Michael Williams: The Man Who Helped Murder Nina Courtepatte Has Been Transferred to Two Women's Federal Prisons — And Canada Barely Noticed

Nina Courtepatte was thirteen years old. On April 3, 2005, she was approached at West Edmonton Mall by a group of people who told her there was a party. She got in the car.

There was no party. There was a golf course. There were five people. What happened to Nina Courtepatte at Castledowns Golf Course on the night of April 3, 2005, is one of the most horrific crimes in Alberta's history — a premeditated, collaborative act of sexual violence and murder carried out against a child by adults who had specifically targeted her for what they intended to do.

Michael Williams was one of those adults. He was seventeen years old. He was tried as an adult. He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.

He was diagnosed as "highly psychopathic" by a court-ordered psychological assessment. He showed no remorse.

In 2014, nine years into his life sentence, Williams began identifying as transgender. He eventually took the name Bunny Autumn Colasimone. He has since been transferred to two separate women's federal institutions — Fraser Valley Institution for Women in 2017, and Grand Valley Institution for Women in 2025. At Fraser Valley, he was caught having sex with female inmates and sent back to a men's institution. At Grand Valley, he threatened female inmates, produced a weapon, and was removed after a tactical standoff involving CSC negotiation teams and tactical units, lasting approximately four days.

He is now back in a men's prison. He has not stopped seeking transfer to a women's institution.

Nina Courtepatte has been dead for twenty years. She was thirteen years old. Her murderer has spent a significant portion of his sentence attempting to access women who are incarcerated and cannot leave.

Nina Courtepatte

Who She Was

Nina Louise Courtepatte was born on February 19, 1992 in Edmonton, Alberta. She was thirteen years old when she was murdered. She was a child.

In the years since her death, Nina has been remembered by family, by advocates, and by the journalists who have continued to report on the movements of the men convicted of killing her. Her name appears in this database entry not as a detail but as the centre of it. The crime that put Michael Williams in prison for life was a crime committed against a person — a thirteen-year-old girl who accepted a ride from strangers because she believed them when they said there was a party.

There was no party.

The Murder — April 3, 2005

On the night of April 3, 2005, Nina Courtepatte was approached at West Edmonton Mall by a group of five people: Michael Williams, seventeen; Joseph Laboucan, also featured separately in this database; Michael Briscoe; Stephanie Rosa Bird; and an underage female accomplice known publicly only as "Buffy," who was Williams' girlfriend at the time.

The group had gone to the mall with the deliberate intention of finding a victim. Nina was the victim they chose. She was lured to their vehicle with the promise of a party. She was driven to Castledowns Golf Course on the outskirts of Edmonton.

What followed was systematic. Nina was sexually assaulted by multiple members of the group. Stephanie Bird — herself later convicted — held Nina down while Williams beat the child's genitals with a sledgehammer. Joseph Laboucan then choked Nina with a wrench and stabbed her. She died from the injuries inflicted upon her.

Her body was found on a golf course fairway the following day.

The details of what was done to Nina Courtepatte are not included here for shock value. They are included because they are the record — the documented, court-established facts of what Michael Williams participated in, the acts he committed with his own hands and in concert with others, the specific nature of the violence he inflicted on a thirteen-year-old child. These facts are the context within which every subsequent decision about his prison placement must be understood.

The Conviction and Sentence

Trial and Plea

Williams was tried as an adult. He pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in 2007. First-degree murder in Canada requires both intent to kill and premeditation — the most serious finding available in Canadian criminal law. Williams's guilty plea confirmed that what he did to Nina Courtepatte was not impulsive, not accidental, and not the result of circumstances beyond his control. It was premeditated murder.

He was sentenced to life in prison with no eligibility for parole for twenty-five years.

He showed no remorse.

