Accused in war vet home invasion key suspect in 2007 triple homicide

Retired judge Alban Garon, his wife Raymonde, were found dead inside their 10th-floor residence in the high-security Riviera condo complex near the Rideau River in Ottawa in 2007.

There is a new development in a triple homicide that has stumped Ottawa investigators for 8 years.

CTV News has confirmed through sources that police believe there is a possible connection between the accused home invader Ian Bush and the 2007 triple murder involving a retired judge.

Alban Garon, his wife, Raymonde, and their neighbour, Marie-Claire Beniskos, were found in their upscale condo on Riverside Drive bound, gagged and beaten to death. That was 2007.

Last December, World War Two vet, Ernest Coté was tied up and robbed at his upscale condo in New Edinburgh. Coté is 101 years old; he managed to free himself and call police.

59-year-old Ian Bush is in jail awaiting trial on that case. Police sources tell CTV news that investigators, using DNA, have discovered a pattern between the two cases and began to put the pieces together. For the families of the murder victims, it would be the break they have been waiting for for years.

‘A triple murder that shook Ottawa,’ is how Staff-Sergeant Monique Perras described the case to the media at the time.

Now, a possible break; based on new information, and police sources say crime scene DNA. They tell CTV news that Ian Bush, the man accused of robbing and trying to kill an elderly decorated war veteran last December is now a suspect in the triple murder from 2007. Bush’s lawyer, Geraldine Castle-Trudel questions why police are waiting to charge her client, then, if the information is so compelling.

‘Why wait four days?’ says Castle-Trudel, ‘if you're going to charge someone with an offence. They know where he is, he's in custody; he’s not going anywhere. Why not go and charge him?’

There are similarities in the cases. All the victims were seniors. 101-year-old Ernest Coté lived alone in his high-end condo and answered the door to a man posing as a city worker. Coté told CTV he had a bag tied over his head.

‘He put this bag over my head which was very dangerous. It could have been lethal.’

A day before she was murdered, Raymonde Garon told a friend about someone posing as a delivery man.

‘Madame Garon told friends about a suspicious person, something unusual,’ said Staff-Sergeant Perras at the time of the murders.

None of the victims' families have heard of a possible connection between the two cases. Jean-Pierre Lurette, who was Raymonde Garon's brother, still lives in the same apartment building on Riverside where the murders happened. He told CTV News that he has calls in to police in the hopes that there may be a break in the case.

Clearly, if there is a connection between these two cases, police will be looking into other similar unsolved crimes to find out whether that connection goes a little deeper. Ian Bush is back in court this Friday for the results of a psychiatric assessment. It's expected the other charges will be addressed at that time.