Transcript of The Cheapskate (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

In January of 1988, the clerk of a sporting goods store in a small town in Canada looked up right as a man walked into his shop. Now, it was below freezing outside, but this man wasn't wearing a coat. He was just wearing sneakers, ripped pants, and a thin plastic rain poncho. This man quickly walked down the aisle and grabbed a pair of ski pants, and then he walked up, he paid for the pants in cash, and then very quickly hurried out of the store. But after this sort of strangely dressed man left, the clerk turned on the radio and he heard a breaking news report about a murder right up the road.

But before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do. So if that's of interest to you, please secretly steal the Follow Button's phone and delete all of their music playlists. Okay, let's get into today's story.

On the night of January 11th, 1988, a 62-year-old man named Wilfred Godreau ate a bowl of hot soup at his kitchen table in Cappas, Kaysing. Which was a tiny lumber town in Northern Ontario, Canada. His 53-year-old girlfriend, Agathe Bréchaud, was sitting across from him, and she was visibly shivering because it was freezing cold inside of their house. Now, Wilfred knew Agathe probably wanted him to turn up the heat, but he absolutely was not going to do that because as it was, their electric bill was already too high. So Wilfred really hated spending money.

But not because he didn't have any. Back when he was a kid, his family had been really, really poor, and so he'd picked up some really frugal habits that had just sort of stuck with him. So even now that he had a steady income as a mechanic and pretty comfortable savings, he still always tried to spend as little as possible. Plus, he wanted to retire soon, and he was supporting Agathe too. So as he sat there watching Agathe continue to shiver, clearly trying to signal to him like, "Come on, turn up the heat," Wilfred finally did get up, but not to turn up the heat.

Instead, he walked over to the living room and he grabbed a shawl off the couch and he brought it back and he handed it to Agathe. Then, as Agathe kind of scowled at him, Wilfred just sat back down and continued eating his soup. Early the next morning, around 7:15 AM, Wilfred woke up to an empty bed and the familiar sound of Agathe bustling around in the kitchen, making breakfast and packing his lunch for work. And then a few minutes later, he felt the blanket shift as Agathe crawled back into bed beside him. So Wilfred and Agathe had been together about 12 years, and these days they lived a pretty quiet life, which was pretty easy to do in Kappeskasing, which was the kind of place where really nothing ever happened.

And it's also where pretty much everybody knew everyone and where people didn't even bother locking their doors at night. And that suited Wilfred just fine because at one point his life had been anything but quiet. His relationship with Agathe had actually begun with a huge, dramatic scandal. That scandal had cost Wilfred his marriage, most of his family, and a lot of his self-respect. So at this point, a simple life with Agathe was exactly what he wanted.

Now, Wilfred lay in his bed just for a bit longer, listening to the wind howl outside and, you know, feeling Agathe next to him. But eventually he got up and he headed down the hallway in just his underwear. The sun was not up yet, so the house was completely dark, but he made his way to the bathroom by memory, and when he got there, he flipped on the light. He closed the door and then walked over to the sink, and he turned on the tap, and he had just begun shaving when he heard the door behind him creak open. Now, Wilfred instinctively figured it was Agathe coming in to use the bathroom.

Then he turned around and saw who was actually standing in the doorway. At the same time this was happening in the bathroom, Wilfred and Agathe's neighbor, Suzanne Gravel, was in her kitchen next door when she heard these loud crashes and shouting coming from Agathe and Wilfred's house. She ran to the window to look out, but it was too dark to see anything. It sounded like Agathe was screaming Wilfred's name over and over again, and so assuming there had to be some sort of emergency, Suzanne grabbed her coat and just ran outside to see what was going on. But she'd only gone a few steps out her front door when she looked over and saw the door to Wilfred and Agathe's house swing open and a man stepped out.

And this man was definitely not Wilfred. He was short and stocky and looked like he was maybe in his early 30s. And as he stepped down off the stoop, he turned and made eye contact with Suzanne, who immediately froze. Her heart was racing out of control, and she knew she was now in danger. But she didn't panic.

