THE BOY PULLED his snowmobile up to the driver's side of the van for a close look. Through the blood-streaked windows, he saw a body, its head blown off, slumped in the front seat.

     The boy raced home and returned to the lonely back road with his father and then they called for help.

     Police had trouble believing the story at first and responded only after being called a second time, arriving hours after the grisly discovery. Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigators found a 7 mm rifle braced between the driver's door and front seat.

     The Mounties ruled it a suicide, so routine that they closed the file without properly identifying the corpse.

     But the details in the reported 1990 shooting death of Canadian businessman turned drug informant Gilles Arthur Castonguay are far from routine. There are even doubts that Mr. Castonguay, the key informant behind the longest-running drug and money-laundering prosecution in Canadian history, is really dead.

     These suspicions come a few years after Ray Shalala, a 52-year-old lawyer and businessman, was condemned to prison.

     The Mounties have said little publicly about the mysterious death and have since destroyed their file and all physical evidence surrounding the 'suicide.'

     Testimony in the Shalala trial raised questions about the Dec. 7, 1990 death but information unearthed by a former prosecutor turned private investigator may be hard to ignore.

     The RCMP theory that their prized drug informant killed himself is ripped apart in the investigator's confidential Jan. 24, 1997 report. Derek Baldwin's extensive report outlines serious problems with the RCMP's probe into Mr. Castonguay's alleged death.

     In his report, he also details several theories of his own, including one suggesting Mr. Castonguay faked his own demise with the approval or aid of RCMP officers. Another suggests Mr. Castonguay was the target of a professional hit made to look like a suicide.

     The report also says the investigator has established that four "goodbye" letters were sent to members of Mr. Castonguay's family and a friend.

     Mr. Baldwin interviewed several people close to the case, including witnesses, police investigators and the now-retired RCMP officer who worked closely with the drug informant.

     "You'll never find him!" retired RCMP Sgt. Yves Desaulniers is quoted assaying in one of several interviews contained in the confidential report. Mr. Desaulniers is the officer who travelled to a Florenceville morgue on Dec. 8, 1990 to identify the corpse.

     But according to his own 1990 notes that he read into the court record, the identification was not positive "due to the complete destruction of the head.

     And the Baldwin report reveals police did not fingerprint the corpse, apply DNA testing or compare dental records to the partial dental plate recovered from the truck. After interviewing Mr. Desaulniers, Mr. Baldwin concludes the retired RCMP sergeant is not convinced the informant is dead.

     In an interview with the boy who found Mr. Castonguay's van on a steep, icy back road near Florenceville, Mr. Baldwin learned of another incident at the scene.

     Three days before finding the corpse, Jason Oakes, now 20, recalled seeing two men in a grey four-door sedan parked halfway up the hill. He said the car had out-of-province plates and didn't recognize the men.

     "Both men were clean shaven, short hair wearing suits and ties. Neither man was big enough to have been the corpse," Mr. Oakes recalled.

     "This is not a usual place for people to pull in and if they do, they don't try to come up the hill," he told the investigator in a Dec. 19, 1996 interview.

     The day he found the corpse, the boy also spotted a set of 4X4 vehicle tracks leading to a nearby camp. Mr. Oakes said there was also a set of footprints from the Castonguay van to the camp and back. (The owners of the camp had not been there in weeks and did not own a 4X4 vehicle, according to statements in the report.) The officer who first responded, however, said that because of a light snowfall the only footprints around the truck were his own. RCMP Constable Blake Keirstead later told the private investigator that he recalled one set of footprints "where the subject apparently left the van, urinated and then returned to the van.

     The private investigator wrote that police used the one set of footprints as a cornerstone in concluding the death was a suicide. "It is their contention that there was only one set when they arrived," Mr. Baldwin writes in the 51-page report. "In fact, the ground was covered with footprints when they got there.

     That the Toronto-based private detective believes Gilles Castonguay didn't take his own life raises questions about the foundation of the Shalala police investigation.

     For it was Mr. Castonguay's own banking affairs that triggered the probe. And it was Mr. Castonguay who, in 1989, became an RCMP drug informant and went on to inform on his business associates.

     The successful businessman may have been misled by the Mounties, who allowed him to think they could bring criminal charges against one of his brothers when in fact they could not.

     It is also in trial evidence that he became an informant on condition that he and his brother were shielded from charges.

     Even in the end, police appear to have been less than fair. One month before the informant's reported death, the Mounties told him the probe was being scaled down, that the investigation would not lead to charges and that police didn't need him any more.

