Coroner's inquest will allow nurse to flesh out murder confession

Julie Surprenant, 16 at the time of her disappearance, vanished after getting off a bus less than 50 metres from her home in Terrebonne on Nov. 16, 1999.

MONTREAL - In 2006, a Laval nurse was burdened with a murder confession from a dying man that she was not allowed to pass on to authorities.

A coroner's inquest will now force her to reveal the secret, which is one two ways for her to release the information without violating the Quebec charter or her professional code.

The nurse was apparently told by Richard Bouillon, a convict serving time for sex crimes, that he had murdered the 16-year-old Julie Surprenant.

Bouillon died at the age of 52, on June 22, 2006, at Laval's Cite de la Sante Hospital. He had been serving a six-and-a-half year sentence for rape, molestation, sexual assault and drug-trafficking.

Police had long considered Bouillon the prime suspect in the Surprenant disappearance as he was a neighbour of the missing girl. He was confronted by a television journalist in 2003 but denied everything.

The nurse finally reported Bouillon's alleged confession to a TV crime reporter in January 2011 and although the information might have brought some degree of closure to the family, the disclosure could technically be considered a violation of article 9 of the Quebec Charter and article 60.4 of the professional code.

A nurse can only disclose confidential information with the permission of the person who offered it or when ordered by law, as the Quebec order of nurses (OIIQ) explained in a press release Wednesday.

Julie Surprenant was 16 when she vanished on Nov. 16, 1999.

She disembarked from a bus in Terrebonne, north of Laval, at around 9 p.m. just metres from home and was never seen again.

Bouillon allegedly told the nurse that he had stuffed Surprenant's body into a sports bag and dumped it into the Mille-Iles River in front of a church, not far from her home. A search for her body found nothing.

The OIIQ stressed in their press release that information transmitted to health professionals by patients does not get passed on, other than in these rare, exceptional circumstances.