She just turned and walked over to her car. She got in and then locked the doors, and then she just sat there and waited. Now, the whole time that she did that, that she was just sitting in her car waiting, this short, stocky, mid-30s-something man actually just continued to stand there in front of Wilfred and Agathe's house, and he was just staring at her in the car. But after a little while, he turned and walked over to the curb, and he climbed into a blue pickup truck, and he drove off without even turning on his headlights. The second he was gone, Suzanne rushed out of her car and ran back into her own house.

And once she was inside, she immediately grabbed her home phone, and she tried calling Wilfred and Agathe's number for their house next door, but the line just kept on ringing. Nobody answered. So she eventually hung up, and then she called the police. A dispatcher picked up her call, And just as Suzanne began describing what was going on, Suzanne at her house, she heard this loud banging coming from her front door. Immediately Suzanne thought that the, the short stocky guy who drove off had come back for her.

And so she was terrified. But then she heard Agathe calling her name from outside. So clearly it was her banging on the door. And so Suzanne, she drops the phone, she runs over to the door, opens it up, and there was Agathe who had no coat on and she looked equally terrified here. Suzanne grabbed Agathe, she pulled her She slammed the door, locked it behind her, and then she looked at Agathe like, "What's going on here?" And Agathe, she's like, she's out of breath, she's clearly panicking here, but eventually she calms down and she looks at Suzanne and she says, "Something terrible has happened to Wilfred." About 20 minutes later, a constable with the Ontario Provincial Police drew his revolver and pushed open the front door of Wilfred and Agathe's house.

He was here because the police had just been told that a violent assault had just apparently occurred in this house, and so this officer was here to check it out. And so this officer, as soon as the door was open, he shouted inside that if anybody was in there to come out with their hands up. And then when there was no response, he stepped through the doorway. As the officer went room by room making sure nobody was in the house, he noticed that it was very quiet and very clean, like the house was immaculate and nothing was out of place. It didn't look like anything had even happened in here until he got to the bathroom.

When he looked in there, all he saw was blood. It was on the walls, it was on the floor, it was everywhere, on the toothbrushes, the toilet paper. I mean, the whole room was splattered in blood, but most of the blood had pooled around the body of a man who was lying on the bathroom floor. The man was just wearing underwear, and he was lying on his back, and there was shaving cream on half of his face, and he was covered in at least a dozen stab wounds on his neck, on his chest, and on his arms. Now, the constable knew there was virtually no chance this man was still alive, but he obviously had to be sure.

So he stepped into the bathroom, he crouched down next to the body, and he felt for a pulse. But there wasn't one. The body was still warm though, so the constable pulled out his radio and he called it in. And he also asked for instructions because Kappes Kasing did not see a lot of homicides, and the constable literally didn't know what he was supposed to do next.

A few hours later, so around noon on January 12th, 1988, Detective Wayne Fréchette of the Ontario Provincial Police stepped off a plane at an airstrip near Kapuskasing, where he'd just been made lead detective on a murder case. This town was so small that the local police didn't have anyone who'd worked a homicide before, so Fréchette had been flown in from Toronto to run this investigation because he did have homicide experience. He'd been briefed on the flight and already had a good sense of the case. So Wilfred Gaudreau, the victim, was a 62-year-old mechanic, and he had been stabbed to death in his bathroom that morning. And right afterwards, a neighbor had apparently seen this short, stocky Caucasian man in his mid-30s walk out of Wilfred's house and drive away in a blue pickup truck.

So assuming that man that was seen leaving the house was the killer, it seemed like he already had a pretty big head start here because he had a decent description of the number one suspect, potentially the killer. He was also confident this had not been part of a robbery or just some random attack because the first responders hadn't found any signs of a break-in or robbery, and the house had been basically spotless aside from the bathroom where pretty clearly the murder had taken place. So for Shett, you know, he couldn't possibly know if that guy who left the house, if that really was the killer or not. However, there was one person he could turn to right now who could really help him figure out if this person could have been involved, because she'd actually been inside the house when Wilfred was being murdered and so very likely at least saw or maybe even knew that man that was seen exiting the house. Later that afternoon, Fourchette sat in an interview room at the local police station listening to Wilfred's girlfriend, Agathe, walk him through her morning.

