Allan Woods
| National Post |
June 24, 2004
Martin Ferrier
The mother of a Brampton psychopath who aspires to be like Paul Bernardo is warning Peel residents her son will kill upon his July 7 release so he can spend the rest of his life in prison.
"He's going to do something horrendous," Judy Perry, mother of Martin Ferrier, said in an interview with the National Post last night.
Ferrier has spent 15 of the last 17 years behind bars. He has 63 convictions, including six for rape. He once told a doctor he wanted to become "the most prolific killer in Canada, perhaps North America."
Peel police issued a public warning yesterday that Ferrier will live "in the Peel community" upon his release next month.
"Every time he does something, it gets a little bit more serious," Ms. Perry said in a telephone interview from her Northern Ontario home. "Even if he doesn't come up here and kill me, he's going to kill somebody, some innocent Joe Blow in Brampton."
In 2002, Ferrier, 31, was sentenced to two years in the Warkworth Institution in Campbellford for verbally threatening his brother-in-law during a court hearing.
He has also been convicted of arson and the rape of an ex-girlfriend that saw him return afterward and try to burn the woman and her two children to death.
Though his current sentence has expired, police are asking a judge to order Ferrier to sign a contract limiting his freedom. In an interview with CanWest News Service published yesterday, Ferrier said he would sign that contract.
"He won't be going to a halfway house because they won't have him there," Ms. Perry said. "One of his friends from inside ... has a wife and the wife has a house in Brampton. She is going to rent him a room or an apartment in her house."
The court order Ferrier agreed to sign makes him adhere to a midnight curfew and report to police every other day, Ms. Perry said. He must also have a job within seven days of his release, she added.
"He wants to come out of there to be a bouncer or work in a strip club because that's all he can do. He has no other practical experience," she said of her son, whose education ended at Grade 9.
Ferrier has been branded an "incurable psychopath" by prison doctors.
"He wants to be as notorious as Paul Bernardo. He thinks it's the greatest thing. He's thinks [Paul Bernardo] has got a nice cell, he's got a computer and a colour TV," she said.
The reality, Ms. Perry said, is that Ferrier cannot exist outside prison and has no contacts that are not criminal. She said he once bragged about making the "lifers" basketball team while in prison.
This year, he threatened to order an attack on her by associates with the Hells Angels.
Ms. Perry has been lobbying, unsuccessfully, for legislative changes that would see her son and other notorious criminals like him declared dangerous offenders.
So far, all of Ferrier's convictions have landed him relatively light sentences and he has been able to avoid the extra restrictions that accompany a dangerous offender status.
"I don't believe in three strikes you're out, but I believe in 63 strikes and you're out," Ms. Perry said.
What is worse, she said, is that he enjoys the publicity that comes with his criminality, once telephoning her when his case was profiled on the CTV program W5.
"I was not afraid of him, but with all this publicity, now I am," she said. "If he had gotten out six months ago and killed his mother, that wouldn't have been a big story. Now with all the publicity, killing his mother would be a big story."
Constable Kathy Gagnon, a spokeswoman with Peel police, said the force does not know where exactly Ferrier will reside when he is released, but officials wanted to get what little information they have out to the public as soon as possible.
Noel Catney, Peel's Police Chief, will be issuing a community safety alert "when and if" Ferrier is released, Const. Gagnon said.
"Any time there is a safety alert for the public about anybody who has shown a [criminal] history and is deemed as a high risk to re-offend, when it happens, if it happens, we'll put out more information," she said.
Peel Region dealt with a murder scandal last year after it emerged that Douglas Donald Moore, a 36-year-old convicted pedophile, was the prime suspect in the deaths of three young Mississauga men.
Moore, who hanged himself in jail, had been living in a Mississauga community where neighbours were unaware of his criminal past and the danger he might present to the community.
Harpal Singh Grewal, the uncle of 22-year-old Robert Grewal, said he was glad police are acting early to alert the community to Ferrier's release.
"I would say I am definitely of the opinion that if those indicators had been there [with Moore], lives could have been saved," he said.