Serge Audette, 69, will appear Friday at the Montreal courthouse. Nearly 30 years after the events, he will face charges of manslaughter.
The mystery that shrouded this case until now is the subject of the documentary Apartment 5, presented by journalist and news anchor for Noovo Info Marie-Christine Bergeron. On June 6, 1996, Patricia Ferguson disappeared and left behind her 1-year-old daughter, Sabrina. At the time, no one had heard of this disappearance under the radar of the media in Montreal.
The documentary “brought new facts” which were “crucial in relaunching the investigation,” said Sébastien Lévesque, lieutenant-detective of the Montreal Police Service (SPVM), in an interview with Noovo Info.
“These new elements are that we happen to have the place where the missing person was last seen [et] the individual who had seen him for the last time – elements that we did not have in 1996”, he specified.
Missing 23-year-old mother
Patricia Ferguson was 23 when her family lost track of her. The young mother was with friends in an apartment building in Pointes-aux-Trembles when she left to join her neighbor who lived in apartment number 5: Serge Audette – a seemingly blameless man.
The young woman has never been seen since, leaving behind her daughter who was 1 year old at the time.
The case was dormant on the shelves of the unsolved cases section of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), until Maryse St-Germain, a private detective with the organization Meurtres et disappearances irresolus du Québec, discovers that Patricia Ferguson had certainly been the victim of a crime.
Ms. St-Germain and Marie-Christine Bergeron traced Serge Audette, who confirmed to Noovo Info having spent the last evening with Patricia Ferguson. The SPVM then immediately relaunched the investigation.even going so far as to search apartment 5.
Enough circumstantial evidence to lay charges against Serge Audette
Serge Audette has already been convicted of three armed sexual assaults committed between 1984 and 1998. This sexual predator – whom the court has already declared a dangerous offender – spent twenty years in prison in total.
The SPVM multiplied investigative techniques in order to gather enough evidence for the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions (DPCP) to lay charges of manslaughter.
“No body, no weapon, no crime,” the phrase goes. But the prosecution is sufficiently convinced that Serge Audette is the one who made the young woman disappear to lay charges.