Now, according to Agathe, she hadn't actually seen the attack. She hadn't seen the, the potential killer, like none of it, because when she heard this commotion in the house, she had just sort of instinctively jumped into a closet and hid. And she had stayed there until she heard the sound of whoever this was leaving and driving off. Now, Fréchette was not totally alarmed by the story. I mean, people get scared and they protect themselves.

But what did stand out to Fréchette as Agathe told him the story was that she didn't cry once the whole time she was talking. In fact, she came off as almost weirdly calm. Now, Fréchette knew from experience this could definitely just be, you know, a product of shock, but it also could be that she just wasn't that upset. So at some point, Fréchette asked Agathe about her relationship with Wilfred. And she told him that, by and large, they'd been really happy together.

They'd hardly ever argued, and when they did, it was just about Wilfred being cheap. Because, as Agathe went on to explain, Wilfred would go to crazy lengths to save money—even just a few cents—even though he had plenty of money saved up. She said Wilfred would even watch the TV with the lights off, just to save money on electricity. He also insisted on reusing bathwater for the same reason. And then when he and Agathe traveled, he made them sleep in the car rather than paying for a hotel.

So Fréchette, you know, after listening to this, he felt like he was getting a picture of a guy in Wilfred who had strong opinions and really not a lot of flexibility. It did make Fréchette wonder if maybe because of this personality type that he appeared to have, Wilfred, you know, it's entirely possible he could have made some enemies along the way in his life. And when he asked Agathe about that, you know, when he asked her, you know, did Wilfred have any enemies, Frechette immediately saw Agathe's expression change. She went from being sort of weirdly calm to looking almost apprehensive, and she looked down at the table for a moment and then back up at Frechette, and then she just said, you know, that she didn't want to point fingers here, But there was some history that he needed to know. She told Fréchette that before Wilfred was dating her, Agathe, Wilfred had actually been married for 20 years to Agathe's own sister, Rachel Bérchoux.

Agathe said that she and Wilfred had had an affair, and when her sister Rachel found out about it, it became a huge scandal that really tore the whole family apart. Rachel had divorced Wilfred pretty much right away, and she was still very angry about it even now, 12 years later. Like, this was a deep, deep cut. And according to Agathe, Wilfred's son Paul had taken the whole thing really hard too, and he'd barely spoken to Wilfred since the divorce. Until recently.

This past Christmas, Agathe said Paul had come to Kappuskasing for a visit. It had been a pretty awkward couple of days, but she said that Paul and Wilfred had actually really bonded in the end, and Paul seemed to have, you know, basically forgiven his father. Fréchette wrote all this down, but he wondered how sincere Paul's forgiveness really was. It was definitely suspicious timing, and on top of that, Paul was also in his early 30s, which was the exact age range as the suspected killer, that guy who walked out of the house that was seen by the neighbor. And so now, Frechette really wanted to speak to Paul and also Wilfred's ex-wife Rachel as soon as possible.

But just as he was wrapping up the interview with Agathe, an officer poked their head into the room and said they had just found something that Frechette needed to see right away.

A half hour later, Frechette stood by the side of the road just a few miles from Wilfred's house, looking down at a pair of bloody winter boots lying in the snow. And then behind Fréchette, a little ways up the road, was a team of police officers who were working over this blue pickup truck that they had found abandoned behind a paper mill. These two clues, the boots and the truck, were actually just the latest in a trail of breadcrumbs that the killer had apparently left behind, because all day long various reports had been coming in about this mysterious man who matched the killer's description. Around 8:30 AM that morning, so about an hour after the murder, this mystery man had been spotted in downtown Kappeskäsin wearing a rain poncho, ripped pants, and no coat. He'd gone to a few different stores buying boots, a jacket, and ski pants, and he paid for everything in cash.