     The informant, or his work, actually went on to become the heart of the Shalala prosecution. Fuelled by cryptic wiretaps, the cocaine-smuggling and money-laundering case against Mr. Shalala is anchored in the sensational story-line that he plotted with a Montreal drug lord to import Mafia drugs using a legitimate Nova Scotia shipping company.

     But is the drug informant really dead? Just last week, former business associate Myron Mitton testified that an RCMP officer told him Mr. Castonguay was very much alive and living in Vancouver.

     BY DECEMBER 1990, Gilles Castonguay seemed to be running out of options.

     On December 6, 1990, the businessman turned informant sat down with his lawyer and signed his final declaration, bequeathing chunks of his estate, including a holding company, 1987 Cadillac and a boat, to his two children, his wife, Bernadette, and female friend, Una Parlee.

     He initialed each page of the will, appointing his wife, Bernadette, as trustee. He asked that his remains be cremated.

     He then drove north for two hours into the night, pulled up a steep, icy back road near Florenceville and left the engine running.

     The next morning around 7 o'clock, Jason Ellery Oakes noticed the vehicle on the way to school.

     "It was unusual to see a vehicle parked there, people don't usually park there," he recalls in a statement contained in the Baldwin report. "I could see exhaust coming out of the tail pipe.

     He thought nothing of it at the time but when he returned from school around 4 p.m., the van was still there. "I wondered why it was there, so I got on my Ski-doo and went up beside the van approximately one foot away from the driver's side.

     Seeing blood inside, he looked closer.

     "I could see the body inside," he told Mr. Baldwin in the December 1996interview. "The body's head was completely gone. The corpse was dressed in a business suit. He might have had a tie on.

     The boy said it was not snowing at the time - it had, he recalled, snowed earlier that week. He also said blood had seeped outside under the driver's side door.

     After discovering the corpse, he went back to his family home, located on the same hill as the back road.

     According to his statement to the investigator, he returned to the bloody scene with his father and his sister's boyfriend. "I saw tracks that whoever was in the van walked towards the camp and then walked back ... It is possible that the footprints came from the camp to the van then back rather than the other way around.

     By the time the police arrived, he said, the place was covered with footprints.

     The private investigator's report discloses also that the police were called sometime between 4 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.

     "The police didn't believe us and didn't come," Mr. Oakes told the investigator. "We called again an hour later at about 5 p.m. or 5:30 p.m. They still didn't come until about four hours after our first call.

     "First one car, then lots of police cars arrived," he said.

     RCMP Constable Blake Keirstead and his rookie partner were the first officers on the scene.

     According to the Baldwin report, the constable told the private investigator that police recovered a 7 mm rifle from the van. Constable Keirstead also reported finding a wallet and cellular phone belonging to Gilles Castonguay.

     "On December 07, 1990, Mr. Castonguay's daughter telephoned Mr. Castonguay's cellular phone and the call was answered by an RCMP officer at the scene," Mr. Baldwin writes in his confidential report.

     Police also reviewed his long-distance phone records for that week; all numbers were ones he called regularly.

     "Keirstead said that there was blood all over the inside of the van," Mr. Baldwin says in the report.

     The report says the constable believed the deceased wedged the rifle between the driver's side door and the seat and shot himself in the chin. The police constable did not know the deceased and said he couldn't recall how much of the corpse's head was still attached, the report says. However, the report continues, Constable Keirstead does remember that an RCMP officer named Desaulniers, Mr. Castonguay's handler, knew the deceased.

     The investigator's report says the constable recalled that then Sgt. Desaulniers said he recognized the body "because part of the deceased's upper lip and a small moustache was visible and that the deceased was heavy-set.

     The constable said the deceased's body was not fingerprinted because when he ran a computer check on Gilles Castonguay, no criminal record came up.

     Constable Keirstead, according to the investigator's report, recalled seeing only one set of footprints at the scene.

     He said also that the van had been parked on the road for at least 20 hours.

     Early the next morning, Dec. 8, 1990, he said he was advised by phone that the individual was an active RCMP informant and that an expert identification officer, Ben Soiris, was being dispatched from Grand Falls. Days later, the RCMP identification officer arrived to examine the van, which had been towed from the scene.

     In an interview contained in the Baldwin report, Mr. Soiris said his blood-spatter tests showed no one else was in the van at the time of the shooting and all the windows were shut.

     Mr. Soiris told the investigator that he believed the death was a suicide and placed his notes in the RCMP file, which has since been destroyed.

