Crime Weekly - S3 Ep145: Crime Weekly News: College Student Arrested for Holding His Girlfriend Hostage in Dorm Room

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

19 Year-old Keanu Labatte is facing several charges after he allegedly sexually assaulted, tortured and kept his girlfriend against her will in her dorm room at St Catherine's University in St Paul Minnesota for four days. Prosecutors allege that Labatte began attacking his girlfriend of two months shortly after arriving on campus to visit her Thursday evening. Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod

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Price and participation may vary. Cannot be combined with any other offer. Single item at regular price. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Crime Weekly News. I'm Derek Levasseur. And I'm Stephanie Harlow. And you're hearing this. We're actually recording this ahead of time. So we're going into the future here. But we want to say thank you to everyone who came to CrimeCon. And at this point, we know if we won the Clue Awards or not. So if we won, thank you. And if we didn't, you didn't vote

enough. Should have voted more. Did we ask them to vote? Not really. I went on our Facebook page and was like, hey, if you get a vote, make sure you vote. But no, I haven't. We didn't really ask anyone to vote. But anyone who went to CrimeCon supposedly got an opportunity to vote. So again, either way, we're super thankful for everyone who did vote. And I'm assuming it was a great experience. And I'm assuming Stephanie didn't get up and throw her a wine bottle because we lost. So we'll see what happens. We'll see. We'll see how this plays out. This is a time capsule right now. Do you think I would do that?

Maybe. Why do I have an entire wine bottle? I could feel you sitting there. If you lost, just grabbing the bottle and be like, give it to me. And like, you're just sitting there drinking. Smashing it on the table. I object. And then when someone goes up there, accept their award, when the prosecutors win, you're just going to throw the bottle up there and be like, I no longer like you. Friend card revoked. No, I would never do that. No, no. Just silently in my head. We're going to like steal their award from them. Stephanie gets

caught on camera stealing a clueue Award from the back room. That would be horrible for the show. That's why I'm wearing black that night, man. Like it has an extra duffel bag where they're... Okay. We're going to get right into it again. As I just said, we're recording this a week early because we're going to be away at CrimeCon when we would normally record this. So we're trying to get a little bit ahead of it. So let's get right into this week's case that we want to talk about. 19-year-old Keanu Labatt is facing several charges after he allegedly sexually assaulted, tortured, and kept his girlfriend against her will in her dorm room at St. Catherine's University in St. Paul, Minnesota for four

days. Prosecutors allege that Labatt began attacking his girlfriend of two months shortly after arriving on campus to visit her on Thursday evening. Horrible story. Definitely as parents, not the type of cases we like to cover, but we always try to look at it from the perspective of we all, a lot of us have children. Although these stories are horrific, the only way to stay informed and to be active against these things, to be proactive is to understand them and educate yourself about them. So Stephanie, unfortunately, I'm going to need you to fill us in on the details for this one. Yeah, this is freaking crazy because I had to read a couple articles before I figured out, did he have a motive? Like what was his motive? Because the most, I think like three or four articles I read just talked about what he had done, but they didn't say why. And so I'm over here thinking, like, is he just the sexual sadist?

And he just did it because he wanted to. And he's done this to multiple other people. And I mean, it's still a possibility that he's done it to other people. But the criminal complaint states that Labatt found messages and pictures on his girlfriend's phone that infuriated him. He then took her phone away and began punching, choking, raping, and threatening to kill her over the course of the following days. Court documents allege that when Labatt choked his victim, she was unable to breathe. She said she felt lightheaded and she saw stars and she thought that she was going to die. And then he allegedly told her he

was going to kill her family as well. At another point during the assault, Labatt waterboarded his victim by making her get into the bathtub, covering her face with a washcloth, and pouring water on her. He then reportedly picked up a knife and held her arm, telling her he was looking for the right vein that he could cut deep enough so that no one could save her. Labatt also allegedly moved her mattress to the floor so that no one could hear the bed squeaking during the repeated sexual assaults. And luckily, on September 10th, the victim was able to convince Keanu Labatt to allow her to leave her room and get some food in the dining hall. And he reportedly made her take pictures of the dining hall to prove that she was there,