Then around noon, a police roadblock had stopped a taxi on its way out of town. The taxi's passenger, who was a short, stocky man apparently in his 30s, had seemed really jumpy. So the officers had checked his ID and recorded his name before letting him through. Just then, Fréchette's radio crackled and he answered it, and dispatch told him that they had just finished running the plates on that abandoned blue pickup truck, and they had traced it to a man from Timmins, which is a town about 2 hours south. The man's name was Richard Boucher, and it just so happened that that was the same name as the jumpy taxi passenger who'd been stopped by the police roadblock.

2 days later, on January 14th, 1988, Detective Fréchette sat at a desk in the Capuscaising Police Station reading the file on Richard Boucher, who was currently on the run from police as the number one suspect in the murder of Wilfrid Gaudreau. And Richard's file only made Fréchette feel more certain that he was his guy. First of all, Richard was a Caucasian 33-year-old man, sort of fit the physical description. And he was also a cocaine dealer with a side hustle of providing strippers to local bars and hotels. And also, he'd previously been arrested for drug trafficking.

However, there was one glaring problem, and that was that so far, Fréchette just could not find any connection between Richard and Wilfred. Like, if Richard was the killer, why? How? Like, how in the world could these two guys be connected? The two men lived hours away from each other.

They didn't seem to share any friends or business connections or really any mutual people at all. So to Fréchette, it sort of left two possibilities. Either they were linked by someone or something that maybe Wilfred had kept secret, or someone else had hired Richard to kill Wilfred. So now, while the local police focused on just finding Richard, Fréchette was trying to figure out who in Wilfred's circle might have wanted Wilfred dead. By this point, Fréchette had already questioned Wilfred's ex-wife Rachel, and she definitely did seem very bitter about the divorce.

But she said that she actually really didn't keep up much with Wilfred these days, and that she couldn't even begin to guess who might have killed him. Because according to her, Wilfred was like the most boring man on earth, and she had no idea who would want to do this to him. Frechette thought this was actually kind of an odd thing to say about your ex-husband who slept with your sister. However, Rachel was not the only person on Frechette's list that had a grudge against Wilfred. Because Wilfred's adult son, Paul, had been so mad at Wilfred, he'd basically barely spoken to his father in the past decade.

Except for just this past Christmas, when Paul had visited Wilfred and stayed at his house. And that visit had taken place just 3 weeks before Wilfred was murdered, which struck Fréchette as awfully convenient timing for Paul to have had this sudden change of heart. And Paul's visit would have given Paul the chance to learn the layout of Wilfred's house. He would have seen Wilfred's routine, how he moved around, and when Wilfred was alone. All information a killer would need to know before attempting to kill someone.

Now, Paul did not live in the area, so Fréchette had actually scheduled a call with him for that afternoon to talk all this through. And when Fréchette glanced at his watch, he actually saw it was time. So he picked up the phone and he dialed Paul's number. When Paul answered, right away Fréchette noticed that his voice was a little bit shaky. And also pretty much immediately Paul said, you know, unprompted, that he very likely didn't have anything useful to say because he hadn't been close to his dad in years.

So Fréchette just asked him about his recent visit to see his dad this past Christmas, and Paul would confirm that yes, that visit had happened, but he said that despite it being a good visit, you know, for the two of them, he claimed he couldn't really remember anything that they'd even talked about, like it was all just kind of a blur. Fréchette did not believe this for a second. I mean, theoretically, this was like a meeting for the ages. This is a father and son who've been estranged for over a decade, and they're having this life-changing meeting where they're gonna reconcile. And apparently they did, and you don't remember what you spoke about?

He just got the feeling that Paul was trying to say as little as possible here, like he was afraid that sharing too much might get him in trouble. Fouchette continued to question Paul for a bit longer. He asked him about his memory of his father's affair and of his knowledge of his father's finances. Now, Furchette knew from speaking to Agathe that Wilfred, despite being incredibly cheap, did have apparently quite a bit of money saved up. But Furchette wanted to know if Paul knew about it.

Because if Paul thought his dad had cash that theoretically could go to him in the form of an inheritance, Well, that was a reason to make amends after all these years, or maybe even reason to commit murder. But Paul said he actually just figured his dad was broke and always had been because it just sort of explained why he was so cheap, because he didn't have much money. That's at least what Paul thought. And so he said he didn't expect his dad to leave him anything. This answer made Fréchette wish they were doing this interview in person because over the phone, Fréchette couldn't watch Paul's body language as he talked about his father's money, so he couldn't tell if maybe Paul was lying when he said he didn't know that his dad had money.

