Woman arrested in lottery winner’s 2000 cold case murder: Quebec police

Warning: This story contains graphic details.

Quebec police are searching a home and apartment in Trois-Rivières on Friday after a woman was arrested for murder in connection with a missing person from 2000.

The SQ (Sûreté du Québec) said Aline Girardin, 63, was arrested on Thursday for the murder of Laval resident Louis Valentine.

The 43-year-old won a substantial sum of money in the lottery in 1999 (around $210,000), moved to Trois-Rivières a month later and met a woman, police said. He was last seen in Laval in August 2000 at a friend’s house, and his family reported him missing in February 2001.

Police would not say whether the woman he met was Girardin.

“She’s going to appear in court this morning and the searches are ongoing in an apartment and a house on Rue Corbeil,” said SQ spokesperson Eloise Cossette.

Girardin of Nicolet, Que., is charged with second-degree murder and desecration of a corpse.

“[She] caused the death of Louis Valentine by stabbing him, thereby committing second-degree murder,” the charge sheet from Quebec prosecutors (DPCP) reads.

The second charge says she cut Valentine’s corpse up, froze it, and buried it between August 2000 and January 2003.

Police said the criminal theory was never ruled out in Valentine’s case.

Cossette said police are searching an apartment and house on Corbeil Street. A forensic anthropologist is on site alongside investigators and crime scene technicians, the SQ said.

Girardin appeared in the Trois-Rivières courthouse on Friday.