but she was able to alert the school's public safety officials, who then contacted the police, who then showed up. And as she was speaking to the police, Keanu Labatt called her five times over the course of 24 minutes and then sent a text asking why the police were outside, which, come on, dude, why do you think they're outside? Take a guess, buddy. What's happening here? And honestly, when I read that part where he's like, why are the police outside? I'm like, this dude's going to try to go into court and say she was down for all of this. That she was consensually a part of these activities and that she allowed it to happen. Yeah, this is maybe like a fantasy type thing. Yeah, he's going to say, he's going to say like, well, I asked her why the cops are outside because I had no idea why they would be there.

It's like, you know why they were there, my dude. And then when the police searched her dorm room, allegedly they did find a folding knife and a wet washcloth, which does support her waterboarding story. And I mean, who would make this up, you know, and who would even allow themselves to be waterboarded? Like, I don't know if that's a sexual kink. If it is, I guess all the power to you. But who would allow themselves to be waterboarded? This is literal torture. So obviously Keanu Labatt has been arrested on three counts of first degree sexual conduct,

one count of domestic assault by strangulation, and one count of threats of violence. And yeah, like I said, I think he's going to try to go in to any legal battle saying she was down for this. She wanted this. We like rough sex and we're into like, you know, BDSM and this kind of like aggressive play. And so I don't know what she's talking about, but like they'd only been together two months. She's 19 years old. I don't really see a young woman engaging in these sorts of activities with somebody she's known two months. It sounds kind of like they had a long distance thing because he's visiting her at college. So it's not like they're together every day.

I just don't see somebody being comfortable enough with their boyfriend of two months that they don't see every day to be like, yeah, go ahead. Choke me, strangle me, waterboard me, you know, stuff like that. It just doesn't make any sense. But he will say like, well, I let her go and get food. Why would I do that if I was holding her captive? Well, because dude, you can't hold her captive forever. You know that. I don't know what his plan was. I don't know what his plan was, but here we are. What do you make of it? Well, the first thing I did not read the script ahead of time. And the first thing I thought was if he was coming to visit her and at that point, based on transmissions between the two of them, whether it was via phone or via text, it's appeared to be for a good visit, right? Just a boyfriend and girlfriend hanging out. I was thinking to myself, something happened. Something happened that he saw or heard while on campus that had him fly off the handle, right? You go into college, obviously you're meeting other guy friends, other girlfriends, and if you have a jealous or possessive significant other who doesn't live there, it's not going to take much to trigger them and have them go into some type of interrogation. What's going to be interesting for me is, clearly I believe her, but what's going to be interesting for me as they build this case is to look at the digital data

of both the offender and obviously the victim to see what type of transmissions were going and coming from their phones and from their computers over the four days where she was allegedly being held against her will and raped repeatedly. Did it appear she had free will? Did it appear she was making phone calls, using Snapchat, anything like that? No, he took her phone away. He only gave it back to her when he let her go to the dining hall. There you go. So he's clearly holding her phone against her and that the record should show that, right? Where there's no phone activity off of her phone for the four days leading up to her going to the dining room to get some food. Same thing with computers.

And also when she tells her story as far as how this came to be, she's going to there's going to be a reason whether it was a DM or a text message or a photo on her wall or whatever it might be. She's going to have to lay out the story as far as, hey, he comes over. He sees or hears this. Here's the here's what he saw, here's the proof, and then he went off and that's where it led. You're also going to have the physical proof, right? You're going to have, I'm assuming, based on what you're describing, some indications that she was assaulted multiple times, not just sexually, but physically. Physically, yeah. And so- Maybe on her neck and things yeah even maybe some

i don't know if there was going to be defensive wounds as far as you know skin under the fingernails things like that i don't know we don't know the details of there this might have been a situation where she i kind of just succumbed to it and just kind of let it happen she didn't really put up much of a fight because she didn't think there was anything she could do and she didn't want to escalate it to where he killed her. So she obviously didn't agree to do this, but went along. She didn't fight back too much because she knew it would just make it worse for her. Right. She's in survival mode at that point. She's in survival mode at that point. So completely understand, obviously a horrendous situation that I wouldn't wish on anybody.