     "He said that he found no blood outside the van. However, he did not go to the location where the van was located with the body in it," Mr. Baldwin writes.

     The report says Mr. Soiris believes he recovered a bullet but doesn't know what became of it.

     The identification expert said the wound was consistent with the weapon recovered but it was difficult to tell because "most or all of the head was missing," the report says.

     Because the body had been removed before he was able to examine the van, the report says he did not know the precise placement of the body or weapon but understood the gun was wedged between the driver's seat and door and that was found to be consistent with the blood-spatter tests.

     THE MAN WHO "tentatively" identified the body as Gilles Castonguay was also interviewed as part of Mr. Baldwin's investigation.

     When the investigator advised retired RCMP Sgt. Yves Desaulniers that he could not disclose his client's identity because it was privileged, the former Mounties started listing various possible clients, the report says.

     He asked if it was Ray Shalala's defence lawyer Morris Manning, or if it was the informant's wife, Bernadette Castonguay, Gilles Castonguay himself or reputed Montreal drug lord Albert Thibault.

     "Are you satisfied that Castonguay is deceased and that it was him in the van in Florenceville?" Mr. Baldwin asks.

     "I'm satisfied as to what I testified to and that's all," the retired officer replies.

     The report says Mr. Desaulniers later said he probably should talk to a lawyer before answering any more questions.

     The investigator tells him his mandate is to establish whose body it was and if it wasn't Gilles Castonguay, to find him. Mr. Desaulniers then says, "You'll never find him!"

     An RCMP investigator, the report says, asked the ex-member, "In your heart and mind, was the body you saw at the morgue that day that of Gilles Castonguay?" Mr. Desaulniers, according to the Baldwin report, replies: "Yes, absolutely.

     "This," Mr. Baldwin writes, "at least clarifies retired sergeant Yves Desaulniers most recent position with respect to the identification question.

     THE BALDWIN REPORT details several speculative scenarios about the mysterious death. The following are based on there being only one set of footprints at the scene: The RCMP theorize that Gilles Castonguay, on the way to visit his sick grandmother in Edmundston, pulled off the highway onto a steep, icy back road near Florenceville. He got out of the van, walked to a nearby camp, stopped to urinate and then returned to his vehicle. Alone, he sat in the van for four to 24 hours, then committed suicide. The tire tracks leading to the camp are unrelated; An unknown deceased drove the van to the lonely back road. A third party in a 4X4 drove to the nearby camp, walked to the van, murdered the deceased, walked back to 4X4 and left the scene; and An unknown individual drove the van to the scene. An unknown deceased then drove a 4X4 to the camp, walked to the van and was murdered by the unknown individual, who then left the scene in the 4X4.

     If individuals walked only in tire tracks, the possibilities are endless, the report adds.

     DEAD OR ALIVE, Mr. Castonguay's work as a police informant has ensnared two of his former business associates in the longest-running drug prosecution in Canadian history.

     One is reputed Montreal drug lord Albert Thibault, who is also charged with conspiring to import huge amounts of cocaine and laundering $5-millionin drug money. Mr. Thibault remains a fugitive from justice.

     Mr. Shalala, meanwhile, has been on trial since January 1996. He took the stand in his own defence last week, detailing for the court his side of the story. It is a move that leaves him open to scrutiny by federal drug prosecutor Scott Ellsworth.

     Mr. Shalala's former business associate, Mr. Thibault, has been described as the financier behind several international business deals involving Mr. Shalala and Mr. Castonguay.

     It is understood that Mr. Castonguay, a heavy gambler, had welshed on huge personal loans from Montreal business associates. These loans, totalling several hundred thousand dollars, were frittered away from funds intended to finance business ventures.

     The Mounties suspected he approached them because he had nowhere to turn.

     There was no way Mr. Castonguay could have known that the RCMP understood that his big bank deposits, however suspicious, were not linked to proceeds of crime.

     Back in 1989, then RCMP Sgt. Yves Desaulniers of the anti-crime profiteering squad, was getting financial information on Mr. Castonguay informally from bankers. Employees at various banks were keeping the Mountie abreast of the businessman's dealings even though the officer had no warrant giving him access to such information.

     The Mounties couldn't get a warrant because they had no proof anything wrong was going on.

     So without persuading Mr. Castonguay to become an informant, the Mounties would never have been able to secretly tape his conversations with Mr.. Shalala which finally enabled the police to obtain legal permission to conduct searches, record phone calls and intercept faxes.

     The key to the case, therefore, is Mr. Castonguay, whose reported death is still being questioned.