The Psychopathy Assessment

During the sentencing process, Williams underwent a court-ordered psychological assessment. The assessment concluded that he was "highly psychopathic." His defence counsel applied for placement in a medium-security institution. The court denied the application. The diagnosis of high psychopathy — and the placement decision it justified — are part of the permanent record that existed when CSC subsequently considered his transfer requests.

Psychopathy is not a diagnosis that resolves or diminishes with the passage of time. It is a stable personality characteristic associated with persistent predatory behaviour, lack of empathy, and the capacity to engage in calculated harm without remorse. The court found this characteristic present in Williams in 2007. It was present when he was transferred to Fraser Valley in 2017. It was present when he arrived at Grand Valley in 2025.

The Transgender Identification and First Transfer

2014 — Identification

In 2014, nearly a decade into his life sentence, Michael Williams began identifying as transgender. He took the name Michelle Autumn. He later became engaged to another male federal inmate, Frank Colasimone, who was serving a sentence for armed robbery and drug offences. Williams subsequently changed his name to Michelle Autumn Colasimone.

No court document, psychological assessment, or media account of Williams prior to 2014 references any history of gender identity concerns. His name change occurred during his incarceration, in the period following Bill C-16's passage and the adoption of CSC's self-identification transfer policy.

2017 — Fraser Valley Institution for Women

In 2017, Williams was transferred to Fraser Valley Institution for Women in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Fraser Valley is a minimum-to-medium security federal women's prison that, at the time of Williams's transfer, was also housing Adam Laboucan — one of Williams's accomplices in the murder of Nina Courtepatte.

The placement of two of Nina Courtepatte's murderers in the same women's federal institution is not a coincidence that the policy framework was designed to produce. It is an outcome produced by the same logic applied independently to two separate cases: male inmate identifies as transgender, requests transfer, transfer is approved.

Caught Having Sex With Female Inmates

Williams remained at Fraser Valley for approximately six months before CSC sent him back to a men's institution. The reason, as reported by the Toronto Sun, was that Williams had been caught having sex with female inmates.

The response to this discovery followed the same pattern documented in the Mehlenbacher case: a male inmate is transferred to a women's institution, exploits the access that transfer provides to engage in sexual behaviour with female inmates, and is removed not by a fundamental reassessment of the transfer policy but by the specific circumstances of detected behaviour.

Morgane Oger's Response

When the allegations of sexual conduct at Fraser Valley became publicly known, trans activist Morgane Oger — a prominent figure in BC transgender advocacy and a former BC NDP political candidate — characterized the allegations as "false allegations" and "transphobic."

The lone person unremarked upon in Oger's characterization was Nina Courtepatte — the thirteen-year-old girl whose murderer Oger was defending against allegations of sexual misconduct in a women's prison.

This is noted not to single out Oger for particular condemnation, but because the response illustrates a consistent pattern in how trans rights advocacy has engaged with the question of violent male offenders in women's prisons: the rights and experiences of the women in those prisons are systematically subordinated to the rights claims of the trans-identified male inmates, and allegations of harm by those inmates are dismissed as transphobia rather than assessed on their merits.

The 2025 Transfer and Tactical Standoff

The Application and Transfer to Grand Valley

Following his return to men's institutions after the Fraser Valley incident, Williams continued to pursue transfer to a women's federal institution. He changed his name again — to Bunny Autumn Colasimone — and at some point applied for transfer to Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ontario.

In 2025, the transfer was approved. Williams arrived at Grand Valley from Millhaven Institution — a maximum-security men's federal prison in Ontario — on a Thursday in March 2025.

Arrival and Immediate Threat to Female Inmates

Williams's time at Grand Valley lasted approximately four days.

Heather Mason was contacted by female inmates at Grand Valley within hours of Williams's arrival. She described to Reduxx what she had been told by those women:

"He lasted on Pod 1 for 30 minutes on Thursday. He put his hair up, was posturing, cracking his knuckles, and threatening to fight the women. They all got locked down and two women called me just hours after it happened."

