MOM WANTS ANSWER

On the last day off his life, Joseph Beliveau told his mother he was
on his way to Nanaimo to visit her.

It was a trip he never made.

The 27-year-old ex-con was found less than two hours later on Mount
Prevost, critically wounded from a single gunshot wound to the head.

"I was getting worried when my son didn't show up," said Darlene
Holt, recalling the Jan. 31, 2006 date she will never forget.

"I kept calling his cellphone but got no response."

Police are releasing few details of the investigation, but here are
the known facts: Beliveau and another man went up Mount Prevost.

At some point Beliveau was shot.

On the drive down the mountain, the second man used a cellphone to
call the authorities at about 1:20 p.m.

Police and emergency crews raced about 1.5 kilometres up the mountain
on a gravel access road where they found the wounded man.

Beliveau died in hospital later the same day.

Now, more than 10 months later, the dead man's mom wants to know why
no one has been arrested for murder.

"Two men went up that mountain, and only one came down," said Holt.

"It seems to me the answers are pretty clear," said Holt. "I believe
there is a murderer walking our streets."

Police did an extensive interview with the second man, but released
him without charges.

Holt dismissed any notion her son's wound was self-inflicted.

"Joe always thought suicide was the coward's way out and he never,
ever considered taking his own life," she said.

Yet Holt said she has no illusions about her son.

"He was a drug addict," she said, noting he'd spent stretches of his
life behind bars for violent crimes.

But there was another side to her son, she said.

"I have in my head who Joe really was, a deep thinker with a great
sense of human compassion -- children, animals, old people, they all
loved him."

The grieving mom said her boy tried several times to quit the drug --
crack cocaine -- that was ruining his life.

In fact he was planning to get into a rehab program when he died.

"He was trying to get clean to reconnect with his (now nine-year-old)
daughter," Holt said.

"He wanted to be a better person, a better son, a better father, a
better brother and friend."

"But when you live in poverty and are homeless, when your spirit is
broken your choices are limited and there are few people willing to
open doors for you -- it can all seem so hopeless," Holt said.

And part of Holt believes that's why no one has been arrested for
what she believes is her son's murder.

"I get the feeling (the RCMP) think he was just another criminal,"
she said, noting police have kept her in the dark about details of
the investigation.

"What I do know is my son is dead and a victim of a violent crime. He
was a human being and something needs to be done."

But police are doing something, insists RCMP Const. Susan Boyes of
the North Cowichan/Duncan detachment.

Investigators, including members of the Island District Major Crime
Unit, continue to sift through information gathered at the scene and
during interviews.

"Right now we're waiting for the results of our forensic evidence
that's in the RCMP's Vancouver lab," she said.

It's unclear when those results will be available -- the B.C. lab's
resources have been drained while processing material for the
upcoming trial of Robert "Willie" Picton, a Port Coquitlam man
charged with the murders of 26 women.

Yet police are reluctant to call Beliveau's death a homicide.

"We're investigating a suspicious death and the focus of the
investigation is on how the death came to be," said Boyes.

"We're investigating all circumstances of the death and if it turns
out to be a homicide, that's where it'll lead us."