Julie Surprenant

Julie Surprenant was a vibrant 16-year-old girl with a passion for improv-comedy, which she performed with her school’s troupe in Terrebonne, Quebec. In the fall of 1999, she was living with her father, Michel Surprenant, in a new apartment and working a holiday job wrapping gifts at the Galleries Terrebonne shopping center. She was a typical teenager who enjoyed spending her evenings at the local youth community center. Her life was full of promise until it was abruptly cut short on a cold November night.

On the evening of Tuesday, November 16, 1999, Julie followed her usual routine. She spent time at the youth center before catching a bus home around 8:30 p.m. A friend who was on the same bus got off at the shopping center and saw Julie sitting near the front, chatting with the driver. The driver later recalled their conversation and remembered seeing a man waiting inside the bus shelter at Julie’s stop. He asked the man if he wanted to board, but the man said no. At 8:56 p.m., Julie, a young woman, stepped off the bus for the short walk to her apartment on Île Saint-Jean. She was wearing a floral skirt with a blue petticoat, a green wool jacket over a dark brown leather coat, and a blue scarf with a fish pattern. On her back, she carried a black canvas backpack on which she had drawn a peace symbol. She never made it home. The next morning, her father realized she was gone and reported her missing to the Sûreté du Québec.

The initial investigation into Julie’s disappearance was treated as an abduction. Police tried to identify the man seen at the bus shelter but were unsuccessful, and the case quickly went cold. Suspicion soon fell on a neighbor, Richard Bouillon, a convicted sex offender with an extensive criminal record dating back to the 1970s who lived just two doors down from the Surprenants. When police searched his apartment, they found microscopic traces of blood, but Bouillon denied any involvement. Without sufficient evidence, he was never charged in connection with Julie's disappearance.

The case remained stagnant for years. In 2004, Julie's father, Michel, co-founded the Association of Families of Missing or Murdered Persons (AFPAD) to support other families and advocate for change. A major break came in 2011 when a nurse came forward with shocking information. She revealed that in 2006, while Bouillon was in a Laval hospital dying of cancer, he had confessed to her and another hospital employee. Bouillon, who was serving a prison sentence for other sexual assaults, admitted on his deathbed that he had raped and murdered Julie. He claimed he stuffed her body into a sports bag with bricks and threw it into the Rivière des Mille Îles, across from a church in Terrebonne.

This deathbed confession prompted an extensive search of the river by provincial police divers in September 2011, but they found no trace of Julie. Despite the lack of remains, the confession provided a grim answer. In October 2012, Quebec coroner Catherine Rudel-Tessier held an inquest and formally ruled Julie Surprenant's death a homicide. Her report concluded that Bouillon had likely abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered the 16-year-old. Because Bouillon had died in 2006 and Julie's body was never recovered, no one was ever held legally responsible for her death.

In the years since, Julie’s family and friends have continued to honor her memory. In 2014, on the 15th anniversary of her disappearance, they unveiled a monument depicting a bowler hat, a style Julie often wore. Her father has become a prominent advocate, calling for public access to the national sex offender registry, believing such a measure could have saved his daughter's life.

As of November 2018, the Sûreté du Québec confirmed that the investigation into the homicide of Julie Surprenant remains open. A documentary filmmaker began exploring the case around that time, hoping to uncover new leads. Though a suspect confessed, the absence of Julie's remains means her case is still officially unsolved, leaving her loved ones without the closure of a final resting place.