Mother of convicted killer glad 14-year-old victim's family 'got justice'

Tyrell Perron begged his mother to stay away from the Hinton, Alta. courthouse.

The now-convicted killer wanted to shield her from all the horrible details that emerged at his first-degree murder trial in Court of Queen's Bench, which ended last week.

April Brideau ignored her son's wishes. She remembers his reaction when she first walked into the courtroom.

"The moment he saw me, he choked up," she recalled in an interview with CBC. "I could see the little smile because he knew I wouldn't listen to him ...I knew it made him feel good at least that someone was there for him."

Day after day, the petite blonde sat alone in the front row of the courtroom, her eyes often locked on her 24-year-old son sitting in the prisoner's box.

After just five of deliberations, a jury found Perron guilty of first-degree murder and offering an indignity to a dead body. The judge described the crime as "monstrous."

On March 4, 2016 in an Edson, Alta. apartment, Perron stood over a sleeping 14-year-old girl he had known for most of her life. The teen can only be identified by her initials, D.H., due to a court-ordered publication ban.

"I was obsessed with her," he later confessed to RCMP. "I was standing over her with a knife and I just stuck her in the neck. And she started screaming to stop. I covered her face with pillows.

"After she had finished bleeding out, I raped her and then I got ready to kill myself."

Perron's mother sat shaking and silently sobbing in the front row of the courtroom as she watched her son's videotaped confession along with the rest of the jury.

"That's why it affected me so bad watching that three and a half hours ," said Brideau. "Because my son loves me so much, and I him. He could never tell me the truth. He wanted to so many times. And I could feel it. But he couldn't. And I understand that."

Brideau admits there's still so much she doesn't understand, and perhaps never will.

'I knew he was troubled'

She fondly looks at pictures of her son that were taken when he was much younger. Her hands are shaking. Tears are running down her cheeks.

"I don't want people to think my son is just this angry person who lashed out and everything else," Brideau said. "My son is not an angry person. He's not the way they're portraying him."

She said Perron began to get bullied at school when he was nine years old. He had trouble making friends and inevitably fell in with "the wrong crowd".

Then in the summer of 2014, Brideau said she found out her son was using meth. He was 19 at the time. She thinks the drug caused permanent and irreversible harm.

"It's like he wasn't in his own body," Brideau said. "He spoke differently. It was like a different voice -- a very deep voice and it was so mean and aggressive and not my sweet boy.He was carrying around an egg as his best friend.

"That's when he started losing jobs. Because he couldn't hold it together."

Brideau said she tried to get him help. She called addiction specialists, took him to the hospital, even consulted the police. RCMP told her that because Perron had no criminal record, and had committed no crime, there was nothing they could do.

In desperation, she had her son committed to a psychiatric facility for 28 days.

That didn't seem to help, she said.

"He almost seemed more lost coming out of there than what he did going in, in a way," she remembered. "I do remember the doctors telling me that drug-induced psychosis can go away if it's caught early enough and they don't do drugs anymore."

Brideau thinks her son stayed away from meth up until a month or so before the murder. She said Perron admitted he used meth a few days before he killed D.H. He told her, "Mom, that dark side is still there."

Perron was arrested the same day he stabbed, smothered and sexually assaulted D.H. He confessed his crime to RCMP the very next day.

Brideau is proud her son immediately took responsibility.

"I want to say on public record how proud I am of my son, no matter what he's done," Brideau said.

"I'm not condoning what he's done by any means, and please don't ever think I do," she added. "But my son came forward that quickly. And that to me shows great character. The police told me the same. Everyone said the same. He's not the typical convict."

Will do his best 'to be a good person'

Perron now faces life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years. Last week he apologized to D.H.'s family before he was sentenced.

In a halting voice, fighting back tears he said: "If I ever make it out of jail and I survive, I'm going to do my best to be a good person and make a difference in this world."

Perron's mother never expected the jury to return so quickly with a verdict. She was not in court to hear the decision. His lawyer sent her a text about the guilty finding and the 25-year sentence.

"Oh my God. I couldn't even breathe," Brideau said.

She's terrified about his prospects for survival behind bars.

"It's hard to know that somebody who is not normally a violent person is in with … such hardcore people," she said. "My biggest fear is for his safety of course."

She's afraid one day she'll get a phone call from the prison and it won't be her son on the line.

"The hard thing for me is that my son is gone, but he's not," Brideau said. "Your nerves are always so bad waiting for that phone call. You want to talk to him so bad but you want to hear that it's him and that it's not somebody else giving you bad news."

Brideau hopes her son will be given a psychiatric assessment so he can get the help she thinks he needs while serving his sentence.

'I'm stronger than people think'

Just under 8,500 people live in Edson, and Brideau said she has no anonymity in her home town.

She describes life in Edson as "horrible" and admitted she's received death threats.

"I don't really go out in public a whole lot," she said. "You know, you're going through WalMart and you hear, 'There's the psycho kid's mom.' And it just breaks your heart."

"So it's difficult, but I'm stronger than people think."

The situation is made even more complicated because Brideau and D.H.'s mother used to be best friends. Brideau watched D.H. grow up and thought of her as a daughter.

Now she feels like she's lost two children.

At the end of the highly charged, emotional interview, Brideau is asked what she would say to D.H.'s mother, if given the chance.

"I would tell her that I was very glad that she did get the justice that her family deserves," Brideau said through tears. "And I would tell her that I'm so sorry that we both lost two kids. I would tell her that I hope she will find a way to move on.

"I know I won't," she said.