The man accused of trying to kill a 101-year-old Second World War veteran in Ottawa is now a suspect in an unsolved triple homicide, police sources have confirmed to CTV Ottawa.
Ian Bush, 59, was charged with attempted murder, robbery with violence and forcible confinement after Retired Col. Ernest Cote was tied up and robbed in his apartment last December.
Sources tell CTV Ottawa that investigators have used DNA evidence to link the attack on Cote to the 2007 murders of a retired tax judge, his wife and their neighbour. New charges against Bush are expected to be laid at the end of the week.
But Bush’s lawyer says police have not told her about any additional charges against her client.
“If they’re going to charge him, step up to the plate and charge him,” Geraldine Castle-Trudel told CTV News.
“If you're going to charge somebody with an offence, they know where he is, he's in custody, he's not going anywhere."
Alban Garon, his wife Raymonde Garon and their neighbour Marie-Claire Beniskos, all seniors, were found bound, gagged and beaten in the Garons’ upscale condo on Ottawa’s Riverside Drive in June 2007.
Despite a thorough investigation and the offer of a $100,000 reward, no one was ever charged with the murders.
Alban Garon was the chief justice of the Tax Court of Canada from July 2003 until he retired in November 2004. Before serving as a judge, Garon taught at the University of Ottawa law school and worked at Justice Canada.
A day before the murders, Raymonde Garon told a friend that someone claiming to be a delivery man had shown up at her condo. But even though police released a composite sketch of a man who was seen in the elevator, no one was seemingly able to identify him.
Cote, a decorated D-Day veteran, told police that his attacker posed as a city employee so he buzzed him into the building. Cote said the assailant tied him up and placed a plastic bag over his head before fleeing the apartment.
Bush, who underwent a psychiatric assessment after his arrest in the Cote case, is due back in court on Friday.
