Despite the varying impressions Ian Bush left online and in person, family and friends say they cannot explain the grave allegations he faces as he undergoes a psychiatric assessment at the Royal Ottawa Hospital.
His neighbours call him an ideal family man, a "wonderful" and chatty presence along their Ottawa street.
His social-media presence, opinionated though it could be, in no way suggested a person capable of the charges and allegations to come.
Despite the varying impressions Ian Bush left online and in person, family and friends say they cannot explain the grave allegations he faces as he undergoes a psychiatric assessment at the Royal Ottawa Hospital.
In December, police charged Mr. Bush with attempted murder of 101-year-old Canadian Forces veteran Ernest Côté, whose head was covered with a plastic bag during a violent home invasion and robbery. When he's released from hospital on Friday, Mr. Bush will reportedly face new charges linking him to one of the capital's most vexing unsolved crimes: the 2007 triple murder of retired federal tax court judge Alban Garon, his wife Raymonde and neighbour Marie-Claire Beniskos, according to multiple Ottawa media outlets.
The Ottawa Citizen reported police are also retesting evidence in the case of commissionaire Paul-Andre Simard, found dead in his home three months before the Garons and Ms. Beniskos were killed.
Constable Marc Soucy, a spokesman for the Ottawa Police, said the investigations into the deaths of the Garons, Ms. Beniskos and Mr. Simard are still considered active. He declined to comment on any possible link between those cases and Mr. Côté's.
Mr. Bush's lawyer, Geraldine Castle-Trudel, said her client "absolutely, vehemently denies any involvement whatsoever with the judge, his wife and the neighbour."
The charges and allegations have baffled Mr. Bush's older brother, Norm, who describes his brother as a doting father of three adult children who used to log long hours coaching his kids' baseball teams.
"We've been as surprised and shocked over the past few days as we were when the original charges were laid in December against my brother," said Norm Bush, who is older by four years.
The elder brother said he last saw Ian a year and a half ago. "He seemed completely normal. He had his family with him. I didn't really think twice about it," he said.
He added that news his brother was admitted for a psychiatric assessment alarmed the family because his brother had never suffered from any kind of mental illness. "There's no history of anything like that in the family," he said. "Our primary concern is with the wife and children."
Mr. Bush was born in 1955 and followed his father into work in the pulp and paper industry. After receiving an honours degree in economics at Queen's University, he spent 13 years in labour relations for the Domtar paper company. During that time, he added a McGill marketing MBA, according to his LinkedIn profile, and rose to the point of managing labour relations for 15 plants across the country.
By 1993, he had started his own consulting firm and moved back to Dryden to work as director of administration for the city's board of education. His business began incurring losses that he wanted to claim against his personal income, eventually entangling him with the tax court, according to the Ottawa Citizen.
His most recent stop was Ottawa, where neighbour Ron Snow described him as a "wonderful" guy he'd often engage in lengthy conversations.
More recently, Mr. Bush became a Twitter devotee, posting 4,712 tweets that shared his abhorrence of Justin Trudeau, the World Bank and Beyoncé. He also began taking side-jobs for non-profit organizations, such as COGENCanada, a group that promotes capturing the waste heat created during electricity generation. But it didn't last.
"He did a good job of organizing a couple seminars for us, but instead of keeping a modest sum and giving the rest of the money to the group, he kept it all," said past president Gordon Robb. "That said, these new allegations are very hard to understand."
Mr. Bush is scheduled to appear in court on Friday.
Patrick White