces and agencies within the criminal justice system – the Scorpions are La Loche's "top gang."
The gang was formed in 2006 inside the Prince Albert Correctional Centre when prisoners of Dene descent attempted to protect themselves against dominant Cree-based gangs.
The Scorpion Brothers took control inside the prison and later took a similar hold over La Loche.
Incarcerated members usually return to the community upon release and use their made-in-prison connections to sell and traffic drugs in the region.
"La Loche is an institutionalised community," Cpl. Carrie Boone wrote in The Gazette, saying its residents are regularly in and out of correctional facilities – with many families having two or three generations in custody.
"It's almost like a status symbol here, going to jail."
Barry Mayoros, a security intelligence officer at the Prince Albert Correctional Centre, said policing is tough in a community where the gang, prison, and native cultures are deeply entwined.
In June 2010, a 29-year-old man, Matthew St. Pierre, was shot twice in the face with a sawed-off shotgun across the street from the La Loche RCMP detachment on Main Street in a killing police said was likely gang-related.
Two men charged in the death were said to have snuck up on the man with the weapon hidden and readyin a baby stroller.
The 29-year-old man's 13-year-old niece was hit in a drive-by shooting the previous summer.
The girl's father said that – despite numerous witnesses – no one came forward because people in La Loche were afraid of gang retaliation. He also felt one of the men charged was responsible for both shootings.
The 29-year-old man's mother was named Annette Montgrand. Whether she was related to Mason could not be established.
Given that the shotgun had been allegedly concealed inside the stroller, Annette felt charges of first-degree murder – which carry the elements of pre-meditation and planning – were warranted instead.
RCMP figure there could be up to 100 gang members living around the village and that their influence would spread with a permanent road between La Loche and Fort McMurray, Alberta, in the works.
Terror Squad claims to be Saskatoon's top street team after having edged out the Indian Posse, Crazy Cree and Native Syndicate gangs – all based out of Winnipeg – off the police blotter.
return to story
 |
The Edmonton Institution is no stranger to homicide – read more »
In August 1986, Richard Roche was found stabbed to death.
On December 27th, 1992, 27-year-old Peter Patrick Brideau was stabbed to death with a home-made icepick.
On April 23rd, 1993, 28-year-old Ri Hou 'Ricky' Luo – serving time for manslaughter – was strangled to death.
On April 14th, 1996, 33-year-old Douglas Parenteau was found dead in his cell after suffering 49 stab wounds.
On January 16th, 2000, after Joesph Garon attacked Jason Kerr with a makeshift knife in the prison's dining room, Kerr stabbed Garon in the head with a sharpened spoon.
Kerr was acquitted of the killing because it was decided he acted in self-defence.
On October 24th, 2002, Roland Simard was found strangled in his cell.
Three masked inmates were seen leaving Simard’s cell shortly before his body was found.
Prison guards knew who the masked inmates were, but no charges were laid because it was impossible to prove Simard hadn't been killed earlier by somebody else.
A fatality inquiry later suggested the need for video surveillance in the facility.
In addition, there have been 11 serious injury incidents over the past two decades – 90% of them stabbings, the other 10% involving stranglulation.
In May 1993, two inmates were stabbed three times each from behind with a fashioned icepick before they had a chance to eat breakfast.
In August 1994, a guard was seriously hurt during a stabbing, resulting in attempted murder charges.
In February 1996, a 27-year-old inmate was set on fire and stabbed several times in the chest.
In May 1996, a prisoner was stabbed 19 times and survives. A man stabbed 24 times also cheated death in August 2008.
Prior to Barry Raymond Stewart's death on May 12th, 2011, the Edmonton Remand Centre in the city's downtown had recorded only a single murder in its 32-year history.
On September 10th, 2005, 40-year-old Todd Stevenson was found beaten to death inside his cell in the centre's maximum security wing.
Stevenson was in pre-trial custody facing charges of possession of stolen property under $5,000 and possession of marijuana stemming an incident initially handled by Stony Plain RCMP.
The inmate was taken to hospital suffering cardiac arrest, which was later determined to have been caused by severe head trauma.
Ironically, police had the suspect in Edmonton's 25th homicide of 2005 in custody – but they never figured out who he was and no charges were laid in the death.
In its first three years of operation, the Max also saw four successful escapes – including two, almost exactly a year apart, pulled off by the same man – read more »
Richard Carlson
On April 11th, 1980, convicted bank robber Richard Carlson managed to stash himself inside a penitentiary vehicle and was driven out of the facility.
But Carlson had tipped his hand when he asked for, and received, permission to marry his fiancee while out on an upcoming escorted pass. Apparently, the pass didn't come soon enough and Carlson decided to grant himself his own unescorted pass.
Police knew immediately where to start looking for the Bonnie Doon bank robber. They put surveillance on his girlfriend and she led them directly to Carlson. His freedom had lasted just six hours.
Allan Charles Pratt
The next man to make his way out of the big house was Allan Charles Pratt.