     RCMP Staff Sgt. Bob McFetridge has testified that Mr. Castonguay's reported death made it easier for police to make the informant's information public, in effect, allowing them to finally widen the probe.

     The staff sergeant told court that he became so frustrated that his counterparts in Montreal had stalled on launching a full-scale probe that he threatened to yank all wiretaps from Mr. Shalala's family home and law office.

     Sgt. McFetridge told fellow officers that he'd give up on trying to put Mr. Shalala behind bars and instead give incriminating information to the New Brunswick Law Society, the body that governs the conduct of lawyers.

     He said if he couldn't make a criminal case against the reputed Montreal drug lord then he would at least rid the province of his "organized crime tentacle.

     So the officer's plan was to cripple Mr. Thibault's local connection by ruining his business associate's law career.

     In one of his reports, Sgt. McFetridge wrote that shutting down Mr. Shalala's law office "would no doubt solve our problem locally.

     A full-scale investigation came only after the reported death of Mr. Castonguay, then heavy-set and in his mid-40s.

     THE PRIVATE INVESTIGATION into Mr. Castonguay's reported death also offers a "working scenario" in which Mr. Baldwin speculates the deceased was induced to go to the location. The deceased either drives the van or the 4X4. Mr. Baldwin theorizes the van arrived first.

     "In the writer's opinion, it is likely the murderer drove the van.

     When the second party approached, it would be simple to tell the second party to get behind the wheel using any one of several plausible reasons," Mr. Baldwin writes.

     Once the target is behind the wheel, the report says, the murderer incapacitates him with a blow to the head, a wound concealed by a gunshot.

     "It is possible the murderer convinced the deceased to comply by brandishing a weapon and telling him he was going to drive the van, but the most reasonable scenario appears to be a blow to the head," the investigator theorizes.

     A heavy-set man, the victim would likely put up a struggle, the report says. The report also says the rifle was wedged against the driver's seat to avoid blood splatter shadowing. Here, the seat provides a large shadow as does the passenger seat.

     The victim's nose or chin is then pressed against the muzzle.

     "The murderer crouches behind the driver's seat, reaches through with this left hand, using the deceased's left arm as cover, and fires the weapon using his left thumb on the trigger. This is an easy reach.

     The bullet was likely soft lead, the report says, and may have been drilled to give maximum mushrooming effect.

     The investigator concludes this is likely for two reasons: One, the deceased's head was destroyed with a single shot. And two, the bullet did not penetrate the roof of the van. It hit the roof, causing a dent in the sheet metal. (A steel-jacketed bullet should have penetrated easily.)

     The investigator says the position of the body and gun is too awkward to fit the suicide theory. "The gun being placed either between the feet or on the passenger side would be more accessible if the 'suicide' was unassisted.

     "The shadow of the seat keeps the murderer relatively free of blood spatters and there is no extra shadowing to betray the murderer's presence.

     The murderer, the report continues, removes the deceased's wallet and ID and replaces it with his own wallet.

     "The murderer opens the side door, steps out into the rut made by the van when driving in, walks to the front and walks [away,] leaving only one set of footprints, gets into 4X4 and drives away.

     "The murderer may have stopped to urinate, or the victim may have stopped while approaching the van, or a third party may have. The urination fits with most scenarios," the investigator says.

     The investigator's original report discloses that he failed to establish that Mr. Castonguay left a suicide note. In later interviews, however, Mr. Baldwin says he established that four letters were sent to members of Mr. Castonguay's family and a friend.

     Mr. Baldwin has not seen copies of these letters and can't account for earlier strong denials by various persons that such notes existed.

     "It should be noted that the letters are believed to be in the form of 'goodbye' letters as opposed to specific indications that the accused was about to commit suicide," Mr. Baldwin writes. "But as the investigator has not been able to examine the suicide notes, this is a rumour which has not yet been verified.

     The investigator did not detail his interviews with employees of four airlines. Mr. Baldwin simply wrote: "A number of interesting points were developed from our interviews with these individuals.

     Mr. Baldwin's lengthy investigation included several searches of Mr. Castonguay's registered corporations. They include several manufacturing and distributing firms, a holding company and a small chain of convenience stores.

     Six months after Mr. Castonguay's reported death, four companies he was involved in were amalgamated. The new company, The Express Convenience Stores Ltd., carries on business as a gas bar and store in Oromocto. Mr. Castonguay's female friend, Una Parlee, is listed as president and Mr. Castonguay's wife, Bernadette, is listed as a director.

