On Friday, a judge sentenced Kevin Queau to 12 years in prison for the cold case killing of 24-year-old Crystal Saunders in April 2007.
Queau was initially charged with second-degree murder but pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter last week as part of a plea bargain.
Crown prosecutors dropped the second-degree murder charge due to concerns over the credibility of one of the undercover officers involved in the case, the court heard.
As part of a joint recommendation between the Crown and the defence, Queau was sentenced to 12 years in prison, with credit of 791 days served in custody pre-sentence. He was also handed down a lifetime firearms prohibition.
In court Friday, a victim impact statement was read on behalf of Crystal’s mother, Sandra Saunders.
After the sentencing, some in the gallery swore at Queau as they left the courtroom.
According to an agreed statement of facts presented in court, Crystal was last seen by Winnipeg police officers late on April 17, 2007 and in the early morning hours of April 18, 2007. She was seen getting into a red vehicle in the city’s North End. Officers attempted to follow the vehicle, but lost track of it.
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Her body was found on April 19, 2007 in a water-filled ditch near St. Ambroise, Man., by an off-duty RCMP officer who was checking his trapline. An autopsy determined her cause of death was strangulation. Evidence from the pathologist also showed that Crystal sustained injuries to her head, face, arms, and chest as well.
Police said Cystal was extremely vulnerable at the time, working in the sex trade and struggling with addiction and homelessness. Through investigation, officers were unable to determine who she had been with prior to her death.
The case went cold. It was eventually taken over by Manitoba RCMP’s Project Devote, an initiative to review unsolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
Then, in 2015, a break. Queau was convicted of sexual assault, aggravated assault, and overcome resistance by attempting to choke in British Columbia. His DNA was entered into a national database and was found to match the unknown DNA found of Crystal’s neck and fingernails.
The agreed statement of facts says after RCMP exhausted traditional investigative techniques, they launched a Mr. Big sting operation dubbed Project Domain. Mr. Big stings are an often controversial technique used by police where undercover officers usually pose as members of a criminal organization and befriend a suspect.
The same technique was used by Winnipeg police to secure a confession from Raymond Cormier, the man acquitted of murdering 15-year-old Tina Fontaine in 2014.
Starting in February 2023, undercover officers spent months working to befriend Queau, while posing as members of a small criminal organization that took part in money laundering and trafficking illicit goods by boat around Vancouver, BC.
In January 2024, according to the document, the undercover officers suggested to Queau that he might be being investigated by police in Manitoba, expressing frustration that an upcoming ‘job’ might have to be cancelled and the captain of the boat, who Queau was training to replace, would not be able to retire.
The officers told Queau they could assist him, but only if he were completely forthright. That’s when Queau confessed to killing Crystal Saunders in 2007, saying he “dropped a body.”
According to statement of facts, Queau said he picked up a sex trade worker in Winnipeg’s North End, and while in his red Blazer, he alleges she pulled a knife on him and attempted to rob him. He said that’s when he strangled her with both hands for two to three minutes, saying he witnessed blood coming out of her mouth during strangulation.
He then drove two hours to St. Ambroise, Man., it said, stopping near Portage la Prairie, Man., and stripping the victim of her clothes.
He said he “dragged” her body from the trunk of his vehicle and left her in the ditch near St. Ambroise Provincial Park, before returning to Winnipeg and burning her clothing and purse in a backyard firepit. The next day, he said, he drove to Edmonton and washed his vehicle down with bleach.
On Friday, the court heard he was released from his previous conviction in 2020, before he was arrested in the Saunders cold case in 2024.
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