Back in April 1979, Pratt had been given a day pass from the Drumheller Penitentiary. He forgot to go back.
Pratt soon met up with Robert William Brackenbury, a Calgary man out on parole.
On April 10th, police found the body of Mark Franjic, a high school student, and his mother Edith, 59, in the bedrooms of their Edmonton home.
Detectives said Mark had "met a very violent death." He had been beaten, strangled and had his throat sawed open with a serrated kitchen knife.
Edith was also beaten nearly to death. She was found unconscious and was taken to hospital where she was initially listed in serious condition.
The attackers left the house with the gas stove turned on, the pilot light blown out and a candle lit. The hoped-for explosion, expected to destroy evidence, didn't happen.
Within days, Pratt and Brackenbury, both 24, were charged with second-degree murder and attempted murder.
While awaiting trial, the pair were held at the Fort Saskatchewan Correctional Institute. That's where they met up with the aforementioned Richard Carlson.
The trio hatched a plot in May 1979 to trigger a riot that would cover the planned escape of Carlson and Brackenbury and three other prisoners.
Pratt, already known for having psychiatric problems, went on a rage, throwing coffee, ripping a phone off the wall, smashing a TV against the bars of his cell and setting mattresses on fire.
Meanwhile, Carlson and Brackenbury and the three others cut a hole in the jail's wire perimeter fence and headed for nearby Fort Saskatchewan on foot.
There they hijacked a truck camper from a family in a supermarket parking lot. As chance would have it, an RCMP officer was nearby gassing up his cruiser. He rushed to apprehend the men but they sped off.
When the quintet's exit was blocked by a freight train, they ditched the truck and hopped the train instead hoping to turn a lemon into lemonaid.
But their plans went sour went CN police arrested two of the men, including Brackenbury.
Carlson and another prisoner were picked up at an Edmonton house a few days later, and the fifth escapee was tracked down in Thunder Bay, Ontario, a month later.
And should the name Brackenbury ring a bell, Robert's brother Curt enjoyed a lacklustre professional hockey career.
After five years with the WHA-era Quebec Nordiques, Curt cracked the big league playing 72 games (two goals, nine assists) over two seasons for the NHL's Edmonton Oilers before returning to the minors.
Meanwhile, Allan Charles Pratt was found guilty of Mark Franjic's murder and the attempted murder of his mother. He received a life sentence to be served at the Edmonton Institution.
But Pratt apparently had other plans, some that included journalism, and he served as editor of the prison's newspaper called Midnight Express – a slang term referring to an escape attempt and the title of a popular 1978 movie.
In the fall of 1981, while helping prepare the prison's gym for events related to a rodeo planned for the next day, Pratt disappeared.
It was the first rodeo held in a maximum-security Canadian prison, and Pratt missed it.
Prison officials declared Pratt AWOL at the 4:00 p.m. head count on September 10th, 1981. It wasn't until four days later that they conceded he had escaped.
After forty days of freedom, Pratt was recaptured without incident in Vancouver's Gastown district. For his escape, he was sentenced to a year to be served concurrently with his life sentence.
How Pratt managed to break out was never revealed. Authorities refused to provide details, saying the "unique" plot might be used at another jail if it became known.
In August 2009, Pratt was given full parole after serving 30 years behind bars.
Harvey Andres
The third and fourth escapes from the Max proved to be the most costly, not only in terms of the prison's repuation but for the crimes committed while an inmate was on the lam.
A former Grim Reapers motorcycle gang member, 32-year-old Harvey Andres was serving 25 years without parole for the 1976 murder and sexual assault of Winfield, British Columbia, resident Shirley Ann Baker.
On March 12th, 1981, Andres managed to toss himself into a prison garbage truck and make good his escape.
The law caught up to Andres on April 19th in Calgary after city police and Mounties opened fire on a light blue Ford Pinto he was riding in with three other people.
When the bullets rang out on 12th Avenue and 8th Street S.W., Andres was hit on the right side and RCMP Sgt. Ray Forsythe, who been tailing the fugitive in an unmarked car, was wounded in his upper left chest.
In court it was learned that while the convict did not fire a shot from the .357 magnum revolver he was carrying, he did reach for the gun as police closed in. It was later determined that Sgt. Forsythe had been shot instead by friendly cross-fire.
In addition to charges of escaping lawful custody, Andres also had to answer to possessing an unregistered restricted weapon and possessing a firearm with a defaced or removed serial number.
Back at the Max, Andres plotted his next escape. He waited only 364 days to pull it off, perhaps relying on Mother Nature to provide the timing.
On March 11th, 1982, at the height of a raging snowstorm the likes of which hadn't been seen in years, Andres and four other prisoners attempted to scale a perimeter wall.
The storm was so bad it kept tradesmen and visitors at the institution overnight.
What Andres didn't know was that new electronic measures had been put in place, partially due to his last escape.
