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ST. THOMAS – Chad Reu-Waters had a penchant for saying things to make him seem smart, tough or dangerous.

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‘He started lying to me from day one,’ ex-wife Catherine Reu said under cross-examination by defense attorney Andy Rady at her ex-husband’s first-degree murder trial. Friday.

Lots of loose lips and bragging and lies spilled out after he drank, like when he told her he was a lawyer and had a college degree in science. Or that he had two businesses in Guelph. And he went on, she said, about how much money he had and kept a filing cabinet full of pictures of all the cars he had stolen.

He bragged about his Mafia and Hells Angels ties, but it wasn’t clear, she said. “I thought he was working for people.”

When he told her in 2003 that he had killed his business partner, Ashley Pereira, 33, of Mississauga, by strangling her in a Guelph storage unit and stuffing her body in a freezer, it shook,” Reu said, but she wasn’t sure if that was true.

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Over the next decade, Reu-Waters repeatedly told her that he had killed Pereira, she said. She never saw the freezer, but he said it was kept in Guelph and then moved to Mount Forest. After that, she didn’t know where he had gone.

Then, in 2014, Reu-Waters, who took his wife’s name because he wanted ‘a fresh start’, threatened to implicate her in Pereira’s death during the couple’s messy split and fight for the care of their three children.

And that’s when she first went to the police, Reu said.

The second full day of evidence at Reu-Waters’ trial has revealed what the 48-year-old Jarvis man said about Pereira during Pereira’s 17-year disappearance – before a hiker found him his body in a locked chest freezer dumped over a cliff on the shore of Lake Erie east of Port Burwell on May 6, 2019.

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Reu-Waters pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and indecently offered indignity to human remains by concealing them in a freezer. The jury heard he was in jail when his son, Sam Waters, and two pals moved the freezer from a Simcoe hobby store and pushed it off the cliff into the night.

When questioned by Assistant Crown Attorney Andrew Paul, Reu spoke in a matter-of-fact, neutral tone about her rocky marriage to Reu-Waters which began in October 2000.

He founded South Coast Hobbies and Rides in Simcoe, originally called Waters Family Quads, and was also part of a multi-level marketing company that sold books and CDs, she said.

His partnership with Pereira began after the two spent time in the same unit at a prison in Milton. Reu said they started some sort of IT business involving $100,000 worth of equipment.

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She only met Pereira once, in early 2002, when she was pregnant with his daughter, at a business meeting with her husband at a restaurant near the Toronto airport.

“He said Ashley is a good name,” perfect for a boy or a girl, Pereira told her as she suggested what to call the baby, she said.

The marriage deteriorated. In 2003, after her mother’s death, Reu-Waters stayed home “a lot” which caused a lot of arguments, she said. When Reu told her she was “finished,” Reu-waters “said he would kill me,” she testified. “(He) said he’s done it before and mentioned Ashley.”

Reu-Waters has mentioned Pereira on other occasions, usually when drunk. It escalated when the couple broke up in 2013 and 2014.

She said Reu-Waters threatened in text messages to implicate her in Pereira’s death to prevent her from reporting it to child protection authorities and getting her to agree to custody terms.

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She told her lawyer about it before Reu-Waters backtracked, but he renewed the threat two weeks later, writing that if she didn’t tell him he’d ‘let the police know exactly what I had. done,” she said.

He told Reu he would include details like that she put a hat on Pereira’s head and panties in her pocket. He also said he had receipts from when she paid for a Guelph storage company while he was in jail and “he had a reserved spot in my size next to Ashley,” he said. she stated.

Reu shows the texts to the police. Police spoke to Reu-Waters about Pereira, but the investigation went no further.

Reu described finding Reu-Waters on their porch, “wondering who called the cops about Ashley,” unaware it was her. “I had never heard my heart beating in my ears before. My blood pressure was so high,” she said.

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Reu said she moved back to their Jarvis home a year after they split because she didn’t want to leave Reu-Waters – “a bad influence” – alone with the kids.

The relationship ended in 2018 when Reu-Waters threw her and the children out of the house without their belongings, she said. The couple then communicated “as little as humanly possible”.

In brief email exchanges, Reu-Waters again threatened to implicate him in Pereira’s death. He said he spilled all the details to his new girlfriend.

Reu took the emails to the police in 2019. The divorce was finalized in 2000.

The jury also heard from three police officers. OPP Sergeant Timothy Mason described finding the keys to the Master brand locks in a safe in Reu-Waters’ bedroom closet. const. Kaitlin Rodak showed how two of the keys opened the freezer lock.

She also said no DNA or fingerprint evidence was found on the freezer and other items seized.

Former police officer Sherri Hill testified that she had a conversation with Reu-Waters in 2005 about a collision involving a van registered with SMJ Marketing, a company owned by Reu-Waters and Pereira.

Reu-Waters told Hill the van belonged to Pereira, who “had been to Mexico” but “checks in every few weeks.”

The trial continues Monday.

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