Rafiou Sow charged and jailed in Guinea over 2007 Lennoxville murder of Rachelle Wrathmall

Downtown Lennoxville, where Rachelle Wrathmall lived and was killed in 2007. The man long considered the prime suspect is now jailed in Conakry, Guinea. (Photo: Nick/Wikimedia Commons, Licence Art Libre)

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The man the Sûreté du Québec considers the prime suspect in the 2007 stabbing death of Rachelle Wrathmall has been arrested, charged and jailed in Guinea.

It is a dramatic turn in a Lennoxville cold case that, until a few weeks ago, had gone unsolved for nearly two decades.

Rafiou Sow, 49 — the opposition politician known in the Townships as Raphiou Sow — was taken into custody at his home in Conakry on the evening of June 19. He was held at Guinea’s central judicial police directorate, the DCPJ.

On June 24, he was brought before the Court of First Instance in the capital’s Dixinn district and questioned at length by the prosecutor and an investigating judge.

He was then placed under a committal order and transferred that evening to Conakry’s Maison Centrale prison, where he is to remain while the investigation proceeds.

The Guinean news site Africaguinee, citing a judicial source, reported that Sow was formally charged with murder before being detained.

The arrest-and-detention sequence was reported by several Guinean outlets — among them Guinee7, Guinee360 and Africaguinee — citing judicial sources in Conakry.

La Presse, the Montreal daily that has led coverage of the case, reported on June 20 that the arrest had not yet been officially confirmed by Guinean authorities. The formal court steps were set out in the days that followed.

The proceedings against Sow in Guinea opened on June 17, when the Parquet Général at the Conakry Court of Appeal announced it had ordered an investigation naming him.

In its communiqué, the prosecutor general, Fallou Doumbouya, said his office had received a formal complaint alleging facts that could amount to murder under Guinean law in connection with Wrathmall’s death. He instructed the Crown prosecutor at the Dixinn court to lead the file.

The office grounded its authority in articles 41, 42, 44 and, in particular, article 759 of Guinea’s Code of Criminal Procedure — a provision that lets Guinean courts investigate and try serious crimes committed abroad when a Guinean citizen is involved.

The communiqué stressed that Sow “bénéficie pleinement de la présomption d’innocence” — that he is fully presumed innocent until a final court decision establishes guilt — and that his defence rights and dignity would be respected throughout.

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Every step since traces back to a four-part investigation by La Presse journalist Isabelle Hachey, published June 6 under the title Meurtre irrésolu de Rachelle Wrathmall: sur les traces du mari en fuite.

The series spread quickly in West Africa, where a short accompanying video went viral. Public outrage at the apparent impunity of a man suspected of murder helped push the case onto the radar of Guinean authorities.

As detailed in that reporting, Wrathmall, 31, was found stabbed to death in her family home on Downs Street in Lennoxville on June 29, 2007, after her sister Donna grew alarmed at a missed morning phone call.

A daughter of the family that owned Green’s pastry shop and a Bishop’s University graduate who worked at Revenue Canada, she had married Sow in Sherbrooke in 2006. Friends and relatives told La Presse the relationship was marked from early on by jealousy, psychological control and threats.

The head of the SQ’s cold case division said he has no doubt about who was responsible, calling the killing a femicide.

Investigators concluded Sow flew out of Montréal on a one-way ticket to Casablanca on June 28, 2007 — the day before Wrathmall’s body was found — and never returned to Canada. He resurfaced publicly in Guinea in 2014 and founded a small opposition party, the Parti du renouveau et du progrès. He has never been charged in Canada.

Observers cited by La Presse have urged restraint, noting that the credibility of any prosecution will hinge on the independence of Guinea’s courts.

Extradition from Guinea — led since a 2021 coup by Mamadi Doumbouya — has long been considered unrealistic, which is part of what makes a domestic Guinean prosecution potentially significant.

The SQ has said it remains open to assisting Guinean investigators if a formal request comes through Interpol. The case remains officially unsolved in Quebec, nearly 19 years after Wrathmall’s death.

La Presse’s series is a remarkable piece of journalism that deserves a wide audience. To read it in full in French — and to use your browser’s translation feature for an English version — visit lapresse.ca and search “Rachelle Wrathmall.”

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