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Montreal police make arrest in the 1996 disappearance of Patricia Ferguson

Sabrina Ferguson was 11 months old when her mother went missing. (Radio-Canada - image credit)
Sabrina Ferguson was 11 months old when her mother went missing. (Radio-Canada - image credit)

For most of her life, Sabrina Ferguson thought her mother had abandoned her.

She was 11 months old when Patricia Ferguson, 23, disappeared. Now almost 27 years later, Montreal police have charged 69-year-old Serge Audette with manslaughter in her mother's disappearance.

"It's a feeling of liberation, of relief," Sabrina Ferguson said in an interview Friday. "I don't have all this hate toward this woman anymore. I love her now."

A missing persons notice on the Montreal police website says Ferguson was last seen June 6, 1996, when she was spending the night at a friend's house in Montreal's Pointe-aux-Trembles neighbourhood with her young daughter.

Ferguson left in the night, leaving Sabrina at the house with a note for her friend saying she had gone for breakfast and was going to meet with her sister.

SPVM
SPVM

But Ferguson never came back and her daughter says, growing up, she was told all sorts of stories about why her mother could have left — that she'd simply gone out for a beer and that maybe she'd be back one day.

"All sorts of quirky stories. In some moments, I would just think the whole thing was a lie," Sabrina Ferguson said, adding that Audette's arrest and arraignment on the manslaughter charge brought her closer to gaining some form of closure.

Audette was arrested Thursday and appeared in court Friday to be charged. He is expected to make another court appearance on June 12.

There was a brief publication ban on Audette and Ferguson's identities Friday, but it was lifted.