The life and death of Montreal concert promoter Matt "Dutch" Garner

Matt "Dutch" Garner

   There's only one way for Jenna Lee Solley to cope with the nightmarish sight she witnessed in mid-November 2011 and that is, with hope and patience.
   Solley, on that day, entered the third floor apartment on St. Remi near Notre Dame where her on-again-off-again boyfriend and close-confidante Matt "Dutch" Garner, 29, had been killed days earlier, alongside Einick Gitelman, 28.
   Solley was allowed into the crime scene to collect her badly-burnt-but-still-alive cat which had been stuck inside the horrific fire that accompanied the two killings.
   That's when she came face-to-face with the calcified corpse of Garner, her lover of eight years, all but unrecognizable on the couch, complete with zipper hoodie melted onto what remained of the sofa.
   The shock of the still-unsolved double murder on St. Remi St. - perhaps the most horrific local crime in recent history - was only heightened by Garner's stature as a high-profile concert promoter and scenester in the hip hop world, where he counted many devoted friends and business associates. 
   Gitelman, it seems clear, was burnt to death. He managed to descend two sets of stairs but perished across the street.
   How Garner died remains a mystery, as a coroner's report remains confidential due to the ongoing murder investigation. Solley can only hope to one day be told that Garner was already dead by the time that flames consumed his body.
   "At least we have the hope that he was shot or stabbed or something first because you can't tape someone to a couch," said Solley.
*** 

Ken Garner

   For Matt Garner's father Ken, the initial pain has since transformed into an ongoing agony of maintaining hope that he will one day receive answers concerning the increasingly-distant murders in St. Henri on November 11, 2011. 
   But 29 months and ever-diminishing communications with police investigators have led hopes to fade and frustrations to grow.    Homicide investigators routinely conceal details about ongoing investigations, even from families, leading to a not-uncommon frustration between the parties, according to one expert.    
   “It's a difficult situation when there's no arrest made,” said Heidi Illingworth head of the Ottawa-based Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime.
   “Police are often busy investigating tips and can't necessarily provide information right away to families. It's hard for families to understand. Usually someone from the police services is able to sit down with them.” 
    Many cities have dedicated squads designed to assist families of crime victims. Ottawa, for example, has about nine officers on its victims assistance force, along with several volunteers. Montreal has no such squad.
   A Montreal police representative told Coolopolis that families of victims are directed to a provincial body known as CAVAC which can offer similar services.    But Ken Garner has become so frustrated that he has, on occasion, berated officers at a police station near his home in the West Island. 
   He says that he has begun the process of filing an official complaint against the squad. “I haven't heard a peep besides the initial contact that night when they came to my house to tell me,” said Garner, who admits that he gruffly asked the police to leave after telling him the bad news about his son's death. 
    Solley, who was outside with the officers at the time of their grim visit, said that she even overheard an officer speaking disrespectfully about Ken Garner immediately after the encounter. 
   Ken Garner and Solley's frustrations have been compounded by what they consider ample potential evidence to make progress in the hunt for killers.
   They believe that video surveillance footage of the perpetrators exists from cameras affixed on a neighbouring commercial property as well as from a gas station where the perpetrators purchased gasoline employed in the incendiary attack.
   Another piece of physical evidence, which cannot be disclosed here, might also have yielded telltale fingerprints.
   But those close to the victim do not know if police have pursued those leads or have even interviewed all possible witnesses.
   Ken Garner also complains that about 20 police cars showed up to a vigil held Garner in St. Henri 11 days after the murder, although he concedes that police might have been mindful of the attackers striking again. "They might have thought that there was a danger to others because clearly these killers aren't normal," said Ken Garner.
   Solley also complains that police discouraged Sun Youth from offering a $25,000 reward for the capture of the killers. (Police generally discourage such rewards because the practice leads to a flood of worthless tips).
   One potential moment where police and Garner's survivors might have come together also fizzled out when the family nixed a police proposal to park an information van outside Garner's one-year memorial concert at the Belmont on the Main. The family declined, as they felt that a heavy police presence might spoil the memorial.
   In his despair Ken Garner has begun laying faith a series of increasingly-unlikely factors that might have made Montreal homicide investigators indifferent to pursuing the investigation: Matt's grandfather, who he never met and has long since left the country, was a known local criminal from the Point. Matt's lawyer once successfully defended a suspect who killed a police officer, a fact Ken believes might have turned them from the victim. 
   But Ken Garner primarily fears that his son's known-to-police label has prompted police to reclassify the investigation into a lesser-important settling-of-accounts file. 

