Medicine Hat man charged with second-degree murder

By MEDICINE HAT NEWS on January 18, 2022.

https://www.medicinehatnews.com@MedicineHatNews

A Medicine Hat man charged Monday in a 2020 homicide was arrested weeks after a body was found south of the city on seemingly unrelated charges.

The RCMP announced on Monday they had arrested and charged Julian Conrad Morris, 32, of Medicine Hat with the killing of Brooks man Dylan Denault, 27.

The arrest, which occurred on January 13, took place two years to the day after Denault’s body was found near a rural road south of the Hat. Morris is in custody and will next appear in Medicine Hat Provincial Court on charges of second-degree murder on Jan. 20.

The body was found near the junction of Range Road 61 and Township Road 114, south of Medicine Hat on Jan. 13, 2020. RCMP major crimes investigators said at the time that an autopsy determined the death was suspicious but released no other information, including the victim’s name.

No further information was released this week other than to name Denault as the victim.

Three weeks later, Medicine Hat police arrested Morris following an 11-hour long flurry of calls from different areas of the city. That spate of charges against him included two residential break and enters, a car-jacking, wearing a disguise in commission of a crime, possession of a dangerous weapon and methamphetamine.

The chase led authorities to advise an elementary school to go into lockdown procedures before Morris was arrested nearby.

The status of those charges is not immediately clear on Monday afternoon.

Officials with the Medicine Hat Police confirmed to the News that they laid charges but consider the two incidents to be unrelated.

They also say their officers were not actively involved in the murder investigation, which was conducted initially byt he Redcliff RCMP detachment and then Alberta RCMP’s major crimes unit.

Fourth murder charge in four months

Charges against Julian Morris bring the number to four unlawful death charges laid with a Medicine Hat connection in the past four months.

That’s after a period of three years in which no local murder files were opened.

In mid-October, Suffield resident Deborah Belyea was charged with first-degree homicide after the disappearance of her husband Alfred Belyea.

Later that month, Timothy Faulkner was charged in the death of his domestic partner after the body of Corrine Schneider was discovered at their downtown apartment.

Hatter Melissa Lynn Martens-Legasse faces a first-degree homicide charge after police identified the body of her travelling companion near Pincher Creek.

Charges in all three cases are now proceeding through the courts.

Prior to that, police laid charges after a body was discovered in a downtown apartment tower in December 2018. That resulted in a guilty plea in 2020.

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