     "It is interesting to note that Una Parlee and Bernadette Castonguay are currently business associates in the operation of the Gilles Castonguay companies," Mr. Baldwin writes.

     Mr. Baldwin of the Toronto-based Baldwin Agency would not divulge any of his findings, saying the investigation report is confidential.

     THE BOY PULLED his snowmobile up to the driver's side of the van for a close look. Through the blood-streaked windows, he saw a body, its headblown off, slumped in the front seat. The boy raced home and returned to the lonely back road with his father and then they called for help. Police had trouble believing the story at first and responded only after being called a second time, arriving hours after the grisly discovery. Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigators found a 7 mm rifle braced between the driver's door and front seat. The Mounties ruled it a suicide, so routine that they closed the filewithout properly identifying the corpse. But the details in the reported 1990 shooting death of Canadian businessman turned drug informant Gilles Arthur Castonguay are far from routine. There are even doubts that Mr. Castonguay, the key informant behind the longest-running drug and money-laundering prosecution in Canadian history, is really dead. These suspicions come a few years after Ray Shalala, a 52-year-old lawyer and businessman, was condemned to prison. The Mounties have said little publicly about the mysterious death and have since destroyed their file and all physical evidence surrounding the 'suicide.' Testimony in the Shalala trial raised questions about the Dec. 7, 1990 death but information unearthed by a former prosecutor turned private investigator may be hard to ignore. The RCMP theory that their prized drug informant killed himself is ripped apart in the investigator's confidential Jan. 24, 1997 report. Derek Baldwin's extensive report outlines serious problems with the RCMP's probe into Mr. Castonguay's alleged death. In his report, he also details several theories of his own, includingone suggesting Mr. Castonguay faked his own demise with the approval oraid of RCMP officers. Another suggests Mr. Castonguay was the target of a professional hit made to look like a suicide. The report also says the investigator has established that four "goodbye" letters were sent to members of Mr. Castonguay's family and afriend. Mr. Baldwin interviewed several people close to the case, including witnesses, police investigators and the now-retired RCMP officer who worked closely with the drug informant. "You'll never find him!" retired RCMP Sgt. Yves Desaulniers is quoted assaying in one of several interviews contained in the confidential report. Mr. Desaulniers is the officer who travelled to a Florenceville, New Brunswick morgue on Dec. 8, 1990 to identify the corpse. But according to his own 1990 notes that he read into the courtrecord, the identification was not positive "due to the complete destruction of the head. And the Baldwin report reveals police did not fingerprint the corpse, apply DNA testing or compare dental records to the partial dental plate recovered from the truck. After interviewing Mr. Desaulniers, Mr. Baldwin concludes the retired RCMP sergeant is not convinced the informant is dead. In an interview with the boy who found Mr. Castonguay's van on asteep, icy back road near Florenceville, Mr. Baldwin learned of another incident at the scene. Three days before finding the corpse, Jason Oakes, now 20, recalled seeing two men in a grey four-door sedan parked halfway up the hill. He said the car had out-of-province plates and didn't recognize the men. "Both men were clean shaven, short hair wearing suits and ties. Neither man was big enough to have been the corpse, " Mr. Oakes recalled." This is not a usual place for people to pull in and if they do, they don't try to come up the hill," he told the investigator in a Dec. 19,1996 interview. The day he found the corpse, the boy also spotted a set of 4X4 vehicle tracks leading to a nearby camp. Mr. Oakes said there was also a set of footprints from the Castonguay van to the camp and back. (The owners of the camp had not been there in weeks and did not own a 4X4 vehicle, according to statements in the report.) The officer who first responded, however, said that because of a light snowfall the only footprints around the truck were his own. RCMP Constable Blake Keirstead later told the private investigator that he recalled one set of footprints "where the subject apparently left the van, urinated and then returned to the van. The private investigator wrote that police used the one set of footprints as a cornerstone in concluding the death was a suicide. "It is their contention that there was only one set when they arrived," Mr.Baldwin writes in the 51-page report. "In fact, the ground was covered with footprints when they got there.That the Toronto-based private detective believes Gilles Castonguay didn't take his own life raises questions about the foundation of the Shalala police investigation. For it was Mr. Castonguay's own banking affairs that triggered the probe. And it was Mr. Castonguay who, in 1989, became an RCMP drug informant and went on to inform on his business associates. The successful businessman may have been misled by the Mounties, who allowed him to think they could bring criminal charges against one of his brothers when in fact they could not. It is also in trial evidence that he became an informant on condition that he and his brother were shielded from charges. Even in the end, police appear to have been less than fair. One month before the informant's reported death, the Mounties told him the probe was being scaled down, that the investigation would not lead to charges and that police didn't need him any more. The informant, or his work, actually went on to become the heart of the Shalala prosecution. Fuelled by cryptic wiretaps, the cocaine-smuggling and money-laundering case against Mr. Shalala is anchored in the sensational story-line that he plotted with a Montreal drug lord to import Mafia drugs using a legitimate Nova Scotia shipping company. But is the drug informant really dead? Just last week, former business associate Myron Mitton testified that an RCMP officer told him Mr.Castonguay was very much alive and living in Vancouver.

