Cops say they’ve sent in the clowns
Two men charged with armed holdup, wearing disguises
The Montreal police weren’t clowning around on this investigation.
Two men appeared at the Montreal courthouse on Wednesday to face a series of charges related to an armed holdup, on May 1, of the administrative offices of a residential building on Sherbrooke St. E. The men, disguised as clowns, burst into the office at about 5 p.m. and made off with a large amount of money. The office had received rent payments from tenants just before the heist.
Two months later, the Montreal police issued an unusual release requesting help from the public in the hopes of locating where the clown costumes were purchased or rented. In the release, they identified the robbers as each having worn “a coloured wig, mask and (carrying) highquality balloons.”
It also mentioned the men left on foot (with no mention of the size of their shoes) and fled the scene in a car parked nearby.
Montreal police Constable Jean-Pierre Brabant confirmed the recent arrests were part of the investigation into the robbery of the rental office. But he was unable to say Wednesday if investigators were able to track down where the robbers got their disguises.
The two men who appeared in court on Wednesday — Musset Merisier, 35, and Bentz Alexandre, 32, both of Laval — were charged with armed robbery, conspiracy, forcible confinement and with “being disguised as a clown” with the intention of committing a crime. The case is scheduled to return to court on Thursday to set a future date for a bail hearing.
Merisier has already served two federal prison terms for past crimes, including the fatal shooting Rodney Jean-Paul, 19, in Laval in 2003. Merisier was part of a group of men tied to the Bo-Gars street gang who went to JeanPaul’s home and killed him because they believed he had stolen from their marijuana grow-operation.
Merisier did not pull the trigger on the 12-gauge shotgun used in the homicide but pleaded guilty to manslaughter and, on Feb. 7, 2005, was sentenced to six-year prison term. He was denied parole, in part, because he continued to associate with known gang members while behind bars.
He appeared before the Parole Board of Canada in October 2007 as his statutory release date, the twothirds mark of his sentence, approached. According to a written summary of the hearing, he claimed to have been at the fatal shooting “by accident” but had a tough time explaining why he was armed with a knife that day and had threatened JeanPaul before he was shot.