A killer helps a killer kill a killer: Institutional Thunderdome at B.C.'s only maximum security prison
When homicides happen behind bars, we often don't hear details about what victims and those responsible were in jail for in the first place
A "severely damaged" young man of "marginal intelligence" sent to prison for 18 years as a 19-year-old after shooting two police officers is not someone you want as a neighbour or a roommate.
The case of a man murdered at Kent Institution three months ago, might be soon forgotten by the public as psychopaths killing psychopaths, disposable societal outcasts tossed into a Thunderdome-style living arrangement where violence is inevitable and, well, who cares?
A not-too-deep investigation into the names and the backgrounds of those involved is an example of Canada's tragic history of cultural genocide of Indigenous Peoples from coast to coast to coast: Young First Nations men raised in terrible circumstances who turn to a life of drugs and crime and gangs.
The Incident
On Dec. 15, 2024, Therae Racette-Beaulieu murdered Christopher Braun in the cafeteria at Kent Institution helped by Michael Okemow, Theodore Anderson and Joseph Goulet. That's the quick version.
This is a not uncommon gang-style murder at a maximum-security institution, B.C.'s only, Kent Institution in Agassiz. Looking at the backgrounds of all of those involved, from a risk assessment perspective and with the hindsight of a person who doesn't work in corrections, this isn't too surprising and, maybe predictable?
Maybe, but a place like Kent Institution is one of a handful of maximum security prisons in the country where we house potentially dangerous human beings who kill other human beings. It's the end of the road.
The only place one gets sent further into hell is in the small town of Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, Quebec, about 40 kilometres northwest of Montreal. That's the location of Correctional Service Canada's (CSC) blandly named Regional Reception Centre, which is home to Archambault Institution and the Regional Mental Health Centre. It's also the location of "the SHU." That's CSC's Special Handling Unit where about six dozen of the most dangerous men in the country live, the only super-max detention centre in Canada for inmates considered to be too high-risk for regular maximum-security prisons.
So who were the five men involved in the incident on Dec. 15, 2024, the victim and the four attackers?
The Victim
Christopher Braun, 43, died from his injuries in that cafeteria fight where he was attacked by the four other men, an attack almost certainly caught entirely on surveillance footage.
Twenty-one years ago when he was then just 23, Christopher Dillon Braun fatally stabbed 40-year-old Justin Zaba in Regina. He was charged with second-degree murder in 2005, and in 2006, Braun pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter and received the equivalent of a six-year sentence, according to a Regina Leader-Post article.
Three months after he killed Zaba, and before he was charged, Braun stabbed another man resulting in an attempted murder charge. He later pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and got an 18-month sentence.
Still living the thug life in Saskatchewan 15 years after that, the 39-year-old Braun was in the Native Syndicate street gang along with 24-year-old Morris Poitras who looked up to the older man like a big brother. In February 2019, Braun expressed fears that people in the gang, including Poitras, were acting "shady" and planning to kill him. Braun recruited Poitras, who owed him money, for a robbery that never happened.
Braun instead confronted the younger man and on Feb. 13, 2019, fired a single gunshot into Poitras’ head, killing him.
A day later he was caught on surveillance video pushing Poitras’ body out of an SUV in an alley downtown Winnipeg. The body got hung up in the snow and Braun abandoned the vehicle. Caught redhanded, Braun was sentenced to life with no chance of parole for 15 years, which brings him to Kent in B.C. and the cafeteria on Dec. 15, 2024.
The Killer
On Aug. 29, 2018, Therae Racette-Beaulieu, just old enough to be charged as an adult at 18, fired a shotgun at two RCMP officers who were responding to reports of a break and enter near Onanole, Manitoba, 200 kilometres west of Winnipeg.
One of the shots struck RCMP officer Cpl. Graeme Kingdon in the back of the head. The other officer, Const. Mitch Thompson, wasn't wounded. The shooting sparked an 18-hour manhunt ending Racette-Beaulieu's arrest along with three others, two of which are related to him: Tommy Edward Beaulieu, 21; Shane Donovan Beaulius, 30; and Delaney Marcus Houle, all from Portage la Prairie.
The judge who sentenced Racette-Beaulieu to 18 years in prison called him a "severely damaged" young man, who was abused as a child, lived in group homes and different homes of relatives, and was of "marginal intelligence" with little hope for treatment.
On March 13, 2025, the BC Prosecution Service approved one count of second-degree murder against Therae Racette-Beaulieu for the murder of Braun in December.
Another killer helping the Killer kill a killer
In addition to the charge against Racette-Beaulieu, Theodore Anderson was charged with aggravated assault and assault; Michael Okemow was charged with assault with a weapon and assault; and Joseph Goulet was charged with assault.
So who are these three men?
• Michael Okemow: The assault in the cafeteria at Kent Institution in December 2024 was not Okemow's first rodeo. In fact, it parallels almost exactly something he did almost seven years prior at Stony Mountain Institution just north of Winnipeg.
On Jan. 7, 2018, 42-year-old Max Richard died in what a judge called “a brutal, grotesque killing” in the prison dining room at the multi-security complex. Okemow along with two other inmates, Victor Travis Ross and Wilfred George Cook, murdered Richard in an attack lasting about one minute, captured on the prison’s surveillance cameras, and which investigators say may have been gang-related.
On June 14, 2019, Okemow pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received a life sentence with no chance of parole for 10 years. Now he lives at Kent.
• Theodore Anderson: On July 27, 2022, Winnipeg police responded to report that a female in an apartment suite was going to shoot someone. Upon arrival, officers located two suspects and placed them under arrest. A third suspect, Anderson, 18, fled to a balcony and onto the roof of the building where he was arrested and found with a .22 calibre handgun and 19 rocks of crack cocaine. A search of the apartment suite resulted in the seizure of a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun.
Soon after, emergency crews responded to a shooting of a 13-year-old boy several blocks away. He survived, and it's unclear who was responsible or what Anderson was sentenced to but he was charged with several firearms offences, drug trafficking and possession of the proceeds of crime.
• Joseph Goulet: Twenty years ago also in Manitoba, Goulet took part in two violent home invasions over a two-day period.
In the first one on Oct. 29, 2024 in Grande Prairie, Goulet and a co-accused tied up and robbed a 62-year-old man. The next day the two showed up at a family home in in St. Andrews, saying their car had broken down. They tied up two young men, held them at gunpoint and forced them to give their bank card numbers up.
Goulet pleaded guilty in 2007 to taking part in both home invasions and received nine-and-a-half years. It's unclear what Goulet did after all of that to land him at Kent, but that's where he is.
All four men are, obviously, still behind bars awaiting a first court appearance to face the charges. Okemow is scheduled in court on March 31, the other three on April 1.
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Paul J. Henderson
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