     BY DECEMBER 1990, Gilles Castonguay seemed to be running out of options. On December 6, 1990, the businessman turned informant sat down with his lawyer and signed his final declaration, bequeathing chunks of his estate, including a holding company, 1987 Cadillac and a boat, to his two children, his wife, Bernadette, and female friend, Una Parlee. He initialed each page of the will, appointing his wife, Bernadette, as trustee. He asked that his remains be cremated. He then drove north for two hours into the night, pulled up a steep, icy back road near Florenceville and left the engine running. The next morning around 7 o'clock, Jason Ellery Oakes noticed the vehicle on the way to school. "It was unusual to see a vehicle parked there, people don't usually park there," he recalls in a statement contained in the Baldwin report. "I could see exhaust coming out of the tail pipe. He thought nothing of it at the time but when he returned from school around 4 p.m., the van was still there. "I wondered why it was there, so I got on my Ski-doo and went up beside the van approximately one foot away from the driver's side. Seeing blood inside, he looked closer. "I could see the body inside," he told Mr. Baldwin in the December1996 interview. "The body's head was completely gone. The corpse was dressed in a business suit. He might have had a tie on. The boy said it was not snowing at the time - it had, he recalled, snowed earlier that week. He also said blood had seeped outside under the driver's side door. After discovering the corpse, he went back to his family home, located on the same hill as the back road. According to his statement to the investigator, he returned to the bloody scene with his father and his sister's boyfriend. "I saw tracks that whoever was in the van walked towards the camp and then walked back. It is possible that the footprints came from the camp to the van then back rather than the other way around. By the time the police arrived, he said, the place was covered with footprints. The private investigator's report discloses also that the police were called sometime between 4 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. "The police didn't believe us and didn't come," Mr. Oakes told the investigator. "We called again an hour later at about 5 p.m. or 5:30 p.m. They still didn't come until about four hours after our first call. "First one car, then lots of police cars arrived," he said. RCMP Constable Blake Keirstead and his rookie partner were the first officers on the scene. According to the Baldwin report, the constable told the private investigator that police recovered a 7 mm rifle from the van. Constable Keirstead also reported finding a wallet and cellular phone belonging to Gilles Castonguay. "On December 07, 1990, Mr. Castonguay's daughter telephoned Mr.Castonguay's cellular phone and the call was answered by an RCMP officer at the scene," Mr. Baldwin writes in his confidential report. Police also reviewed his long-distance phone records for that week; all numbers were ones he called regularly. "Keirstead said that there was blood all over the inside of the van," Mr. Baldwin says in the report. The report says the constable believed the deceased wedged the rifle between the driver's side door and the seat and shot himself in the chin. The police constable did not know the deceased and said he couldn't recall how much of the corpse's head was still attached, the report says. However, the report continues, Constable Keirstead does remember that an RCMP officer named Desaulniers, Mr. Castonguay's handler, knew the deceased. The investigator's report says the constable recalled that then Sgt.Desaulniers said he recognized the body "because part of the deceased's upper lip and a small moustache was visible and that the deceased was heavy-set. The constable said the deceased's body was not fingerprinted because when he ran a computer check on Gilles Castonguay, no criminal record cameup. Constable Keirstead, according to the investigator's report, recalled seeing only one set of footprints at the scene. He said also that the van had been parked on the road for at least 20hours. Early the next morning, Dec. 8, 1990, he said he was advised by phone that the individual was an active RCMP informant and that an expert identification officer, Ben Soiris, was being dispatched from Grand Falls. Days later, the RCMP identification officer arrived to examine the van, which had been towed from the scene. In an interview contained in the Baldwin report, Mr. Soiris said his blood-spatter tests showed no one else was in the van at the time of the shooting and all the windows were shut. Mr. Soiris told the investigator that he believed the death was a suicide and placed his notes in the RCMP file, which has since been destroyed. "He said that he found no blood outside the van. However, he did not go to the location where the van was located with the body in it," Mr.Baldwin writes.The report says Mr. Soiris believes he recovered a bullet but doesn't know what became of it. The identification expert said the wound was consistent with the weapon recovered but it was difficult to tell because "most or all of the head was missing," the report says. Because the body had been removed before he was able to examine the van, the report says he did not know the precise placement of the body or weapon but understood the gun was wedged between the driver's seat and door and that was found to be consistent with the blood-spatter tests.

