Susan Boulanger’s life felt like a movie in the days after her mother’s disappearance.
“It wasn’t yet reality,” she told the court Friday.
Boulanger’s mother Judie Thibault went missing in November 2000; her body was discovered four years later near Wolf Lake with a bullet in the back of her skull.
Thibault’s daughter testified Friday at the Superior Court of Justice in Thunder Bay in the first-degree murder case against Michael Kelly, Thibault’s common-law spouse at the time of her death.
Boulanger, who lives in Longlac, said Kelly called her around Nov. 21, 2000 to inform her Thibault was missing and asked that she come to Thunder Bay to help look for her. He told her Thibault had been upset and hadn’t come home the night before.
As she drove to Thunder Bay, Boulanger said she thought her mother would have returned home by the time she arrived and she’d be upset with her mother but then they’d hug and everything would be normal.
But when she arrived, Thibault hadn’t returned and Boulanger wasn’t sure what to do; the police were then called.
“I was shocked,” said Boulanger. “If she was missing, where did she go?”
She then set out with Kelly to search for her mother. They checked the airport and she recalled Kelly walking up and down the parking rows looking for Thibault’s car. It was getting dark so they decided to check the bus station and around Boulevard Lake the next day.
On their way to check those locations the following day, Kelly spotted Thibault’s car in the Intercity Shopping Centre parking lot as they drove by.
Boulanger recalls the parking lot was almost empty and the front window was frosted. She said Kelly noted the driver’s seat of the car was pushed back, which Boulanger thought was unusual since her mother was only 5’2’ and would need the seat close to the steering wheel.
Thibault had never said anything negative to her daughter about her relationship with Kelly. Boulanger testified she thought the two got along well and he seemed to be a good man.
As time went on, Boulanger received at call at her home in Longlac from a tenant at one of Thibault’s rental properties saying their hydro had been turned off and they were unable to get a hold of Kelly, who Boulanger assumed was continuing to run the rental properties, including picking up rent and paying the bills.
A police officer told her they were looking at her mother’s accounts and there was no money coming in or going out. During cross-examination, Kelly’s lawyer Gil Labine noted that Thibault’s accounts were frozen, which meant no money would come in or out of the accounts.
Boulanger broke down on the stand when shown a picture of a necklace with a pendant she had given her mother that OPP officers had discovered on Thibault’s body.
She also tearfully recalled when an OPP officer asked if she recognized a ring two undercover officers were given by Kelly during a sting operation in 2009. She said she immediately recognized the ring as her mother’s.
Boulanger also said Thibault had problems with her son and a niece before her death and there was also tension with Thibault’s father, who lived in the same house as Thibault and Kelly.
Labine also asked Boulanger during the cross-examination if she had noticed anything in her mother’s home to suggest a gun had been shot inside. She answered no and also said she never saw Kelly in possession of a gun.
She also testified that it was unlikely her grandfather would not have heard a gunshot go off in the residence.