And if everything turned out to be what it sounds like it was, throw the book at this kid. He shouldn't be out ever again. You can't recover from this. You don't eventually serve your time and then say, you know, I'm a better person for it. If you rape, torture, and kidnap a woman or a man for that matter for days on end and everything turns out to be what she's saying. There's no rehabilitation in my mind at that point. I know that there's maximum sentencing on charges like this, but he deserves to be away as long as he can be so that he never does this to anybody else again. Yeah. This wasn't something he just did out of the blue and he's never had thoughts of doing this before.

And like I said, it's possible he's done something like this before. So this is not something you just decide to do because you're angry. First of all, you've been dating two months. Whatever messages or photos you found, I mean, you've been dating two months. Chill out, dude. You know, it's not like you're married. It's not like you guys have been together for years and years. It feels like there's a lot of control here, a lot of possessive issues. And he reacted in a way that would, you know, demean her, scare her and pretty much say, like, you're not going to do this ever again. I don't know. Once again, there's clearly not a lot of forethought that he put into this, right? Because at some point, she's going to have to leave the room or somebody's going to come looking

for her. And then what? Did you think that you would terrify her so much that she just wouldn't speak? Or was he planning to do worse worse was he planning at the end of this long weekend to to kill her i don't know and we'll probably never know because if he was planning to kill her he wouldn't admit it but i think they're clearly you know he wasn't he didn't he didn't plan this he didn't think it through and there would have come a point where he would realize like this has to come to an end soon and i don don't think she's going to go along with this. So what do I do? And this could have been a murder.

So thank God that she got away and she had the presence of mind, even though she was terrified, to still go and contact the police instead of walking back into that room to whatever awaited her. You're right. And you said something that actually made me think of something else as well. As detectives are building their case against Keanu, they're going to go back and they should talk to previous relationships that he's been in with other women to see if he's ever displayed any type of behavior like this before. They're going to try to show a pattern. Or if there's unsolved rapes in the area that he lives in. Yeah, that could be something too. because we have a ton of those right there's a ton of those every day women get grabbed off the street raped in

alleys they never saw his face they don't know him there's no dna left behind and then it's just this unsolved thing and there's a culprit out there still well somebody like this like i said this does not feel like it's his first time he doesn't seem like a novice in the raping and torturing department. Right. And if those previous cases have DNA that's been uploaded to CODIS, if they upload his DNA once he's convicted, yeah, you could have some matches. But either way, they're going to show a jury or attempt to show a jury a pattern of behavior where this isn't the first time he's become violent with his partner. They're also, not because they don't believe the victim, but preemptively for a possible defense, they're going to try to find previous relationships for this victim as well to say,

hey, has she ever had rough sex with you before? Is there anything? Because you may have a situation where Keanu's defense team comes out and says, like you just said, she liked this. She wanted this. This was something she was into. She asked for it all the time. Well, detectives, if they're doing their job, should be going to her previous relationships ahead of time. And if they're saying no, God no, she would never do anything like that. She was, you know, whatever the case may be.

They're not doing that to discredit their victim. They're doing that so when the defense comes out with this, they already have a, they're already prepared for it. So you, they don't get this dismissed on a technicality. And so there's a lot of work here to do, even though it seems like it's all right there for the taking. You got your crime scene, you got your witness, you got your victim, you got your offender. They really want to build this case up because nothing's guaranteed at trial. And I think if they do their due diligence, they can really tie this case up nicely for a jury. Even if she did like rough sex, though, like what happened between this woman and Keanu LeBat,

that is not rough sex. That is like assault. Right. So if she went back like there are people who enjoy rough sex who would not enjoy that. Right. Because now this is clearly like four days of this. No one is signing up for that. Oh, completely. So it wouldn't really even matter if her boyfriends were like, oh, yeah, she likes, you know, she likes to get choked during sex sometimes or she likes this or that. Like, I would hope that that wouldn't be even a factor. Like her past sexual history should not be a factor in this at all. Well, I mean, listen, I can't say I disagree with you. And I'm not saying, I don't think you're insinuating that I'm saying that it shouldn't, you know, that her past history doesn't matter. But to be fair, it does.