But either way, Paul clearly was not giving him anything particularly useful at this point. And so now Fréchette was starting to think that the only person who could tell him if Richard had killed Wilfrid and why was Richard himself. The police just had to find him first.

2 days later, on the night of January 16th, 1988, Detective Frechette climbed out of his car in front of the Timmins Police Station and hurried up the steps into the building. After 4 long days in Northern Ontario, he was tired of the extreme cold and was just ready to go home. But this murder case just kept getting more complicated. Until recently, Fréchette had pretty firmly believed that his primary suspect, Richard Boucher, had been hired to murder Wilfrid Gaudreau. Wilfrid's ex-wife Rachel and his adult son Paul were the top suspects in terms of, you know, people who might have hired a hitman since they both had really good reasons to hate Wilfrid.

And then also Wilfred's girlfriend, Agathe, had been so calm in her interview, so she was also on the list as well. And she was also present at the time of the murder. But then, Fourchette had gotten access to Wilfred's bank statements, and they'd made him reconsider everything. Wilfred did have a lot of money saved up, that was true, just like Agathe had said. But his bank account had been steadily draining over the past few months.

His bank statements showed big withdrawals spaced out in regular intervals, and Frechette had no idea where the money had gone, which made him wonder if Wilfred had been mixed up in something like drugs or sex workers or gambling. Any one of those could explain the random chunks of money coming out of his account, but more than that, they could theoretically explain Wilfred's hidden connection to Richard, that sort of secret connection that maybe they had. And if those two did know each other, then maybe no one had hired Richard after all. Maybe Richard had killed Wilfred over something that was just between the two of them, like an unpaid loan or a deal that went bad. But now, Fréchette actually had a chance to find out himself, because that afternoon, the Timmins police had finally tracked Richard down and arrested him.

And Fréchette had made the 2-hour drive from Kapuskasing to Timmins so he could interview Richard himself. Once inside, Fréchette spoke to the officer at the station's front desk, and then quickly they had someone take Fréchette back to Richard's holding cell. And when they got there, Fréchette found Richard inside the cell slumped over on the bench, looking exhausted and maybe strung out. His clothes were really dirty, he smelled terrible, and his eyes were completely bloodshot. Fréchette entered the cell and sat down across from him and as aggressively as he could started laying out the facts.

He told Richard that on the morning of the murder, like right after it happened, Wilfred's neighbor had seen Richard leaving the crime scene and they would be able to pick him out of a lineup for sure. This neighbor also saw Richard's blue pickup truck, which had been found abandoned near a pair of bloody boots that were in Richard's size. Fréchette said the lab was still testing the blood, but he was fairly confident that it was going to come back as Wilfred's. Fréchette told Richard that with all this evidence, there really was not a jury anywhere in Canada that wouldn't convict him. So if Richard wanted any chance of a lighter sentence, he had to come clean right now.

But Richard didn't seem to care at all about Fréchette's threats. He just kind of laid there, glaring at the floor and refusing to say a word. A few days later, Fréchette was back at the Capuscaising police station, walking a constable through a script that he had written out. Now, Fréchette still didn't actually know for sure if Richard really was the killer, but assuming he was, Fréchette didn't know why he did it. He still was sort of torn on the issue.

Like, did Richard Boucher kill him for personal reasons? Or was Richard hired by somebody else? However, despite being torn between these two ideas, Fréchette had sort of landed on a theory and a way to test it, too. His plan was actually really simple. The constable that he was talking to right now was going to call the person Fréchette suspected, and the constable was going to try to trick them into incriminating themselves.

Now, Fréchette couldn't do this himself because the suspect would definitely recognize his voice. And so this wouldn't work that way. So once the constable was all prepped, Fréchette picked up the phone, dialed the number, and then handed the phone to the constable. And when the suspect answered, the constable just launched into the script that Fréchette had given them. He told the suspect he was a concerned friend, but he couldn't share his name.