Within the first thirty minutes of his arrival, Williams had made clear to the women around him what his presence meant for their safety. They were locked down. They called Heather Mason.

The Weapon and the Standoff

Williams's behaviour escalated. He produced a weapon. He threatened to use it against a correctional officer.

CSC's negotiation teams and tactical units were deployed. A standoff ensued. Williams was forcibly transferred out of Grand Valley on the following Monday — four days after his arrival.

"I am told that he arrived Thursday from Millhaven and was forcibly transferred out on Monday after a tense standoff with CSC negotiation teams and tactical units," Mason told Reduxx. "Apparently, he had a weapon and was threatening to use it against a correctional officer."

Williams was removed to an unknown detention centre.

The Court Application

Following his removal from Grand Valley, Williams applied to the court for an order requiring his return to the women's institution. That application was denied. He was returned to a men's federal prison.

The Epoch Times and National Post reported on the court proceedings. The fact that Williams was able to mount a legal challenge to his removal from a women's institution — requiring a court to adjudicate whether a man who had just brandished a weapon and threatened a correctional officer should be returned to a prison housing exclusively female inmates — illustrates the legal architecture that his previous transfer had created.

The Connection to Adam Laboucan

One of the most significant features of the Michael Williams case within the context of this database is the connection to Adam Laboucan, documented separately here.

Laboucan was one of Williams's accomplices in the murder of Nina Courtepatte. He is the same individual who, years later, sexually assaulted a three-month-old infant in Quesnel, BC — becoming Canada's youngest ever Dangerous Offender. He is currently housed at Fraser Valley Institution for Women, where he loiters near the Mother-Child Program and makes inappropriate comments to mothers with young children.

When Williams was transferred to Fraser Valley in 2017, two of Nina Courtepatte's killers were housed in the same women's federal institution simultaneously. Neither of them should have been there. Both were there because the same policy — self-declaration of gender identity as the operative criterion for transfer — was applied to their cases independently and produced the same result.

The coincidence is not remarkable. The policy is consistent. Apply the same rule to different cases and the same outcome follows.

What Nina's Name Means in This Context

This entry appears in a database of criminal cases involving trans-identified males and women's safety. It is factual, sourced, and documented. It records what happened and where and what the consequences were.

But it is also, at its centre, about a thirteen-year-old girl who was murdered — who was beaten and choked and stabbed and left on a golf course because a group of people decided to use her as an object of violence and discarded her when they were done.

Every time a court considers whether Michael Williams should be housed among women, every time a trans rights advocate characterizes his victims' allegations as transphobia, every time a CSC official approves a transfer application without publicly accounting for what he did — Nina Courtepatte's name should be in the room.

She is not. She is not a party to any proceeding. She has no advocate before any tribunal. She is dead at thirteen.

The case for keeping Michael Williams away from vulnerable women is not complicated. It does not require sophisticated legal analysis. It requires only that the people making placement decisions read what Williams did to Nina Courtepatte, assess what he has done at every subsequent opportunity to access women, and ask whether a different outcome is plausible.

Conclusion

Michael Williams helped murder a thirteen-year-old girl. He was diagnosed as highly psychopathic. He showed no remorse. He received a life sentence.

He identified as transgender. He was transferred to two women's federal prisons. At the first, he was caught having sex with female inmates. At the second, he threatened women, produced a weapon, threatened a correctional officer, and was removed after a tactical standoff.

He is currently in a men's prison.

He has not stopped seeking transfer to a women's institution.

And somewhere in the federal corrections system, someone with the authority to approve that transfer will eventually be asked to consider another application.

Nina Courtepatte was thirteen years old. She has been dead for twenty years. Her murderer is thirty-seven. He has a lifetime of incarceration ahead of him, and a policy framework that gives him grounds to request placement in a federal institution housing women every time he chooses to do so.

That is the policy Canada has built. That is what it produces. And Nina Courtepatte, who had no say in any of it, remains forever thirteen.