     THE MAN WHO "tentatively" identified the body as Gilles Castonguay was also interviewed as part of Mr. Baldwin's investigation. When the investigator advised retired RCMP Sgt. Yves Desaulniers that he could not disclose his client's identity because it was privileged, the former Mounties started listing various possible clients, the report says. He asked if it was Ray Shalala's defence lawyer Morris Manning, or if it was the informant's wife, Bernadette Castonguay, Gilles Castonguay himself or reputed Montreal drug lord Albert Thibault. "Are you satisfied that Castonguay is deceased and that it was him in the van in Florenceville?" Mr. Baldwin asks. "I'm satisfied as to what I testified to and that's all," the retired officer replies. The report says Mr. Desaulniers later said he probably should talk to a lawyer before answering any more questions.The investigator tells him his mandate is to establish whose body it was and if it wasn't Gilles Castonguay, to find him. Mr. Desaulniers then says, "You'll never find him!" An RCMP investigator, the report says, asked the ex-member, "In your heart and mind, was the body you saw at the morgue that day that of Gilles Castonguay?" Mr. Desaulniers, according to the Baldwin report, replies: "Yes, absolutely." "This," Mr. Baldwin writes, "at least clarifies retired sergeant Yves Desaulniers most recent position with respect to the identification question.

     THE BALDWIN REPORT details several speculative scenarios about the mysterious death. The following are based on there being only one set of footprints at the scene: The RCMP theorize that Gilles Castonguay, on the way to visit his sick grandmother in Edmundston, pulled off the highway onto a steep, icy back road near Florenceville. He got out of the van, walked to a nearby camp, stopped to urinate and then returned to his vehicle. Alone, he sat in the van for four to 24 hours, then committed suicide. The tire tracks leading to the camp are unrelated; An unknown deceased drove the van to the lonely back road. A third party in a 4X4 drove to the nearby camp, walked to the van, murdered the deceased, walked back to 4X4 and left the scene; and An unknown individual drove the van to the scene. An unknown deceased then drove a 4X4 to the camp, walked to the van and was murdered by the unknown individual, who then left the scene in the 4X4. If individuals walked only in tire tracks, the possibilities are endless, the report adds.

     DEAD OR ALIVE, Mr. Castonguay's work as a police informant has ensnared two of his former business associates in the longest-running drug prosecution in Canadian history. One is reputed Montreal drug lord Albert Thibault, who is also charged with conspiring to import huge amounts of cocaine and laundering $5-million in drug money. Mr. Thibault remains a fugitive from justice. Mr. Shalala, meanwhile, has been on trial since January 1996. He took the stand in his own defence last week, detailing for the court his side of the story. It is a move that leaves him open to scrutiny by federal drug prosecutor Scott Ellsworth. Mr. Shalala's former business associate, Mr. Thibault, has been described as the financier behind several international business deals involving Mr. Shalala and Mr. Castonguay. It is understood that Mr. Castonguay, a heavy gambler, had welshed on huge personal loans from Montreal business associates. These loans, totalling several hundred thousand dollars, were frittered away from funds intended to finance business ventures. The Mounties suspected he approached them because he had nowhere to turn.There was no way Mr. Castonguay could have known that the RCMP understood that his big bank deposits, however suspicious, were not linked to proceeds of crime. Back in 1989, then RCMP Sgt. Yves Desaulniers of the anti-crime profiteering squad, was getting financial information on Mr. Castonguay informally from bankers. Employees at various banks were keeping the Mountie abreast of the businessman's dealings even though the officer had no warrant giving him access to such information. The Mounties couldn't get a warrant because they had no proof anything wrong was going on. So without persuading Mr. Castonguay to become an informant, the Mounties would never have been able to secretly tape his conversations with Mr. Shalala which finally enabled the police to obtain legal permission to conduct searches, record phone calls and intercept faxes. The key to the case, therefore, is Mr. Castonguay, whose reported death is still being questioned. RCMP Staff Sgt. Bob McFetridge has testified that Mr. Castonguay's reported death made it easier for police to make the informant's information public, in effect, allowing them to finally widen the probe. The staff sergeant told court that he became so frustrated that his counterparts in Montreal had stalled on launching a full-scale probe that he threatened to yank all wiretaps from Mr. Shalala's family home and law office. Sgt. McFetridge told fellow officers that he'd give up on trying to put Mr. Shalala behind bars and instead give incriminating information to the New Brunswick Law Society, the body that governs the conduct of lawyers. He said if he couldn't make a criminal case against the reputed Montreal drug lord then he would at least rid the province of his "organized crime tentacle." So the officer's plan was to cripple Mr. Thibault's local connection by ruining his business associate's law career. In one of his reports, Sgt. McFetridge wrote that shutting down Mr.Shalala's law office "would no doubt solve our problem locally." A full-scale investigation came only after the reported death of Mr.Castonguay, then heavy-set and in his mid-40s.