He had to be anonymous. And he said he was only calling for one reason. He knew what the suspect had done. What he wanted was just to hear exactly what the suspect had told the police. That was it.

Just to help them. The line went quiet for a second and everybody just kind of held their breath as they waited to see what happened. But finally, the suspect spoke. And they said they hadn't told the police anything. And that they had enough money to make sure nobody else did either.

And when Fréchette heard that comment about having enough money here, he knew his theory had been right because there was a mastermind, somebody behind Wilfred's murder, and they had just given themselves away.

Based on witness testimony and recorded evidence, this is what police believe happened to Wilfred Gaudreau.

On the afternoon of September 18th, 1987. So this is 4 months before Wilfred was killed. The mastermind behind Wilfred's murder, the eventual mastermind, sat in a diner in Timmins waiting for someone to arrive. They knew that meeting with this person was going to be a very big risk. But they were tired of feeling angry and they wanted Wilfred to pay.

Eventually, the mastermind saw a man in his 30s enter the restaurant, and after they made eye contact, this man walked over and slid into the booth across from the mastermind. And then over lunch, the two of them talked through all the details of the mastermind's plan. 4 months later, on the morning of January 12th, 1988, basically in the middle of the night, the mastermind was laying awake in bed, literally shaking with nervous anticipation. Their heart was racing because this was it. Tonight was the night their plan was going to be carried out, which meant they were finally going to get the money they deserved out of Wilfred.

And so the mastermind, as they were laying there, eventually noticed what time it was and knew at any moment it was about to start. And sure enough, just then they heard the sound of somebody walking in through the door that led into their house. Calm as can be, the mastermind simply climbed out of bed, walked into a bedroom closet, and closed the door. And that's because the mastermind was Wilfred's own girlfriend, Agathe Bréchot. She'd gotten fed up with how cheap Wilfred was, and she wanted his money all to herself.

And in fact, she'd already started taking it before he was dead. For months before the murder, she had been the one moving money from Wilfred's account to her own without him ever noticing. Just sort of ironic for a guy that was so focused on protecting his money. Detective Frechette had honed in on Agathe when he learned about the missing money and realized that Agathe would have had access to Wilfred's bank accounts. Agathe had hired Richard.

To be her hitman, and she had been introduced to him by her niece, who happened to own one of the bars that Richard provided exotic dancers to. And Agathe actually paid Richard the money from Wilfred's own savings. So Wilfred basically paid for his own murder. Agathe Boucher and Richard Boucher were both charged with first-degree murder. However, Richard would take his own life before the trial.

As for Agathe, she was convicted and she spent 20 years in prison before being released on parole in 2009.

A quick note about our stories: they are all based on true events, but we sometimes use pseudonyms to protect the people involved, and some details are fictionalized for dramatic purposes.

The Mr. Ballen Podcast: Strange, Dark, and Mysterious Stories is hosted and executive produced by me, Mr. Ballin. Our head of writing is Evan Allen, produced by Jeremy Bone and Cole Locascio. This episode was written by Andrew Kelleher. Story editing by Luke Baratz. Research and fact-checking by Shelley Xu, Samantha Van Hoos, Evan Beamer, Abigail Shumway, Camille Callahan, Alex Paul, Ben Fasciano.

Research and fact-checking supervision by Stephen Ear. Audio editing and post-produced by Whit Locascio and Jordan Stidham. Production support by Antonio Monada and Delaina Corley. Artwork by Jessica Clogston Kiner. Theme song, "Something Wicked" by Ross Bugden.

Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballen Podcast. And just a reminder, every new and exclusive episode we put out on the Mr. Ballen Podcast, you can also now watch on the Mr. Ballen YouTube channel that very same day. And trust me, some of these stories you truly have to see to believe. Again, my YouTube channel is just called Mr. Ballen. If you want to listen to episodes one week early and ad-free, free, you can subscribe to SiriusXM Podcast Plus on Apple Podcasts, or visit SiriusXM.com/podcastplus to listen with Spotify or another app of your choice.

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