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A man who killed his mother in her home in Plateau-Mont-Royal in 1995, while they argued over how his drug consumption was contributing to a life of crime, has been granted full parole.
Serge Charron, 62, convinced the Parole Board of Canada that he merits the release after having spent more than three years on day parole. In a decision made last week, the board decided Charron should continue to reside at a halfway house for another three months before full parole.
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The parole board is acting cautiously in Charron’s case because he posed problems when released in the past. He assaulted and stabbed his mother, Denise Charron, inside her apartment on St-André St. on Oct. 7, 1995, while he was out on a statutory release and was serving a 104-month sentence for a series of armed robberies between 1988 and 1993.
During his murder trial, in 1996, Charron admitted he attacked his 63-year-old mother, who had cancer, just 12 hours after he had been released from a federal penitentiary. He told a jury he consumed cocaine and alcohol before the attack.
According to the decision recently made by the parole board, Charron “exploded and killed her using a knife and a hammer. It is noted that, at that moment, you were heavily intoxicated by alcohol and cocaine.”
On Oct. 30, 1996, he was convicted of second-degree murder and his period of parole ineligibility was set at 10 years.
Three years later, he was convicted several times of drug trafficking inside a federal penitentiary and was transferred to a maximum-security institution.
In 2005, he made headlines when he escaped custody while undergoing tests at a hospital in Laval. He jumped into a taxi and asked to be driven to the Henri-Bourassa métro station. He was arrested a few days later after robbing two banks in Montreal. He was sentenced to five years for the two holdups.
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He committed another armed robbery in Montreal on April 7, 2015, while he was under the influences of drugs and out on day parole. In that case, he pleaded guilty and received a seven-year sentence.
In the decision made last week, the parole board decided to attach a series of parole conditions on Charron. For example, he is not allowed to possess alcohol or be inside a bar for the rest of his life sentence. He is not allowed to consume drugs unless prescribed by a doctor.
“Over the years, you have demonstrated that you have little regard for your legal obligations, because you have reoffended several times and you have not been able to respect your special conditions (attached to previous releases). You present yourself as an institutionalized individual who struggles to socially reintegrate into society. All of your release periods turned out to be be failures,” the parole board wrote in its recent decision.
“However, since a suspension was lifted in 2022 (for testing positive for THC), your journey has been more positive. You appear able to respect your release conditions and no breach of conditions have been raised apart from a discrepancy in April 2024 linked to taking an Ativan tablet you were not authorized to take. You demonstrate motivation in the different spheres of life and expressed a desire to remain in the community for good, saying you are saturated with incarceration.”
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