Although I tend to avoid crimes of passion and mainly focus on events relating to organized crimes or the underworld workings relating to it, I’m a sucker for prison escapes. Maybe my interest in such events stems from bank robbers of the 20th century deciding to jump the fence, maybe it stems from the complication, the adventure, the guts and the planning to pull it off. I don’t know. Ricardo Vilches was incarcerated for murdering his ex-wife in 1985. He managed to escape the penitentiary he was barred up in last Monday (23/02/2025).
The act that Vilches had committed back in 1985 confirms that he was scum. We won’t deny it one bit. Maybe he changed, maybe he hasn’t, with the parole board denying his release in 2010. Either way escaping from a federal penitentiary at 85 years old is pretty impressive, although his freedom didn’t last long.
The Crime
Ricardo was convicted and sentenced of a second degree murder that occurred in September of 1985, for the murder of his ex-wife, Patricia Fierro-Vilches. After they had broken up, Patricia Fierro-Vilches had taken refuge in a residence housing beaten and battered women. Along with her children. But Ricardo still had a penchant for her, seeking her out and ultimately murdering the woman.
Ricardo had gotten his oldest son to help out in the grisly murder. He had cornered the woman in the Pierrefonds borough and violently attacked her, stabbing her multiple times with a hunting knife in front of her own children. He managed to flee to Guatemala shortly after, for a considerably long period of time. Enough time to start a new family, which he did. His stay in South America had lasted a total of 10 years.
Then he decided to come back to Quebec. He flew back to Canada under the alias of Stephane Ostrowski, living under false identification for the next few months to come. It seemed his life of mischief and abuse hadn’t come to a halt as he was arrested in 1995. Police took his fingerprints and Vilches life came crumbling down afterwards. A mistake which would land him 30 plus years in a federal penitentiary. Authorities had figured it all out.
The Escape
Archambault personnel had first realized there was a prisoner missing after a head count at 12:00pm on Monday (23/02/2025) afternoon. The Correctional Services of Canada (CSC) didn’t hesitate to contact the SQ (Quebec Provincial Police). Issuing an arrest warrant for an 85-year-old man, 170 centimeters, grey hair and 77 kilograms. Over time, he had been transferred to the minimum-security unit of Archambault, making it possible for the senior citizen to escape.
If you’ve ever witnessed the plains driving through the desolate land of Saskatchewan, the same description sums up driving by the Sainte-Anne-Des-Plaines penitentiary, where so many famed criminals and mobsters spent their days. You could barely see the structure of the prison from the closest public road. This seemed to not be a problem for Vilches. He was found nearly 30 hours after his escape, 600-700 kilometers away in Toronto. At 5:45pm on the 24th of February, a day after his escape, the man was apprehended by the Toronto Police Service. An investigation is under way to resume the circumstances of this event.
