Member-only story
Vengeance is Mine: The Murder of Jennifer Stewart
In the early morning hours of August 20, 1999, a man out walking his dog stumbled upon the body of a young woman in a parking lot in the Vanier neighborhood of Ottawa, Ontario. Police called to the scene could tell right away that the victim, later identified as thirty-six-year-old Jennifer Stewart, had been hacked to death with a sharp instrument.
An investigation was launched but ultimately led nowhere. Since Jennifer was working as a prostitute at the time, it was difficult to track her activities. The mother of a twelve-year-old daughter, she had resorted to selling herself in order to provide for her family. Detectives assumed she had met up with the wrong person the night before her body was found. Unfortunately, it was a scenario they had seen play out so many times they had lost track.
Three years would pass before investigators finally got a break in the case, which had gone cold long ago. One day, completely out of the blue, the lead detective received a call from a jailhouse guard concerning a prisoner by the name of Adrian Daou who was telling anyone who would listen that he had killed a woman in Vanier in 1999.