Jenna Lee Solley 

***
   Matt Garner grew up with both parents and a brother on bucolic Cadieux Island in Dorion, 45 minutes west of downtown Montreal, until the age of eight when his parents split.
   The brothers then spent weekends on the West Island with their father Ken, a construction worker. Garner was entranced by city life and moved downtown at 18 to study computer programming. Matt's blue-collar father didn't understand the choice.
   "He'd put on his nice slacks and dress up for the office and I'd say, 'what the fuck are you doing? I'm giving you the possibility to buy a house and renovate it. I know real estate agents,'" said Ken Garner. 
   Eventually Matt would gain his father's approval by becoming an entrepreneur, registering a company called Escape Entertainment. "Everybody should have a company. It's something I find very convenient," said Ken Garner. 
   Garner started promoting hip hop concerts and soon his apartment became a magnet for emerging artists such as I.Blast and Magnum and others who he'd arrange opening gigs to for such out-of-town draws as Rick Ross, Redman, Method Man and Busta Rhymes. Matt Garner was soon at the centre of a creative circle of ambitious and talented rap music aspirants. 
   When he moved from Old Montreal to St. Henri, many of the hip hop artists soon followed and also found apartments nearby. 
   His impact on the music scene was undeniable. "Hip hop wears its city on its sleeve and Matt made people feel like we could be Toronto or New York City, or Los Angeles, every city's rap dream," said music journalist Darcy MacDonald, a close observer of Garner's efforts.
   Garner also "lived fast" and "elevated the wrong incentives, popping bottles on stage and promoting the image of living large. But that's not Matt or Montreal's fault, that's hip hop's problem," said MacDonald.
   Life was good and the parties were frequent.
   "He was always the guy at the barbecue with the apron on, putting on the burgers, cracking jokes. He was the guy bringing people together. That huge group of friends just drifted apart after he died," said Solley.
   Deep bonds were forged: one friend later named his child after Garner while another had Garner's initials tattooed onto his forearm.
   Garner's dedication to the cause never waned, in spite of many challenging moments, including a Rick Ross show which quickly went from triumph to fiasco over a small detail. 
   Ross was inked to perform at the Corona Theatre in January 2011 and was paid $80,000. Garner's team sold 2,300 tickets at $50 each but his team neglected to purchase adequate insurance and when fans vandalized the speakers, a healthy profit turned into a loss. 
   Garner persevered in spite of such frustrations, which also included regular money squabbles. "He had been ripped off so many times but he said 'I'm going to do it.' Nobody was stopping him," said Matt's father Ken. 
 ***
   Garner was also an avid fan of marijuana, a tonic he employed to ease the stress of promoting.
   Dealing marijuana also helped him finance gigs. 

