Police connect two homicides, charge three suspects with murder

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This article was published 06/02/2023 (989 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg police have linked two recent homicides in the city’s core and charged three suspects with first-degree murder in each of the killings.

Police would not comment Monday on a possible motive in the slayings of Carl George Wescoupe and Lee James Boulette.

A charge of first-degree murder is laid in killings that are allegedly planned and deliberate.

Wescoupe and Boulette, both 40, were found dead in locations about a kilometre apart over a three-day period last week.

“We don’t believe these incidents are random,” Winnipeg Police Service spokesman Const. Jay Murray said Monday, after police announced the homicides are connected. “We don’t believe there any type of escalated risk to the public.”

Police have not revealed how the men were killed.

Wescoupe was found dead Jan. 29 inside a suite at the Manwin Hotel on Main Street, just north of Logan Avenue.

He had suffered “severe” injuries, according to police.

General patrol and tactical support officers discovered the body after a man in his 30s showed up at a city hospital with a serious injuries at about 5:20 p.m.

While speaking to police, the man indicated someone else might be injured at the hotel.

It is at least the third homicide at the Manwin since the summer of 2017.

Boulette was found dead Feb. 1 in similar circumstances in an apartment suite on the 100 block of Selkirk Avenue.

Police said officers were sent to the building after a stabbing victim went to a hotel on the 800 block of Main Street for help at about 10 p.m.

The male, who was later hospitalized, indicated another victim might be at the Selkirk Avenue residence, leading to the discovery of Boulette’s body.

Detectives from the homicide unit linked the deaths and identified three suspects, said police.

Kurtis Joseph Dilallo, 39, Robert Shawn Murdock, 31, and Ernest John Young, 54, have each been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault.

All three men, who are from Winnipeg, remain in custody.

Court records show all three accused have prior convictions for assault.

Dilallo and Murdock have additional convictions for drug offences and uttering threats. Murdock was convicted in 2021 and 2022 of carrying a concealed weapon.

At least five homicides have been investigated by city police so far in 2023. Of those, four occurred in an eight-day period.

Clifford Earl Bos, 56, died in hospital after he was found outside the Salvation Army’s Centre of Hope shelter at Henry Avenue and Main Street shortly after 12 a.m. Feb. 2.

It appeared he had been stabbed, according to police.

Joseph Diamond Sanderson, 25, has been charged with second-degree murder.

Richard Darryl Wheeler, 65, was found Jan. 25 with fatal injuries at an apartment building on the 300 block of Hargrave Street.

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Police have charged Joy Nancy Moose, 31, with second-degree murder.

No one has been charged in the death of Star Alicia Thomas, 23, who died in hospital after emergency services were called Jan. 3 to an apartment fire on the 700 block of Sargent Avenue.

— with files from Dean Pritchard

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @chriskitching

Chris Kitching
Reporter

Chris Kitching is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He began his newspaper career in 2001, with stops in Winnipeg, Toronto and London, England, along the way. After returning to Winnipeg, he joined the Free Press in 2021, and now covers a little bit of everything for the newspaper. Read more about Chris.

Every piece of reporting Chris produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.