MONTRÉAL, Que. — A man who killed his neighbour and her two-year-old daughter in Brossard more than two decades ago out of a hatred for immigrants will be released on full parole soon even though he continues to deny the extent of his role in the double murder.
During the spring of 1992, Denis Paulet and his mother-in-law Yvonne Payette shared a deep resentment of immigrants while they lived on welfare in their apartment on Provencher St. in Brossard. Paulet focused his hatred on an Armenian family that had immigrated to Canada from Turkey during the 1980s and lived in the same apartment building.
As he would later admit to the police, Paulet hated how the family appeared to be doing well financially while he struggled.
He hatched a plan to first earn Bercuhi Leylekoglu’s trust and then kill her to steal anything of value from her family’s apartment while her husband and their three daughters were out for the day. What he didn’t anticipate was that Leylekoglu’s youngest daughter Talin would be home when he carried out the crime.
On May 26, 1992, he tied Leylekoglu to her bed and strangled the 33-year-old mother to death. He then strangled Talin in another room while Payette, who was 47 at the time, acted as a lookout. He grabbed more than $4,000, a camera and a gold chain and used a crayon to draw a swastika and write the word “Terminator” on a wall in the apartment in an effort to hide the robbery as the motive for the slayings.
Leylekoglu’s then seven-year-old daughter discovered the bodies when she came home from school later that day.
“It disgusted us to see these imported people who had jobs while we had nothing but BS. So, we decided that we would rob them and we didn’t have the choice but to kill them afterward. But we didn’t think about killing the child,” Paulet, now 72, was quoted as having told the police following his arrest weeks after the double homicide.
Days before he killed the mother and daughter he deflated a tire on Leylekoglu’s car and then pretended to be doing her a favour by filling it with air. Leylekoglu’s husband would later tell the police that his wife found her exchange with Paulet strange because it was obvious someone had simply let the air out of her tire. On the morning she was killed, Leylekoglu noted to her husband that she noticed that the man who helped her with the tire lived in apartment 106 of their building.
On June 7, 1993, Paulet was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder following a trial at the Longueuil courthouse. He automatically received a life sentence with a parole eligibility set at 25 years. Seven months later, Payette, a key prosecution witness in Paulet’s trial, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder. She also received a life sentence but her parole eligibility was set at 13 years.
During his trial, Paulet alleged that Payette must have carried out the murders because, he claimed, he passed out while they were inside Leylekoglu’s apartment.
According to a recent decision made by the Parole Board of Canada, Paulet continues to maintain he had a limited role in the murders. He claims to have consulted a legal aid lawyer with a plan to appeal his sentence but there is no record of the appeal having been filed.
“To this day, you claim your innocence for the murders that were committed. You offered an incriminating version to the police, but you claim you did it it under pressure (from Payette). According to your version of the facts, you lost consciousness at the crime scene and it was then that your accomplice committed the murders,” the parole board noted in the written summary of its decision.
Paulet was first granted day parole in May of last year and, according to a written summary of the decision, he has “rigidly” followed all of the conditions of his release to a halfway house. His day parole was recently extended for three months and it appears full parole will begin for Paulet in August.
The board’s decision to grant Paulet parole is unusual in that board members normally prefer to hear that an offender accepts the role they are alleged to have played in their crime before granting parole. Also, Paulet lost all contact with his wife and children after the murders and has no network to support him on the outside. Part of the written summary released to the Montreal Gazette is redacted but it appears that one reason why Paulin was granted parole is because his release plan involves the septuagenarian residing at a home for elderly people.
“(Paulet’s case-management team) is of the opinion that this is an opportune moment to take the step toward returning you to society, notably because you have attained the fixed objectives set for you (while residing at) a halfway house,” the board noted in its decision. In a previous decision made last year the parole board referred to his “advanced age” as a factor in granting Paulet day parole.
