Periard pleads guilty to gruesome Chapple Ave homicide

Twenty-one-year-old Keegan Periard pleaded guilty yesterday to second-degree murder in connection with a January 2009 Chapple Avenue homicide in which the victim was mutilated with almost 300 knife wounds. Joseph Charles Reed, 58, was found in his bathroom with a knife piercing his heart and other wounds to his face, genitals, abdomen and thorax.

Evidence has indicated that Periard called 911 from the Greyhound Bus depot on January 6, confessing that he had stabbed Reed the day before.

"I killed Joe Reed," he told attending police. "He tried to grab my balls so I sliced his guts out."

Periard said became upset after Reed tried to touch him.

"I killed Joe Reed, stabbed him in the chest, sliced open his stomach because he tried to go down my pants," he said in a wrtten statement. "Diddlers don't deserve to be alive. He's a goof, he doesn't deserve to be alive," Periard wrote, admitting that he felt such hatred toward Reed that he also defecated on him.

A medical examination also found a two-dollar coin thrust down Reed's throat.

The Sault Star is reporting a plea bargain under which Superior Court Justice Ian McMillan has been asked to allow Periard to be eligible for parole in 13 years.

The judge's decision has been reserved until Friday.