And not to maybe you or me, but my point being is obviously everyone is innocent until, you know, found guilty by a jury. So unfortunately, you're going to have a defense attorney. You know this. We're seeing in cases right now as we speak where there's going to be a defense attorney, maybe even a public defender that's going to try to build a case unless this person comes out, unless Keanu comes out and says, yeah, I did it. That would make everyone's life a lot easier, right? But if he comes out like you had suggested

and says, oh my God, she told me she wanted to do this for four days. That's why I asked why the police were outside. I had no clue. I thought there was like a safe word. I thought she wanted to do this. Right. Like it could be complete bullshit, but you as investigators and as the prosecution have to plan for that. You don't want to get caught with your pants down. So I feel like any piece of information you can gather to help strengthen your case against a potential defense is going to bode well at court so that, you know, even though it seems like a slam dunk, if defense throws a curve ball at you, you're ready for it. And I, like I said, I agree with

you. Even if she did, had done it in the past, it doesn't automatically suggest that she was okay with it here. Right. But it is something that if they're doing their job, they'll definitely have all that information ahead of time. So they don't get something thrown at them in discovery where they're like, oh my God, we didn't look into that. Why didn't anybody check that out beforehand? But I think this one might be a slam dunk. That seems more like something the defense team would do. Like the defense team would go and. No, I used to do it all the time. No, I'm sure the police also are going to do it, but specifically do it because they know it might get brought up in court by the defense. Oh, yeah. That's why. That's why we do it. Yeah.

We had unfortunately I did a lot of sexual assault cases. We didn't have a ton of murders, but we had a lot of domestic violence cases, a lot of sexual assault cases. And one of our protocols was to look at character witnesses, not only for the offender, but also the victim, because we wanted to show a pattern of behavior could show an escalation of violence over the years amongst multiple partners who did not know each other. And it only strengthens the case on top of the physical evidence you have in the specific case they're being charged for. So it's a lot of work. Sometimes you don't even need it. Sometimes they take a plea deal. But it's better to be safe than sorry and be prepared so you don't have some scumbag walking out on a technicality that's all i'm saying like i guarantee you the amount of people that have admitted to a sexual assault or rape probably count them on one hand yeah for real

the rest of them because it's it is like technically so hard to prove yeah you it's so hard to prove what happens between two people in the privacy of their own sex lives so it's so difficult to prove something like this so they're going to just ride it till the wheels fall off they're gonna they're gonna say that she wanted it and hope that you know it it gets them through and that's unfortunate you can't even take accountability for your own shitty behavior. Well, good luck to the team prosecuting the case. Obviously, we didn't mention the victim by name, but we wouldn't do that. We're thinking of her and her family and hopefully for the best outcome here so that, you know, unfortunately what she went through, this man is never able to do it to anybody else. That's all we can hope for.

I hope he's found guilty. And, you know, even if he is, though, dude, what's he going to get? Seven freaking years? I don't know. That's a whole different story. But we'll keep an eye on it. I know you guys will as well. Anything else before we close this one out? No, that's it.

Okay, guys, we're back from CrimeCon. We're here. We'll be back to you next week. We're going to have a new episode this week as we're covering this right now. Are we going to say the name of the new case? Are we not? We're just going to hold it off. It's a new case. We can say that much. Yeah. It's a new case. So new episode coming to you. New series. Check it out. We will talk to you soon. Stay safe out there. We'll see you, hear you on Friday. See you on Sunday. Bye. Night.