Julie Surprenant

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

S Ret Du Qu (BEC)

Missing From:

Terrebonne, Quebec

Summary:

Julie Surprenant was a 16-year-old Canadian girl who disappeared in Terrebonne, Quebec on November 16, 1999. She was last seen getting off a bus not far from her home in L'Île St-Jean at 8:56 P.M. Her family's neighbor, Richard Bouillon, reportedly made a deathbed confession regarding her murder, though her remains have yet to be found and her fate remains unknown.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Disappearance:

After school, on the evening of Tuesday, November 16, 1999, Surprenant informed her father she would be spending a majority of her evening at the youth community center near the corner of Hauteville and Côte Boisée streets, as was common for her. Surprenant departed from the youth center at 8:30 PM with a friend prior to boarding the line to her house. Her friend boarded off at the shopping center stop, noticing Surprenant sitting at the front next to the driver. The bus driver recalled chatting with her for the remainder of the bus ride, noticing a man standing in the bus shelter at the stop. She began her journey home at 8:30 P.M and was last seen getting off the bus not far from her home in L'Île St-Jean at 8:56 P.M. It was only a 200-300 foot walk from the bus stop to her home. However, none of the clothes she had been wearing that day were found at the residence, suggesting she never made it that far. The following day, her father, Michel Surprenant, officially reported her missing to the Sûreté du Québec on November 17, 1999.

Additional Details:

Richard Bouillon, a known sex offender, who lived near Julie was initially considered the prime suspect in her case. However, there was never enough evidence to charge him in her disappearance. A convicted sex offender with a long history of mental health problems, Bouillon lived two doors away from Surprenant's family home in Terrebonne when she went missing. Bouillon had an extensive criminal record dating back to the 1970s, marked by repeated offenses involving sexual violence, particularly against minors and young women. Notable convictions included the 1974 attempted rape of a 6-year-old girl, the 1990 sexual assault of a patient under his care, and in 1996, paying a minor for sexual services; by 2003, he was convicted on additional sex-related charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison as a long-term offender. In 2006, Bouillon made a deathbed confession to two hospital employees. He claimed that he had murdered Julie before "stuffing" her remains in a sports bag and disposing of them in the Rivière des Mille Îles. As he lay dying of cancer in a hospital in Laval in 2006, Bouillon confessed to nurses that he raped and killed Julie, and wanted to talk to reporters about his actions. A nurse from Cité-de-la-Santé Hospital in Laval has told a coroner's inquest that a prisoner she treated in June 2006 admitted on three seperate occasions to murdering 16-year-old Julie Surprenant. In 2011 the case was re-opened when the Annick Prud'homme, the auxiliary nurse to whom Bouillon confessed, watched a television program and learned that the Julie Surprenant case was unsolved. For five years, Prud'homme had mistakenly believed that what she had told her superiors had been passed onto police, and that Bouillon had talked to journalists. Two Sûreté du Québec investigators, accompanied by a Terrebonne municipal police officer, spent several hours on the site where Surprenant's body was allegedly dumped into the Mille Îles River by Richard Bouillon, a convicted sexual predator. They were following up a lead contained in an account of an alleged deathbed confession from Bouillon more than four years ago, one that included a location for his disposal of Surprenant's body. The coroner's inquest into the presumed death of Julie Surprenant was initiated in 2011 by Quebec coroner Catherine Rudel-Tessier to investigate the circumstances of her 1999 disappearance, with public hearings held in March 2012. The process included testimonies from key witnesses, such as a nurse at Cité-de-la-Santé Hospital in Laval who cared for suspect Richard Bouillon during his final days, as well as police investigators who detailed prior leads and the handling of Bouillon's 2006 deathbed confession. In her report released on October 15, 2012, Rudel-Tessier ruled Julie Surprenant's death a homicide, concluding it was likely perpetrated by Richard Bouillon through abduction, sexual assault, and murder. Despite a search of the river Bouillon claimed he dumped Surprenant in completed in September 2011, her remains have yet to be found. That's where dozens gathered on Sunday to unveil a monument in her name. The monument depicts a bowler hat, the kind Julie often liked to wear.

Case Last Updated:

Sep 04, 2026