Anger fuelled man accused in McGill Ghetto stabbing death, psychiatrist tells trial

Montreal Gazette

20-06-2025

Montreal Crime
By
François Pelletier was acting in anger and was not delusional when he killed Romane Bonnier by stabbing her repeatedly in the McGill Ghetto more than three years ago, a forensic psychologist said at the accused's murder trial on Friday.
In his second day of testimony before a jury at the Montreal courthouse, psychiatrist Gilles Chamberland continued to make the argument that Pelletier's case does not fall within Section 16 of the Criminal Code, which covers whether an accused is not criminally responsible for his actions.
Pelletier, 39, is acting as his own lawyer in the trial. He has told the jury he suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder and that his 'normally baseline' delusions became intense after June 23, 2021, when 24-year-old Bonnier told him she wanted to see other men, as well as him, during a relationship that had begun only a week earlier.
On Oct. 19, 2021, Pelletier stabbed Bonnier 26 times on Aylmer St. in front of several stunned witnesses. While testifying in his own defence, Pelletier told the jury he prevented an 'apocalypse' by killing Bonnier. The jury has heard evidence, including Pelletier's own testimony, that he sees women he is attracted to in extremes, where they are either princesses or prostitutes.
'It is clear that when (Pelletier) talks about the apocalypse, it is the apocalypse for him,' Chamberland said. 'He didn't think that the moment he killed the victim the apocalypse wouldn't arrive. When he testified, he said he was living the apocalypse and that he would continue living it, that the apocalypse would come if (he didn't kill Bonnier).'
'Is there a mental illness inside that,' prosecutor Louis Bouthillier asked.
'No. It is a very, very big fragility,' Chamberland said. 'It is not a sickness. He is like that.'
Chamberland did not have a chance to evaluate Pelletier in person. He based his findings on Pelletier's testimony during the trial and documents, including an evaluation done by another psychiatrist that was never completed. That document details how Pelletier showed symptoms of having obsessive compulsive disorder from the age of eight and that he sought help in 2016 at Montreal hospitals and a clinic after a relationship with a different woman came to an end in 2015.
Beginning in 2010, Pelletier was in three relationships in all, including with Bonnier, and it appears they all ended when the women did not fit into his concept of how a woman should be.
'He was searching for an ideal love. That is clear,' Chamberland said.
The psychiatrist pointed out how Pelletier only knew Bonnier for less than four weeks after he moved into her apartment, and that they were in a relationship for just a week when Pelletier became upset after she told him she wanted to see other men while continuing to be in a relationship with him.
On Thursday, Chamberland said that in his opinion, what Pelletier was experiencing when he killed Bonnier was pain and suffering and not a delusion as the accused claimed many times when he testified.
Chamberland was also asked to offer his opinion on text messages Pelletier sent to a young woman hours before he killed Bonnier. Days before the homicide, they met for a date at a park on Mount Royal, took a walk down the mountain and had a conversation on Queen Mary Rd.
On the day Bonnier was killed, Pelletier sent the woman messages asking if she wanted to go to St-Jérôme so she could hand out her curriculum vitae. She was looking for a job and Pelletier was offering to help her, but he also wanted to turn the trip into a romantic one.
He offered to take the woman for a walk on a boardwalk and suggested they sightsee and look at the fall foliage in the Laurentians.
'He is logical (in the message). There is nothing in there that suggests something is about to happen,' Chamberland said. 'It is very strange.
'It is like he is not sure (Bonnier's death) is about to happen. Life is going on (beyond Oct. 19, 2021).'
When the woman testified earlier this week, Pelletier asked her why she didn't accept his offer and she said it was because she didn't trust him following their first date.
When he testified before the jury, Pelletier said that on Oct. 15, 2021, four days before he killed Bonnier, he already made the decision to kill her.
Before Chamberland began testifying on Friday, Superior Court Justice François Dadour told the jury they might have to sit on Tuesday, the Fête de la Saint-Jean, a statutory holiday. The judge has said before that he hopes to have the jury deliberating by the end of next week and, in order to keep that schedule, Pelletier might need more than one day to cross-examine the psychiatrist. In order to have the jury sitting on that day, several staff at the courthouse will have to work on a day when the courthouse is almost entirely closed.