Garner, at right

    "He sold weed, a bag here and and a bag there," said Solley. "Does that make him an evil person? I was with him for eight years. I know that end of the business and saw a lot of what he did. It wasn't done in shady corners. It was always done casually through acquaintances. It's just sad that this whole cloud of drug dealer has cast upon him. The stigma is frustrating." 
   Ken also shrugs. "The kid is moving pot, it's not a reason to kill him."
   On Feb. 12, 2011, Paul Frappier, a well-liked rising local musician who performed under the name Bad News Brown, was found dead near his home the Lachine Canal.
   The murder remains unsolved and many have attempted to link Garner and Brown's deaths. Garner was good friends with Brown and was deeply shaken by the death but Solley and Ken Garner dismiss any possible connection between the murders. 
   By that time Garner's dealings with police had been limited to a single episode in which he was questioned and released in relation to an alleged assault during post-party nightclub melee. 
   But in late 2010 police entered to his ninth-storey apartment and found marijuana on the premises. Garner was charged with possession. 
    His lawyer Frank Pappas (notable for successfully defending a man who shot a police officer dead) raised some doubts about police procedures in the bust. 

The scene of the crime

   Garner received a relatively-light sentence of eight months' house arrest. He was permitted to continue operating Escape Entertainment but was required to report to a parole officer who had to green-light his comings-and-goings.      Garner was jubilant upon news of the sentence and phoned his dad on the way home as he and friends hollered in celebration. "Had I known what was going to happen next, I would have wished that he had been sentenced to a couple of years instead," said Ken. 
   According to a variety of witnesses, Garner then befriended a connection from Toronto.
   A few weeks before the end of Garner's house arrest, that connection - according to an eyewitness - asked Garner if he could sell him some oxycontin. 
    Garner had never dealt in any drug other than marijuana but broke with tradition. 
   The contact reportedly agreed to buy $15,000 worth of oxycontin off of Garner, who planned to acquire the supply from a dealer in the Eastern Townships. 
   Garner sold the drug to the Toronto connection, who returned to complain that what Garner had supplied him was not oxy, but another worthless substance. 
   (An alternate version has it that Garner never had received oxycontin because the dealers that were supposed to supply it simply took his money and drove off in a drug burn in front of Garner's apartment.) 
   The oxycontin foul-up displeased the Toronto connection but Garner felt that he could make things right, as the two sides were to meet the next day to settle the issue. 

Gitelman

   That afternoon, November 11, 2011, Einick Gitelman, a ski instructor from NDG, was planning to come by with some marijuana - an amount said to be worth $15,000, about the same value as the disputed oxycontin - for Garner.
   Gitelman was, by all accounts, a non-violent, non-threatening, well-raised young man who also earned some income with the distribution of pot.
   It remains a mystery who set the fires and killed Garner and Gitelman on St. Remi on that day.
   The attackers, whoever they were, likely accessed the third-storey apartment from the back door along Dagenais, entered and tossed an incendiary device into the room of Garner's roommate – who was out of town at the time – and then taped Gitelman to a chair while also either killing or merely detaining Matt Garner. The attackers likely fled with whatever marijuana was on the premises.
   The killers have yet to be caught. The Journal de Montreal interviewed neighbours who said that they saw young black males leaving the house. 
   A friend of Dutch Garner believes that the killers might be the young black men from Toronto, one of whom might have employed a rap nickname of Green Eyes, or some variation thereof.
   It remains to be known why the killers chose to burn Garner and Gitelman in this cruel fashion, although they might have been inspired by a TV re-enactment shown around that time demonstrating the London Cray gang questioning a tied-up prisoner with threat of fire. 

   The flames eventually burnt through the duct tape on Gitelman's chair. His black-stained hands left a mark all along the walls of the stairway. He managed to get outside only to die in a yard across the street.
   Gitelman was likely simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. His family, who were not interviewed for this article, later established a hockey scholarship in his name. 
   Garner died, according to a coroner's report by "asphyxiation by suffocation." His charred body was found fused to the couch. The victims' friends and families were devastated by the stunning news but were hopeful that arrests would be imminent. They were not.
   Ken Garner, now 60, remains constantly preoccupied by the event and he searches for clues, taking hundreds of long bicycle trips from the West Island to the top of the Mount Royal, his way of contemplating the death of his son. “The truth can cut deep but you have to know the truth,” he says. 

Anybody with information concerning this case is asked to call 911 and share it with police authorities.