"I'm gonna kill him," the father of victim Jean Rock roared in court as he learned how the diner dishwasher had duped the family for years to believe she was still alive.

"An animal, an animal," John Rock repeated as family tried to calm him and escorted him from the courtroom.

At that point, Judge Lynn Ratushny called the lunch recess.

Cleroux pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of neighbour Paula Leclair, 64, and to the second-degree murders of Rock, 32, his common-law wife, and Lise Roy, 27, his wife.

He will get an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Roy was killed in 1990, her bones wrapped in butcher paper and buried beneath a tomato garden that seemed to materialize overnight.

Cleroux had bludgeoned her to death with a rock.
Much of her remains, including her skull, have never been found.

Rock was murdered sometime after August 2003 during a tempestuous, 11-year relationship in which she kept leaving him but always came back.

Cleroux admitted to investigators that she pissed him off one too many times, so they went for a walk and he beat her to death with a rock.

He buried her where she fell, in a shallow grave near Kiwanis Cres.

To conceal the crime, Cleroux paid a woman with similar handwriting to write letters in Rock's name.
Cleroux then hand-delivered the letters to Rock's father - two or three a year from 2004 to 2010 - which said Rock didn't want to have direct contact with her family.

They also conveyed touching details of her fictional life with a trucker, Pierre, and their growing family.

"My dear Dad," read one letter dated April 26, 2004. "I named the baby John. The baby is well, he weighs seven pounds now and he's going to be tall like the Rock side. ... (He has) Indian skin like me, dad."

Cleroux even enclosed pictures of children, all the while paying his forger $10 per letter.

But area construction threatened to uncover the body, so he dug it up and buried it in woods nearby.

But this time he noticed animals had disturbed the grave, so he put her bones in a purple mesh bag, put that in a shopping cart and planned to wheel it to Dow's Lake to dump it, in the summer of 2006.

He paused along the way to pick up pine cones to sell in the market.

There were too many people at Dow's Lake so he dumped the body in the canal near Albion Rd. and Bronson Ave.

National Capital Commission staff recovered it after the canal was drained in the fall of 2006.
The bones weren't linked to Rock because she hadn't been reported missing.

Court heard Cleroux killed Paula Leclair because her apartment had a nice view.

He also thought it would fit his stuff better, and he liked that it was rent-controlled.

But Leclair didn't want to move out, so he took her for a walk and killed her in the woods near their Fairlea Cres. home on May 20, 2010.

Then he moved in.

Cleroux believed Leclair was alone in the world, so he hadn't counted on her son showing up at the apartment.

When the son opened the door on May 29, he saw his mother's possessions gone and that strange new ones had taken their place.

That's when Cleroux stepped off the elevator and noticed Leclair's son standing in the apartment.
Cleroux, cool as a cucumber, told him Leclair had gone on vacation and had left him the apartment - and then boldly asked to take the son's key.

The son went straight to police, who arrested Cleroux.

Before the interview was over, he had confessed to killing Leclair in cold blood.

The sentencing hearing continues Tuesday afternoon.