Guards were alerted and quickly spotted the five men. One escapee was shot in the leg while three others surrendered on the spot. But Andres persisted, cutting his way through a wire fence to freedom.
When the escape was made known, authorities said Andres was likely in possession of a hangun – the origin of which was never disclosed.
Although it wasn't known at the time, the former inmate was then responsible for a crime-spree in the city where he had been previously captured.
"Between April 26 and June 3, 1982, a dark shadow loomed over the city of Calgary," Crown prosecutor Larry Stein said in October 2001.
It was 19 years before police in the southern Alberta city charged Andres with murder and numerous other offences committed after his escape. It took that long for advances in DNA technology to catch up to the felon.
But it was in 1982 when Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, police caught up to Andres during the investigation of a bungled hostage-taking.
Andres had bound and gagged the wife of a local food chain manager inside her home when a neighbour called in a report of a suspicious man.
When officers closed in, Andres gave chase through yards and over fences while shooting at police with a Ruger .44 magnum handgun. An unarmed law student from the University of Saskatchewan working for police in a summer program was shot in the arm.
Andres, wearing a black wig, took four .38-calibre bullets in the chest, abdomen and arm after he was cornered outside a shopping mall dry-cleaning store.
The injured man said he was Robert Stanley Glasgow, but his fingerprints said he was wanted by Edmonton police.
Andres received a concurrent 20-year term for the shootout with Saskatoon authorities and ended up serving his time at a maximum security prison in Saskatchewan.
But that wasn't the end of Andres' run-ins with the law.
As he sat in his Prince Albert digs, over 50 Calgary police investigators combed their way through a number of cold case files from the early 1980s.
By September 1999, prosecutors were ready and charged Andres with first-degree murder, attempted murder, five counts of rape, two counts of assault causing bodily harm, six counts of unlawful confinement, four counts of robbery, two counts of arson and three counts of break and enter.
The charges stemmed from the spring and summer of 1982 when a man dubbed the Ski Mask rapist was breaking into homes across Calgary.
On one occasion, a middle-aged mother and her 22-year-old daughter were raped in their home at gunpoint. The assailant also started a fire in their basement after tying up the older woman and her crippled husband.
The crime that ultimately sealed Andres' fate took place on May 23rd, 1982 when 17-year-old Shirley Ann Johnston was sexually assaulted and then locked in a closet. Her home was then set on fire.
Arson investigators who discovered Johnston's body later testified that the woman had managed to claw her way through the drywall surrounding the closet before her attempt to escape the inferno was stopped by a metal chimney.
Johnston's cause of death was asphyxiation due to smoke inhalation and carbon-monoxide poisoning. She was found curled in a fetal position and clutching a floral sheet on the floor of the closet, her fingers raw.
The trace amounts of DNA evidence collected from the woman's vaginal area was submitted to a private lab in 1989 and provided a 99.9% match to Harvey Andres.
However, Calgary police felt the evidence had to meet more rigorous standards. In April 1990, the samples were submitted to the RCMP's forensic crime lab in Ottawa who determined they were suitable for DNA analysis but not with the technology of the day.
The material remained frozen until RCMP technicians were able to narrow the match between Andres and the samples to one in 560 million.
At trial, the Crown was also able to link Andres to other cases based on "similar fact evidence," trademarks unique to a specific set of crimes.
Held back from public police reports in connection with the Ski Mask rapist assaults was that telephone mouthpieces had been removed during the crimes, preventing victims from being able to easily call authorities.
Also cited was the use of a .44 calibre revolver during the assaults. The gun had been stolen in an early Calgary robbery and was later found in Andres's possession when he was arrested in Sasaktoon.
On November 3rd, 2001, Harvey Harold Andres was found guilty of first-degree murder and arson.
A Calgary judge imposed another automatic life sentence without parole for 25 years that took effect from Andres' arrest on those charges in September 1999.
Andres would be 76 before he was eligible for any type of parole and, because he was a two-time murderer, was not eligible to apply for parole under the faint hope clause after serving 15 years.
The often-convicted man showed no emotion when the verdict was read. Andres appealed, but the Alberta Court of Appeal upheld the earlier convictions in a unanimous decision that left little ground for further recourse.
In April 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled they had no reason to entertain an appeal on Andres' behalf.
As Andres had only been convicted on one count of first-degree murder and one count of arson in connection with the Calgary crimes, the Crown had to decide on whether to proceed on the remaining near two-dozen charges.
The problems that faced prosecutors included deceased witnesses, failing memories of victims and other witnesses, and the reluctance of some witnesses to testify more than 23 years after the alleged crimes.
In early 2006, the remaining charges were set aside.
Andres remains in the Saskatchewan Federal Penitentiary in Prince Albert.
All the information presented on this page has been compiled primarily from published media reports and should not be interpreted as having legal bearing or other prejudice against the individuals named on this web site.
The Last Link on the Left practices fair presentation and the disclosure of relevant interests.
Mouseover for image credits.
