Ex-wife testifies against the accused in Reu-Waters murder trial

The ex-wife of Chad Reu-Waters testified about the rocky marriage they had years before his arrest for murder in connection with a Mississauga man who was found in a freezer.

Catherine Reu told the court how their fights escalated after the victim in this case — Ashley Max Domenic Pereira, 33 — went missing in 2002.

She said that verbal arguments turned to threats and testified, “He said he would kill me and he said he had done it before...and that’s when he said it was Ashley.”

Reu told the court she believed the victim and the accused were involved in a business deal together worth $100,000, but somehow she was told, “He ended up taking Ashley to a storage unit in Guelph, strangled him, and put him in a freezer.”

Seventeen years later Pereira’s body was found in a freezer on a cliff near Port Burwell, and Reu-Waters was arrested within days.

In court he has pleaded not guilty to first degree murder and committing an indignity to a body.

The former spouse testified that from time to time over the years the accused would bring up Pereira’s name, especially when he had been drinking.

However, under cross-examination defence lawyer Andy Rady suggested that Reu-Waters would lie and brag when drinking, even about his connections to the mafia and Hells Angels, and Reu responded, “I believed he worked for people.”

Reu said she believed Reu-Waters was lying to her from the start of their relationship about things like owning several business to being a lawyer.

Their divorce became final in June 2020 months after his arrest.

The trial resumes on Monday.