     THE PRIVATE INVESTIGATION into Mr. Castonguay's reported death also offers a "working scenario" in which Mr. Baldwin speculates the deceased was induced to go to the location. The deceased either drives the van or the 4X4. Mr. Baldwin theorizes the van arrived first. "In the writer's opinion, it is likely the murderer drove the van. When the second party approached, it would be simple to tell the second party to get behind the wheel using any one of several plausible reasons," Mr.Baldwin writes. Once the target is behind the wheel, the report says, the murderer incapacitates him with a blow to the head, a wound concealed by a gunshot. "It is possible the murderer convinced the deceased to comply by brandishing a weapon and telling him he was going to drive the van, but the most reasonable scenario appears to be a blow to the head," the investigator theorizes. A heavy-set man, the victim would likely put up a struggle, the report says. The report also says the rifle was wedged against the driver's seat to avoid blood splatter shadowing. Here, the seat provides a large shadow as does the passenger seat. The victim's nose or chin is then pressed against the muzzle. "The murderer crouches behind the driver's seat, reaches through with his left hand, using the deceased's left arm as cover, and fires the weapon using his left thumb on the trigger. This is an easy reach. The bullet was likely soft lead, the report says, and may have been drilled to give maximum mushrooming effect. The investigator concludes this is likely for two reasons: One, the deceased's head was destroyed with a single shot. And two, the bullet did not penetrate the roof of the van. It hit the roof, causing a dent in the sheet metal. (A steel-jacketed bullet should have penetrated easily.) The investigator says the position of the body and gun is too awkward to fit the suicide theory. "The gun being placed either between the feet or on the passenger side would be more accessible if the 'suicide' was unassisted." The shadow of the seat keeps the murderer relatively free of bloodspatters and there is no extra shadowing to betray the murderer's presence. The murderer, the report continues, removes the deceased's wallet and ID and replaces it with his own wallet. "The murderer opens the side door, steps out into the rut made by the van when driving in, walks to the front and walks [away,] leaving only one set of footprints, gets into 4X4 and drives away." The murderer may have stopped to urinate, or the victim may have stopped while approaching the van, or a third party may have. The urination fits with most scenarios," the investigator says. The investigator's original report discloses that he failed to establish that Mr. Castonguay left a suicide note. In later interviews, however, Mr.Baldwin says he established that four letters were sent to members of Mr.Castonguay's family and a friend. Mr. Baldwin has not seen copies of these letters and can't account for earlier strong denials by various persons that such notes existed. "It should be noted that the letters are believed to be in the form of 'goodbye' letters as opposed to specific indications that the accused was about to commit suicide," Mr. Baldwin writes. "But as the investigator has not been able to examine the suicide notes, this is a rumour which has not yet been verified. The investigator did not detail his interviews with employees of four airlines. Mr. Baldwin simply wrote: "A number of interesting points were developed from our interviews with these individuals. Mr. Baldwin's lengthy investigation included several searches of Mr.Castonguay's registered corporations. They include several manufacturing and distributing firms, a holding company and a small chain of convenience stores. Six months after Mr. Castonguay's reported death, four companies he was involved in were amalgamated. The new company, The Express Convenience Stores Ltd., carries on business as a gas bar and store in Oromocto. Mr.Castonguay's female friend, Una Parlee, is listed as president and Mr.Castonguay's wife, Bernadette, is listed as a director. "It is interesting to note that Una Parlee and Bernadette Castonguay are currently business associates in the operation of the Gilles Castonguay companies," Mr. Baldwin writes. Mr. Baldwin of the Toronto-based Baldwin Agency would not divulge any of his findings, saying the investigation report is confidential.