On the morning of April 13th, 2001, twenty-year-old Céline Goyette was dropped off at the home of her partner, forty-two-year-old Richard Gleeson, on Forestwood Street in Rosemère, Quebec, a quiet suburban community north of Montreal. It was a seemingly ordinary moment: a routine visit to her boyfriend’s residence. Yet neither Céline nor Richard has been seen or heard from since that day. Their simultaneous vanishing has remained one of Quebec’s more perplexing cold cases for over twenty-five years, listed by the Sûreté du Québec as unsolved disappearances with strong indications of foul play.
Rosemère, a peaceful town in the Laurentides region, rarely makes headlines for violent crime. The disappearance of the young woman and her much older partner, without any reported sightings, financial activity, or communication, quickly raised suspicions of a double homicide rather than a voluntary flight. Authorities have never recovered bodies, vehicles, or personal belongings, and no crime scene was publicly identified.
Richard Gleeson’s background adds another layer of intrigue. Born in August 1958, he had previously served a six-year prison sentence for manslaughter stemming from an incident in 1995. By 2000, he was already the subject of a Canada-wide warrant for parole violation, issued in coordination with the RCMP’s Montreal detachment. At the time of the 2001 disappearance, Richard was forty-two years old, described in older fugitive profiles as six feet one inch tall, weighing approximately 285 pounds, with blond hair and blue eyes. Whether his parole status played any role in the events of April 13th remains unknown, as the cold-case files make no mention of it. Some observers have speculated that Richard may have fled to evade authorities, but the unexplained disappearance of his young girlfriend alongside him has led investigators to treat both as potential victims of crime.
Despite the passage of time, the Sûreté du Québec continues to seek information. No arrests have ever been made, and no suspects have been publicly named.
Crime Immemorial 