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Curtis Dagenais is back in court in Saskatoon for a hearing on Monday morning, 20 years after he murdered two Saskatchewan RCMP officers and injured a third.
He is serving three life sentences, with no chance of parole for 25 years, after a jury convicted him of two counts of first-degree murder for killing RCMP constables Marc Bourdages and Robin Cameron and one count of attempted murder for injuring Const. Michelle Knopp.
Dagenais shot them after they rammed a police vehicle into his blue GMC truck during a chase down rural roads on July 6, 2006.
Now, that truck is the subject of a hearing in Saskatoon Court of King’s Bench. The Crown is applying to have it forfeited so it can be destroyed.
Dagenais, who is serving his sentences at the Saskatchewan Penitentiary, is expected to appear via video conference.
The truck “slipped through the cracks,” prosecutor Scott Bartlett explained earlier this summer in court.
Bartlett initially brought an application for forfeiture in 2021, but Dagenais opposed it and said he was waiting to hear from Innocence Canada — a non-profit organization that advocates for the exoneration of people who were allegedly wrongfully convicted — about if they would take on his case.
Dagenais was on Innocence Canada’s waiting list, and the judge at the time agreed to adjourn the application to give Dagenais more time to see if the organization would take on his case. It did not.
Bartlett brought the truck forfeiture application forward again earlier this year, and Dagenais said that he is still opposing it.
He doesn’t want the truck to be destroyed because he is still claiming that he’s innocent, and that the bullet holes in the truck can help prove it.
At a hearing in June, Justice Daryl Labach agreed to give Dagenais time to see if he could find a lawyer.
“I’m inclined to give him one opportunity to get counsel and file some material on this application,” Labach said. “But I’m going to deal with the application. I’m not going to keep adjourning this.”
Dagenais previously appealed his convictions to the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, which dismissed his case in a ruling issued in 2012.
